SharePoint Magazine - Latest Comments in “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

dfwilcox — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:35:39 -0000

What a well-though-out article, Paul! Thank you for taking the time to post your excellent instructions and helpful screen shots!

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Wim — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:43:52 -0000

having the exact same problem. I have updates WSS to sp1, and the .net to the latest service pack as well, and nothing seems to solve it. It appears that after a reboot of the actual server, things seem to work for a little longer, but then - after a random number of iterations - the flowchart gets marked completed. There has to be a reason for this. Can anybody help?

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Michael — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:00:53 -0000

For the e-mail to field I put in "Task: Assigned To" and it works just fine. This is very helpful if you are making your own ticketing/tracking system which I'm currently working on for the company I'm with.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Rohit — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:56:15 -0000

Hi

Does anyone know if there is a way of scheduling tasks in a Sharepoint list automatically?

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Eric — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:00:07 -0000

Sorry Gly, but there's a difference between recursion and intentional repetition. There are conditions specified for each iteration of the loop in Paul's solution, therefore the behavior described is not recursive.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Eric — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:32:37 -0000

Dan;

The problem with your method (and the reason that Paul's requires a "poke" column) is the Pause until strReminderDate or Due Date action. This pauses the workflow and causes it to stop "listening" to list updates so that if the due date is changed the workflow will not detect the change and update.

If you're going to use an SPD workflow for this application then you need to use a method like Paul's to loop the workflow with a frequency (daily, weekly, whatever) that is acceptable to your end user.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

crazy man — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:21:11 -0000

Good article,great thought. No matter how many limitations is has, I wold say it solved put Sharepoint Reminder in new high.
Right new I am using Sharepoint Alert Reminder Boost (http://www.sharepointboost.com/alertreminderboo...) which serves me well. I think the difference between your solution and the third party tools is that for some tech savvy your solution is great, brings some sort of accomplishment while third party tool is more reliable and easy to use.

Nevertheless, your blog gives me fresh knowledge. Thanks!

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Andy — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:01:27 -0000

Is there a way to trigger a workflow based on a field(date)?
List has two columns: Due Date (manually entered by user) and "One week Reminder" (calculated date based on "Due Date")

i.e User create the doc Today(2-6-2009) and enter "Bill Due Date"=3-8-2009 so "One Week Reminder" will be 3-1-2009

How can workflow send out email on 3-1-2009?

Once the user gets the email, he/she will update the "Bill Due Date" to some future date and again one week before that date, workflow should sent out remonder.

Thanks

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Netta — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:58:07 -0000

having the same problem. it doenst metter if it's 24 hours or one. it works once/twice then i get "completed" and it doenst work anymore....

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Netta — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:36:13 -0000

i just can't get it to work.
everything works fine. the "poked" filed updates itself but the update doesnt trigger the workflow to start again.
I set it to everytime an item changes, menual change triggers it but not the "scripted one" from the workflow.
I'm clueless....

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Dan S — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:09:13 -0000

Actually, I accomplished this slightly differently and without looping or creating placeholder columns. I used your article as a good conceptual guide. Hope this helps.. It is working well for me. My actual workflow is more detailed and tailored to my environment, but here is the gist..

All done in Sharepoint Designer. You should consider adding Log messages to the instructions below. By the way, when testing, dont set the counter to 5 minutes.. it wont always work. Plan the testing over a few days.. make it realistic and be patient! I read there are some bugs when setting the time triggers too low..

Create some Workflow steps. Each step is separated with commented ### marks:

Make certain the workflow starts when a new item is created or modified.

### Check if task is set to Completed when created/updated ####

If Status equals Completed
Stop Workflow

### Create a "date" variable named strReminderDate for a 2 day warning that task will be due ####

If Status does not equal completed
Add -2 days to Due Date and output to strReminderDate
Then pause until strReminderDate

Else If Status equals Completed
Stop Workflow

### Email 2 Day Warning to Assignee unless uncompleted task was created within 2 days of Today and Pause until Due Date ###

If Status does not equal Completed and Due Date is greater than Today
Email Assigned To:
Pause until Due Date

Else If Status equals Completed
Stop Workflow

### Email Assignee and pause for 3 days to be escalated if task not complete ###

If Status does not equal Complete
Email Assigned To:
Pause for 3 days

Else If Status equals Completed
Stop Workflow

### Escalate uncompleted task to Manager ###

If Status does not equal Completed
Email Manager
Stop Workflow

Else If Status equals Completed
Stop Workflow

##############

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

howeg73 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:13:34 -0000

Has anyone found a solution to the variability in the iteration? I am also finding that my workflow is actually updating a value in the Current Item, but it never restarts. As a result, I may get 1 iteration in my test or 10. There doesn't seem to be any consistency.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Bernardo — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:13:27 -0000

Sorry by my poor english

Great article, we have a problem with alerts and this article is a solution, and have a question.
One question : is posible to use a group of sharepoint or shareponit's group for to be a destinatary of mail?

One question : it is possible that I can use your articles translated into Spanish in a site sharepoint?

Thanks Pagalvin for your article

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

PatLV23 — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:34:45 -0000

Same here. I've tried 5 minute to 4 hour intervals. I've even tried using "pause until date" instead of "pause for duration". I would get between 1 and 8 reminders before it stopped and marked the workflow as completed.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Chris — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:26:58 -0000

Is there anyway to work around timezone issues.

For example I have users in Hong Kong, London and New York.

If I create a task so that it has a due date of 25th December in Hong Kong when users open it in London or New York the due date appears as the 24th not the 25th.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Is there anyway of assigning an all day flag to a task due date in the same way as the calendar does for example.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

scott — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:53:50 -0000

I really hope this capability is built into the next version of sharepoint this request happens all the time. I have written console apps and ran them as scheduled tasks to perform operations that you think would just be built in.

I have tried various techniques like this including using one list to loop through another, but they seem problematic. I’m glad that some people were successful following your well detailed instructions. But I was not one of them. I only get one instance of the workflow to run. i.e. changing the emailremindercount does not fire off a new instance of the workflow.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Sphix75 — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:05:02 -0000

Great example, I have followed this example step by step, but for some reason in the "send initial email" step, nothing after the Pausing statement gets processed, I get the email, and the "FirstEmailReminderSent" is set to YES, in the description the pausing is set to the right time, but the EmailReminderCount is still set to 0. I tried a different workflow example and i have the same problem nothing gets processed after the pausing statement. ANY help would be much appreciated. Thanks

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

jae — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:12:00 -0000

I'm getting the same behavior. First test looped 4 times, second test 2 times, third test only interated once. No error message. Every stepped is logged properly. It seems to stop for no reason.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

jeiku — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:39:36 -0000

hi paul,
i tried using the Log message to workflow history but whenever I am vieewing it, the old message still appears..

any thoughts on how to fix this?

thanks!

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

jeiku — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:37:56 -0000

hi paul,
i tried adding Log message to workflow history list option but whenever I am viewing the workflow history of a specific record, the old message is still the one displayed.
any thougths on this?

thanks!

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Jesse — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:09:13 -0000

This is a great article.

However, I was just doing some developing and I was testing a workflow and did not want to wait 24 hours so I set it to 5 minutes. It never sent me the email and it only looped 4 or 5 times before finally deciding to be Complete instead of In Progress. The workflow should remain In Progress right? I didn't know if this was a glich or something. Maybe not enough time has been given for the service to run correctly.

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

bob — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:40:01 -0000

Nice work pagalvin...

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

tatchison — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:39:14 -0000

Can't you just check the content type field of the item to determine what the content type is, and then either process or not?

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Paddy — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:45:55 -0000

Great Article Paul. I want to send an email alert every monday. How can i do that. Which step in the workflow tells it that the email alert has to be sent after every 24 hours. Am i missing something

Re: “The Dog Ate My Task” - Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

john — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:53:48 -0000

Thanks much pagalvin, very instructive! Now I don't want to go diverging off the topic of your post, but could this be adapted for use on a issues list, where an email is sent periodically when it's status isn't completed? The rub I see in adapting this is that you have to check the "Automatically start this workflow whenever this item is changed", and hence any dicsussion on an issue starts the workflow email again. But for Tasks, it was very helpful, you taught me a lot!!