Hello All,
We have a requirement where the Manager wants an Escalation Email but doesn’t want to take action on it or delegate it. He just wants to be notified that a certain employee’s task hasn’t been completed for a certain number of days.
How do I create a notification email to the manager when a employee hasn’t completed a task for 2 days or a specified number of days?
Best answer by brandiwoodson
View originalHe wants escalation but without taking action or delegate it. Just a email notification that employee didn’t complete tasks since last 3 days.
I built a workflow to solve a similar situation. This is a component workflow that is called by another workflow that runs on a daily schedule.
The component workflow has 1 input parameter -- a Text variable for the name of the workflow that assigned the task that you want to track.
It has 1 output variable -- a Text variable for the list of all the details of the “escalated” tasks that were found.
Here is the overall workflow:
The first action, Get tasks, looks like this,
Second action, loop for each Task found.
Third action, Run if true (if Workflow name matches the input variable).
Fourth action, Loop for each Task assignment.
Fifth action, Run if true (if Status contains “escalated”).
Final action, inside all the loops, Create a text output.
In your case, if you want to make it filter on how long the tasks have been active, rather than on if the task is escalated, then maybe on that first action you can add dates to filter by Start Date and End Date. Use some “Add time to date” actions to subtract X days from the current date. That might work.
Based on my experience, tasks will still stay active even if you have this set to YES to complete when the first branch completes. Unless something has changed - Nintex can chime in or you can test the concept. What I’m basically saying is in theory, the task should “terminate” if the email sends first, but it won’t. Which in my case I wanted it to roughly a year ago and it wouldn’t. So, this should work for your needs. If the task branch is completed 1st, it “should “skip” the email branch in theory. Or at least I hope so - I haven’t tested pause until date on a branch with a completion criteria set.
Another alternative would be to NOT include a task link with instructions to action something in escalation email that goes out. It will generate a task in NAC - sure - but will the user know? They will just think it’s an email. Although your original task assignee may be confused since they get a copy too.
Good luck.
If you ONLY have one task in your workflow and want to add an extra level of security add a “get tasks” action and count items in collection to your email branch (just in case it’s actioned at the same time the email would go out). Never know…
System will check for active tasks on instance. If there is only ever one task, then you can do this to safeguard it on the off chance task assignee actions at the same time the 2-day (or whatever you pick) window approaches. If anything is returned, send an email, if not move on and do nothing.
I just ran a test.
Here is what happens with tasks on a parallel branch with a completion criteria set to YES. I think Nintex should put logic in this comletion criteria behavior for tasks that are on a branch - in theory Nintex should “terminate” the task immediately if it’s sitting on a SKIP branch when this is set. I asked them to do that last year but no luck!
Received the email.
My task though remains still open even when my workflow completes. It will “eventually” close after the workflow completes. But that is not acceptable to me.
In theory, on this scenario, the “email” branch completed, and it skips the “task” branch and the instance completes - yet here we are just sitting with an active task.
It usually takes 10-20 minutes after workflow completes for the active task to “disappear” from dashboard. In your you case I don’t think this will work because your task will eventually go away for that user to action.
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So you can use my concept from previous post without completion criteria set. Let the email go out @ 2 day mark if task has not been completed by then.
New Instructions:
Apologies for late reply as was doing testing, Thanks for all the details you provided.
I am still rookie so took time in learning.
I tried with start form and 2 departments but did not work as “Get tasks” gets active task as 1 due to I completed one and did not another but sends mail.
Yes it works great Thanks for that, new learning for me, but like you said it will work if only 1 task but flow is like this.
Stage 1 : Request submit
Stage 2 : feedback of 5 departments so 5 tasks. ( Manager Escalation for all 5 if not complete by any department )
Stage 3 : Manager Feedback ( No escalation needed )
Stage 4 : 5 Department Planning stage ( goes to single department which requester selects in stage 1) Branch By Value but still need 5 Escalation.
Stage 5 : Confirmation Stage: Goes to same department who did stage 4. (5 Manager Escalation)
Below Test workflow I created based on your help.
Live workflow.
You can see Stage 1,2,3(Rejection)
Stage 3 if Approved goes to stage 4.
Stage 4 and 5 ( Showing only 1 department due to width but design is same for all department).
Apologies for late response as was testing another answer which was easy for me. Thanks a lot for your answer, I appreciate it.
I am still new to Nintex and found you answer kind of hard to create maybe will reach your level after couple of year(s).
Is it possible you can share me key or create a replica and share key of that if not that is ok :)
Just in case...If you need the get tasks action to verify for 100% assurance that the task has been completed so the system doesn’t send an email out...you can add a loop for each action after get tasks action to support multiple tasks in a workflow. It’s not impossible. I just gave you the instructions for one task in a workflow to avoid all the extra work. :)
Step 1) Update your tasks to include a task description that is unique for each task within your workflow - do not use same name for all five tasks.
Step 2) Configure loop for each action with your output collection from get tasks action.
Step 3) Add a branch by condition action within your loop for each action to find the specific task for your branch you are on by description
Step 4) Create a boolean variable with default value of NO. Add a set a variable value action and change new variable to YES if active task exists.
Step 5) Change the branch by condition action from my previous instructions for email to go out now only if your boolean variable for task 1 = YES. if that task is active, you want to send an email (escalation) to whomever.
Note: Be sure to create 5 Boolean variables to represent each task. You can replicate the above instructions for each task branch with a parallel action.
Thank you so much! You are a genius. It works like a charm, obviously it would Haha. This was a great learning experience for me. I am now trying to convert the same into a standalone workflow so that in the future, I won't need to manage it as a huge workflow with 15+ "Assign a task to multiple users". Once again, thank you a ton. I appreciate all your time and detailed explanation. Cheers!
“Is it possible you can share me key or create a replica and share key of that if not that is ok :)”
Sure. I created a new post to show the details and the keys.
Note that the keys expire after 3 days so be sure to import them as soon as you can.
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