flowable/flowable-engine · error · ActivitiIllegalArgumentException

execution tenant id is null

Error message

execution tenant id is null

What it means

ExecutionQueryImpl.executionTenantId throws ActivitiIllegalArgumentException when the tenantId argument is null. Multi-tenant filtering requires an explicit tenant identifier; null is rejected so that an unfiltered multi-tenant query cannot be created accidentally. An empty string is accepted (querying tenants without an id) but null is not.

Solutions

1. Resolve and pass a valid tenant id, or pass an empty string "" to intentionally match executions without a tenant
2. Only call executionTenantId when tenant filtering is required and the id is known
3. Fix tenant resolution (security context, header parsing) so it never yields null unintentionally

Example fix

// before
query.executionTenantId(TenantContext.get());
// after
String tenant = TenantContext.get();
if (tenant != null) {
    query.executionTenantId(tenant);
}

String t = tenantId; if (t == null) { t = ""; } query.executionTenantId(t);

boolean hasTenant = tenantId != null;

try { q.executionTenantId(tenantId); } catch (ActivitiIllegalArgumentException e) { log.error("tenant resolution returned null"); }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling query.executionTenantId(tenantId) where tenantId is null — typically a TenantContext/provider returning null for missing tenant information.

Common situations: Multi-tenant deployments where the tenant is resolved from headers/auth and the resolution step returns null for anonymous or system calls; single-tenant deployments upgraded to multi-tenancy without backfilling tenant context.

Related errors

• Business key is null
• decision tenantId is null
• deploymentTenantId is null
• deploymentTenantId is null
• deploymentTenantIdLike is null

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1b3e7bc6dd71c6ee. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable5-engine/src/main/java/org/activiti/engine/impl/ExecutionQueryImpl.java:212

        if (activityId != null) {
            isActive = true;
        }
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public ExecutionQueryImpl parentId(String parentId) {
        if (parentId == null) {
            throw new ActivitiIllegalArgumentException("Parent id is null");
        }
        this.parentId = parentId;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public ExecutionQueryImpl executionTenantId(String tenantId) {
        if (tenantId == null) {
            throw new ActivitiIllegalArgumentException("execution tenant id is null");
        }
        this.tenantId = tenantId;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public ExecutionQueryImpl executionTenantIdLike(String tenantIdLike) {
        if (tenantIdLike == null) {
            throw new ActivitiIllegalArgumentException("execution tenant id is null");
        }
        this.tenantIdLike = tenantIdLike;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public ExecutionQueryImpl executionWithoutTenantId() {
        this.withoutTenantId = true;
        return this;

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