Moving sharepoint list items to archive list with associated tasks

Question

I’ve created a custom workflow that runs on a List (ListA) and tasks are being created in the Task list. Both lists are now getting large ListA has 2000 items and Task List has 5000 items over 3 weeks. Also, a few jobs are running daily that check status of ListA and send emails. List A is iterated for status. Though we are using views I think it would be a good idea to move all items that have completed workflows to an archive area. So every list item that has been ‘Completed’ move this item and associated tasks to Archive.

I want to maintain this relationship between the lists when moved. There is a hyperlink under the workflow column status that links to the associated tasks in the task list.

At the moment I'm trying a simple move using Site Content and Structure.

I've created two archive lists, ListA Archive and Task Arhive. ListA Archive is based on a template from List A so it has same columns. I've added the same CT from Tasks list to Task Archive list.

ListA has a workflow and a column is creaded called 'DT wf'. This same column appears in ListA archive as its a template copy but is missing workflow, so I add a workflow to ListA archive with the same name 'DT wf' Copying items from ListA to ListA Archive works, but column 'DT wf' is not populating. Why? Also Copying items from Task list to Task Archive list fails.

I've copied using Site Content and Structure

Answer 1

This is unfortunately not possible without running the workflows in the same order again in the archive. The SPWorkflowManager does not provide a way to recreate workflow instances without actually starting the workflows.

You can of course still move the list items and the workflow task items to an archive - but you will loose the workflow instances and their associations to list items, task items and workflow history task items.