How to stop a workflow from running every time a task is updated in SharePoint 2013?

Question

Hi- I'm responsible for our internal SP sites that are used to manage product generation for clients...full disclosure, I am NOT an IT person or someone who is knowledgeable about coding at all... apologies if my descriptions aren't completely clear for experts. :) Our processes are typically pretty linear (follow task status steps from A-Z), but I currently have a project where we need to manage 2 different processes/sets of steps at the same time. We typically use task status steps to outline the process, so I thought I'd try tracking the progress of the second (smaller) process using checkboxes to avoid confusion on the user's end. The problem is that I need to trigger email notifications from them. After much googling, I figured out how to translate the checkboxes into a yes/no format/column that I can anchor a workflow around. However, I'm stuck on a few points... one: how do I stop the workflow from running every time the task is updated? In other words, how do I stop email notifications from this workflow going out every single time something in the task is altered? The team receiving them only needs to get a notification once, when the meeting in question is initially scheduled. The second issue is that by using the yes/no column I can't avoid that information showing up in the task form, even though no one needs to see/touch it (it appears to be the only field that can't be hidden easily from within SP & w/out the use of any coding). Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!! I'm happy to provide more detail about what I'm trying to do, if it's helpful. TIA!

Answer 1

Hi @Stacy Griffin ,

According to my research and testing, if you want to stop a workflow in SharePoint 2013, please go to List Settings ->> Workflow Settings, and then you can edit the workflow or remove a workflow. For example:

You also can use the following PowerShell to stop workflow in SharePoint 2013:

# URL of the Site  
$web = Get-SPWeb -Identity “https://mysite/sites”  
  
#Get the Workflow Manager.  
$workmanager = $web.Site.WorkFlowManager  
  
# Name of the list  
$list = $web.Lists[“xxxx”]  
  
$items = $list.Items  
  
foreach($item in $items){  
foreach ($wf in $item.Workflows) {  
  
#Cancel Workflows  
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager]::CancelWorkflow($wf);  
}  
}  
$web.Dispose();  

If you want to hide the yes/no column, please go to List Settings ->> Edit View, then you can choose which columns you want to hide.

Hope it can help you. Thanks for your understanding.

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

---