How to "Finish Process" programmatically (and rollback current item in workflow)?

Question

In Tridion 2011 SP1 HR1, I'm using the Core Service ForceFinishProcess method to try accomplish what the CME is doing with 'Finish Process' menu/toolbar item.

The result of the Core Service invocation is the ProcessInstance is finished, a new ProcessHistory is created and the item in workflow is checked-in. This is exactly what the documentation says it should happen.

However, the CME rolls back the changes performed during that process instance. How to achieve this with the API?

Obviously, one could rollback/delete the item last version... Any other way?

Answer 1

You can do this by simply deleting process instance using Delete method

Answer 2

Deleting the process instance will indeed rollback the work item in the CM but if you have already published the work item it should be correct to unpublish/republish it.

If the item is new (no major version) then it will be deleted so the reference is lost and we will end with some junk in the content delivery side. In that case we should unpublish it before the workflow is finished; tricky to do in Tridion 2011, but doable in Tridion 2013.

If the item is not new (it had a previous major version) then we should republish the item once it was rolled back.