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Parent Close Policy

This page discusses Parent Close Policy.

What is a Parent Close Policy?​

A Parent Close Policy determines what happens to a Child Workflow Execution if its Parent changes to a Closed status (Completed, Failed, or Timed out).

There are three possible values:

  • Abandon: the Child Workflow Execution is not affected.
  • Request Cancel: a Cancellation request is sent to the Child Workflow Execution.
  • Terminate (default): the Child Workflow Execution is forcefully Terminated.

ParentClosePolicy proto definition.

Each Child Workflow Execution may have its own Parent Close Policy. This policy applies only to Child Workflow Executions and has no effect otherwise.

Parent Close Policy entity relationship

Parent Close Policy entity relationship

You can set policies per child, which means you can opt out of propagating terminates / cancels on a per-child basis. This is useful for starting Child Workflows asynchronously (see relevant issue here or the corresponding SDK docs).