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How to cancel a running workflow instance

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This topic demonstrates how to cancel a running instance of a Workflow Builder workflow.

Important: This how-to requires a published workflow with a running instance in your account. Run the How to trigger a Workflow Builder workflow example from our launcher projects to create, publish, and trigger a workflow instance before running this example.

Run this code example from our Quickstart or launcher projects: Bash, C#, Java, Node.js, PowerShell.

Required data

Running the code in this how-to requires this data:

Data elementDescription
{API_ACCOUNT_ID}A GUID value that identifies your account. This value is automatically generated by Docusign for any account you create. Copy the value from the API Account ID field on the Apps and Keys page.
{BASE_PATH}A string value that forms the root of the URL required to make API calls. The base path value in the example code is set to target the developer environment at https://<domain> Where <domain> is https://api-d.docusign.com/v1 for the developer environment and https://api.docusign.com/v1 for production.
{WORKFLOW_ID}A GUID value that identifies your Workflow Builder workflow.
{WORKFLOW_INSTANCE_ID}A GUID value that identifies an instance for a given Workflow Builder workflow ID. See How to trigger a Workflow Builder workflow for details.

Step 1. Obtain your OAuth token

To make the API call shown in this how-to, you need a valid OAuth access token. Docusign supports access tokens for three different recommended OAuth grant types: Public Authorization Code Grant, Confidential Authorization Code Grant, and JSON Web Token (JWT) Grant. Choose the OAuth grant type appropriate for your scenario. See Confidential Authorization Code Grant for guidance on your options to get an Confidential Authorization Code Grant OAuth token.

Workflow Builder OAuth access tokens are the same ones used for our eSignature REST API, although you must request one or more Workflow Builder scopes to call the Workflow Builder API. The endpoint calls made in this how-to require that you request the Workflow Builder-specific aow_manage scope when obtaining your access token.

See Workflow Builder Authentication for details and the full list of Workflow Builder scopes.

Three icons that represent the three methods a user can use to obtain an OAuth token: JSON Web Token (JWT), Public Authorization Code Grant (ACG), and Confidential Authorization Code grant

Step 2. Construct your API headers

After you have a valid OAuth access token, you are ready to construct the API headers that you will pass to the API call. Construct your headers like this, but make sure to substitute your valid OAuth access token for {ACCESS_TOKEN}.

declare -a Headers=('--header' "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
    '--header' "Accept: application/json" \
    '--header' "Content-Type: application/json")

Step 3. Call the Workflow Builder API

Make a POST request to the Workflows:cancelWorkflowInstance endpoint. Here’s how you make the call, but make sure to substitute the appropriate base path for {BASE_PATH}, your API account ID for {API_ACCOUNT_ID}, the workflow ID for {WORKFLOW_ID}, and the ID of the instance you want to cancel with {WORKFLOW_INSTANCE_ID}.

View the source code for this how-to on GitHub: Bash, C#, Java, Node.js, or PowerShell.

response=$(mktemp /tmp/response-wftmp.XXXXXX)
Status=$(
    curl -w '%{http_code}' --request POST "${BASE_PATH}/accounts/${API_ACCOUNT_ID}/workflows/${WORKFLOW_ID}/instances/${WORKFLOW_INSTANCE_ID}/actions/cancel" \
    "${Headers[@]}" \
    --output ${response}
)
# If the status code returned is greater than 201 (OK / Accepted), display an error message with the API response.
if [[ "$Status" -gt "201" ]]; then
    echo ""
    echo "Unable to retrieve workflow instance: ${WORKFLOW_INSTANCE_ID}"
    echo ""
    cat $response
    exit 0
fi
echo ""
echo "Workflow has been canceled."
echo ""
echo ""
echo "Response:"
cat $response
echo ""
echo ""

Expected response

If you run this code example from our Quickstart or launcher projects, you should see a JSON response similar to the code shown.

Sample response
{
  "message": "Successfully cancelled the workflow instance 269aa495-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-74291fc0f5a6 in df5981e1-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-621ae5b4cbb3"
}

Next steps