Tooling API - Get all Active Workflow and Validation Rules

Question

I would like to find all active workflow rules and validation rules for a specific object, ultimately with the aim of deactivating and later reactivating.

I have looked at using the Tooling API but the limit of 1 record if using the field Metadata (where the Active flag is) seems prohibitive on using from within Apex. If I have 30 workflow rules I have do a callout for each one to find it's active...is there no better approach than the below?

1. Callout to get all workflow rules

/services/data/v51.0/tooling/query?q=Select+Id,Name,TableEnumOrId+From+WorkflowRule+WHERE+TableEnumOrId='Account'

2. Loop through response calling out to Tooling API, including Metadata

/services/data/v51.0/tooling/query?q=Select+Id,Name,Metadata+From+WorkflowRule+WHERE+Id=wfrId

There are a few questions on this but none explicitly point out the above limitation. appreciate there are alternative approaches for my scenario, e.g. hierarchical custom setting, but I think the question is still valid for other scenarios.

Answer 1

You won't get around needing to do individual calls as you'll need the details of metadata. When you make the PATCH call to deactivate/activate them, you need to include more than just the active property or you risk overwriting values with null (ex. description field) or getting errors as certain fields are expected. In particular, workflow rules have a lot of sub items (WorkflowCritera, WorkflowRuleActions, WorkflowTimeTriggers).

The other consideration to take is how you will know which rules were active after you've deactivated them - assuming the goal would be to later re-activate them when you want.

For this you can take different approaches depending on the goal

1. No inactive rules should exist in an org. They should be deleted. Leverage source control if you ever need to refer to them again
2. Leverage a custom object or platform cache to store which rules were active.

Otherwise, your approach is the general way to go about it.

1. Query all validation rules and workflow rules in the way you outlined for Validation Rule (per object). For Workflow Rules, you can leverage WHERE TableEnumOrId = 'Case' OR... to get them per object.
2. Make calls for each individual one to get their metadata as you need it regardless to pass the complete metadata information (with active changed only in your logic afterwards). You can utilize the URL returned in the first query above to know what endpoint to use for getting the metadata and updating it. url under attributes will contain that endpoint as shown below

{
  "size" : 2,
  "totalSize" : 2,
  "done" : true,
  "queryLocator" : null,
  "entityTypeName" : "WorkflowRule",
  "records" : [ {
    "attributes" : {
      "type" : "WorkflowRule",
      "url" : "/services/data/v52.0/tooling/sobjects/WorkflowRule/01Q4P000000pB6fUAE"
    },
    "Id" : "01Q4P000000pB6fUAE",
    "Name" : "test"
  }, {
    "attributes" : {
      "type" : "WorkflowRule",
      "url" : "/services/data/v52.0/tooling/sobjects/WorkflowRule/01Q4P000000UxejUAC"
    },
    "Id" : "01Q4P000000UxejUAC",
    "Name" : "test2"
  } ]
}

4. Heavily leverage composite requests to bundle the above calls (25 requests in one) into less calls (including the updates). This should make this more doable.

/services/data/v53.0/tooling/composite

{
"compositeRequest" : [
   {
      "method" : "PATCH",
      "url" : "/services/data/v53.0/tooling/sobjects/WorkflowRule/RuleId",
      "referenceId" : "workflow1",
      "body" : { "Metadata" : "pass your metadata queried before here with active changed" }
  },
  {
      "method" : "PATCH",
      "url" : "/services/data/v53.0/tooling/sobjects/WorkflowRule/Rule2Id",
      "referenceId" : "workflow2",
      "body" : { "Metadata" : "pass your metadata queried before here with active changed" }
  }
  ...up to 25
  ]
}

As an aside, if you already leverage apex-mdapi - you could look to accomplish what you want through there.

Answer 2

This tooling query may be able to help what you are looking to achieve:

/services/data/v52.0/tooling/query?q=Select+Id,EntityDefinition.MasterLabel+From+ValidationRule+WHERE+Active+=+true