Manage workflow settings for SharePoint web applications

We can configure the workflow settings for all the sites in a Web application. We can enable designer user-defined workflows deployment, we can allow non-authenticated users to participate in workflows and disable the automatic cleanup of workflow history in SharePoint central Administration.

We can specify users can deploy the designer workflows on the particular web application. By default settings will be enabled to deploy user-defined workflows. So that users who is having designer permissions on the site can create and deploy the workflows using SharePoint designer workflow editor.

We can allow internal users who is not having access to the site and external users who is not having access to the internal resources. We can send an email message to the internal users and e-mail will be send to the attached document to review or sign sent to users. By allowing the non-authenticated users to participate in workflows we don't have to give non-authorized access to the site. We have check properly before giving access to the users who don't have access to site.

We can manage the workflow settings by using the steps below,

Navigate Application Management in SharePoint Central Administration, Click on Manage Web application link.

Select Web application to manage workflows and Click on Ribbon General Settings drop down and select workflow.

In Workflow Setting popup, to enable the user-defined workflows for all the sites on Web application, select Yes in Enable user-defined workflows for all sites on this web application.

Select Yes in Alert internal users who do not have site access when they are assigned to a workflow to allow access to the internal users assigned to the workflow task. Select Yes on Allow external users to participate in workflow by sending a copy of document to allow access to the external users.

By default in SharePoint, we have Workflow Auto clean up job to delete the workflow instances, related task entries still exists 60 days after workflow completed. We can disable the workflow auto cleanup job.

To disable automatic workflow cleanup,

Navigate to Monitoring in Central Administration and click on Review Timer Job definitions on the monitoring page.

Click on Workflow Auto Cleanup link associated with web application to disable the automatic workflow cleanup.

On the Edit Timer Job page, click on Disable to disable the Workflow Auto Cleanup feature.