Executions getting deleted

Questions
1

Hi Team,

I’ve created an automation workflow to manage tool access for new hires based on their joining date. Here’s how the logic is structured:

  • 15 days before joining – Send a notification
  • 2 days before joining – Grant access to Tool A
  • 1 day before joining – Grant access to Tool B
  • On the joining day – Grant access to Tool C

This process is triggered when a new hire signs their Employee Agreement. At that point, it activates a second automation that schedules tool access based on their specific joining date.

In some cases, new hires are scheduled to join in a month, and in other cases, up to two months later. The access workflow uses wait nodes to handle these delays. However, I’ve noticed that for some hires, the execution was marked as “in progress” but later got deleted before completing the process. In other cases, the workflow worked as expected.

I’d like to understand:

  • Why were these “in progress” executions deleted?
  • What’s the best practice for designing automation workflows that include long wait periods like this?

n8n version: 1.75.3
Running n8n via: n8n cloud
n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting: Below is the screenshot

Image 07-05-25 at 2.42 PM
Image 07-05-25 at 2.42 PM2022×1232 152 KB

2

I’m encountering several issues with the above process and would really appreciate urgent assistance to help resolve them.

3

Hi @Sayeeda_Badebade

What type of n8n cloud plan are you on? There is a maximum execution time that could be related to your issue.

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4

I would recommend you keep track of each employee’s state in a database. Then you just have a workflow with a scheduler to run once a day and query the db for employees in a certain state for the specific period which had to be waited before progressing to the next step/state. This way you dont have long running workflows which could stop when the server reboots for whatever reason etc.