flowable/flowable-engine · error · ActivitiException

failedJobRetryTimeCycle has wrong format:" +…

Error message

failedJobRetryTimeCycle has wrong format:" + failedJobRetryTimeCycle

What it means

Thrown from JobRetryCmd.execute() when parsing the failedJobRetryTimeCycle value fails while decrementing job retries. The retry time cycle (e.g. "R5/PT7M") is parsed with a DurationHelper; any exception during parsing is rethrown as ActivitiException with the offending value, wrapping the original exception.

Solutions

1. Fix the failedJobRetryTimeCycle value in the BPMN XML to valid ISO-8601 (e.g. R5/PT7M)
2. Redeploy the process definition with the corrected extension attribute
3. Check the wrapped 'exception' cause in the message/log for the exact parse failure
4. Validate the cycle expression before deployment (unit-test DurationHelper.parse)

Example fix

// before
<flowable:failedJobRetryTimeCycle value="5/7 minutes" />
// after
<flowable:failedJobRetryTimeCycle value="R5/PT7M" />

// validate retry cycle at deploy time
java.time.Duration.parse("PT7M"); // cycle must be ISO-8601 like R5/PT7M
if (!cycle.matches("R\\d*/PT?[^/]+")) throw new IllegalArgumentException("bad failedJobRetryTimeCycle: " + cycle);

try { jobExecutor handling } catch (ActivitiException e) { if (e.getMessage().contains("failedJobRetryTimeCycle")) { fixBpmnAndRedeploy(); } throw e; }

When it happens

Trigger: A job fails and its boundary event/failed job retry configuration has a malformed time cycle string (missing R prefix, bad ISO-8601 duration like "7 minutes" or "R/PT10M"); the async executor then attempts to compute the next retry and hits the parse error.

Common situations: Typo in flowable:failedJobRetryTimeCycle extension element in BPMN XML; copy-pasted cycle with wrong separator (comma instead of slash); Spring/XSD not validating the attribute so bad values deploy unnoticed.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

• activity tenant id is null
• Business key is null
• Business key is null
• Cannot set JPA variable: " + EntityManagerSession.class + "…
• Cannot use taskId together with excludeTaskVariables

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6c9de21be340708d. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable5-engine/src/main/java/org/activiti/engine/impl/cmd/JobRetryCmd.java:128

                    newJobEntity = deadLetterJob;
                } else {
                    TimerJobEntity timerJob = new TimerJobEntity(job);
                    timerJob.insert();
                    newJobEntity = timerJob;
                }

                newJobEntity.setDuedate(durationHelper.getDateAfter());

                if (job.getExceptionMessage() == null) { // is it the first exception
                    LOGGER.debug("Applying JobRetryStrategy '{}' the first time for job {} with {} retries", failedJobRetryTimeCycle, job.getId(), durationHelper.getTimes());

                } else {
                    LOGGER.debug("Decrementing retries of JobRetryStrategy '{}' for job {}", failedJobRetryTimeCycle, job.getId());
                }
                newJobEntity.setRetries(jobRetries - 1);

            } catch (Exception e) {
                throw new ActivitiException("failedJobRetryTimeCycle has wrong format:" + failedJobRetryTimeCycle, exception);
            }
        }

        if (exception != null) {
            newJobEntity.setExceptionMessage(exception.getMessage());
            newJobEntity.setExceptionStacktrace(getExceptionStacktrace());
        }

        job.delete();

        // Dispatch both an update and a retry-decrement event
        FlowableEventDispatcher eventDispatcher = commandContext.getEventDispatcher();
        if (eventDispatcher.isEnabled()) {
            eventDispatcher.dispatchEvent(ActivitiEventBuilder.createEntityEvent(
                    FlowableEngineEventType.ENTITY_UPDATED, newJobEntity), EngineConfigurationConstants.KEY_PROCESS_ENGINE_CONFIG);
            eventDispatcher.dispatchEvent(ActivitiEventBuilder.createEntityEvent(
                    FlowableEngineEventType.JOB_RETRIES_DECREMENTED, newJobEntity), EngineConfigurationConstants.KEY_PROCESS_ENGINE_CONFIG);
        }

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