PREQUEL-2025-0088

Temporal visibility archival failuresMedium

Impact: 7/10

Mitigation: 5/10

PREQUEL-2025-0088View on GitHub

TemporalArchivalData Retention

Description

Temporal Server is experiencing failures when attempting to archive workflow visibility records. These failures occur\nwhen the system encounters invalid search attribute types, specifically those marked as \"Unspecified\". Visibility\narchival is a critical component of Temporal's data retention strategy, allowing historical workflow execution records\nto be preserved while keeping the primary storage optimized for active workflows.\n

Mitigation

- Review and correct search attribute definitions across all workflows\n- Ensure all search attributes have explicitly defined types that are compatible with archival storage\n- Verify archival URI configuration is correct: `file:///tmp/temporal_vis_archival` or your defined path\n- Check permissions and connectivity to the archival storage location\n- Update Temporal server if running an older version with known archival issues\n- Consider implementing a retry mechanism for failed archival operations\n- For workflows with persistent errors, you can manually update their search attributes using the Temporal CLI:\n temporal workflow update-search-attributes --workflow-id <id> --run-id <run-id> --name <attribute-name> --type <correct-type> --value <value>\n

References

• https://community.temporal.io/t/continues-visibility-error-spam-from-finished-workflows-unable-to-decode-search-attributes-invalid-search-attribute-type-unspecified/7404/3
• https://docs.temporal.io/visibility
• https://docs.temporal.io/dataarchival