General

Re: Timed Workflows

dapklp — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 20:04:04 GMT

I asked the Web guys to change the frequency from daily to hourly, which they did. Same thing happened. At the first appointed time, the workflow fired and I got the desired results. I reset the records or loaded new ones that would be caught by the next appointed time, and...nothing. In the case of hourly, 5 appointed times have come and gone and 2 files which satisfy the workflow criteria still sit without triggering an e-mail or a change to the file (resetting a flag). I don't have the repeating feature turned on because upon the appointed (day/hour), the workflow should trigger and the record would change to prevent another e-mail or file change. I'm sure it is a scheduling issue or possibly a load balance issue (we use 2 SharePoint servers). I can get it to work once, but just not for files that it should work at the repeating times.

Re: Timed Workflows

dapklp — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 15:17:29 GMT

For the folks following this, I provided some additional information to Hilary whereby my CA policies did not fire the next time, presumably because the other method I was trying (using pause actions) caused an "in progress" status for a wworkflow when I wanted the CA policies triggered workflow to trigger. I made more adjustments and since the CA policies are administered by the Web server guys, I'll report the results expected tomorrow at 2:15 AM

Re: Timed Workflows

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 15:10:56 GMT

The only thing I can think of is pausing. Depending on the conditions under which your workflow runs, I guess the one thing I'd make sure of is that I don't end up with a new instance starting & pausing each time the form is opened or revised.... and I guess I'd be concerned about how to handle for a changed expiration date? Could that happen?

Timed Workflows

dapklp — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 19:06:12 GMT

I tried using the Information Management Policy and Expiration Policy (on CA) method laid out in http://blogs.askcts.com/2013/05/14/creating-a-timed-workflow-in-sharepoint-2010/, but it has not worked for me yet. I had the Information Management Policy sent to run daily at 2:00 AM and then the Expiration Policy to run at 2:15 AM. I then created a worfklow that looks to see if a particular date field equals today, then send me an e-mail. It didn't work. I made adjustments and will see tomorrow if I get the expected results.

In the meantime, I tried another approach, but couldn't get the workflow to revise a counter field I in my form using a workflow.

So, seeing the pieces I could play with, I created a workflow that looks for a certain State (in my form), has it send an e-mail to me announcing the clock is ticking, find the difference between today and my expiration date field and store that as a variable (in number of days), pause the workflow for the number of days using the variable, and then have it e-mail me after the pause. It worked, but I'm wondering if having a workflow pause for possibly 11 months is a good idea.

The other thing is..."is there an easier way?" I just want to send an e-mail when a certain date (field) is reached - automatically. Ideas???