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Wait until selection

  • 11 September 2017
  • 11 replies
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Badge +4

Hi All,

 

So I have a part in my workflow where the user has to update the status of the request by selecting one of the 3 choices he has.

Field type: Choice

Choices:

1- Pending (default)

2- Confirmed

3- Cancelled

Based on his selection, the workflow will be directed using switch action.

As long as his selection is option 1, he can provide a comment about the reason for keeping it pending.  Once he choose option 2 or 3, the workflow will direct him to next action.

 

My main concern is how to keep the workflow waiting his input until his choice is other than Pending (option 1).

The "Wait for field change in current item" action  is missing the feature to input some conditions like Not equal or does not contain..etc

 

Any hints guys ?

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Best answer by tomcastiglia 11 September 2017, 21:59

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11 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hi

Is it possible to have the original workflow stop before this point and have a workflow to run on edit of the list item with either a condition or run if actions for the 2 possible outcomes?

Badge +4

Thanks Paul Crawford for your reply.

Assuming I created another workflow to check the value of that field and run corresponding action thereafter; how will I configure this workflow to run only when this particular field is updated?

Setting the WF to run on edit will trigger it whenever any column in the list is updated knowing that several edits will take place before reaching this stage.

Thanks

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hi Hassan Dhainy

Unfortunately you cant have a conditional start in O365 so you are correct it would have to run every time the item is updated, but the run if means that only if that condition is true then the actions after will take place.

So the run if would be configured:

When - List Lookup

Source - Current Item

Field - Status

Equals - Confirmed

This would run the confirmed actions

When - List Lookup

Source - Current Item

Field - Status

Equals - Cancelled

This would run the cancelled actions

The corresponding actions would only happen when the field values matched.

The only thing to take in to account would be if there could be any other edits after the status change had taken place to set it to either Confirmed or Cancelled meaning the workflow would start and these conditions would be met.

Hope this helps

Badge +4

I will give it a try tomorrow morning and let you the outcome.

Userlevel 4
Badge +8

Hello Hassan Dhainy... Another option for this is to use a parallel block action with two branches, with a Wait for Field Change action in each branch.  In one branch use wait for the Status = Confirmed and in the other branch wait for Cancelled.  In the Parallel action you can define a boolean variable that gets set to True after either branch processes, which will cause the Parallel action to exit on all branches (rather than waiting for both branches to complete).

For example, I defined a boolean variable called "Stop" (which has a default value = false).  I assigned that variable for the Completion Condition in the Parallel Block action.

I setup the Parallel block as shown below.  So this pattern should meet your needs.  In this scenario, set the Workflow to start when an Item is Created, only (not Updated).  This approach will allow you to have one workflow instance per item rather than start a new instance with each update.  

Note that the approach that Paul Crawford‌ outlined is also a great solution, and mine is simply another option.  If you expect this process to take a long time to complete (say weeks or months), than I would go with Paul's approach.  If you expect each workflow to complete within say 1 - 2 weeks, then I would use my approach.

Regards,

Tom Castiglia

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hi

sounds like an excellent solution. Not having had lots of use of nintex O365 I was unaware of the parallel block.  Hopefully we have helped

Userlevel 5
Badge +14

‌, have you considered assigning a task to the user?

it as well stops workflow execution and waits until the task is responded.

with the task approach, you likely wouldn't need 'Pending' response at all, since until the task is responded it is still considered to be 'pending'. so one action less needed to be performed by your users.

Badge +4

Tom Castiglia  the parallel action seems interesting and I am testing right now and give my feedback here.

Paul Crawford the solution you advised is also good but requires the second workflow which runs on list update to be executed more than 10 times at least since the list will be updated several times during the process.

Marian Hatala the assign a task was the first thing I thought about but it will not suite the current job process which I  can summary as below:

The use sends the quotation to client and waits for a reply; during this, the status is pending with a comment area for user to update whenever he gets a reply from client, stating the reason for being pending. The process of updating this text box should continue until the client finally reply with either confirming the quotation or cancelling it.

Thus the task for confirming (or cancelling) has no specific time to be assigned as it depends on client reply which might be after 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month.

Thank you all for the effective help.

Userlevel 4
Badge +8

Hi Hassan – just curious, did the parallel action approach work for you?

Badge +4

Yes Tom, apparently the parallel action did the trick. I tested it on one example and the process worked as it should.

Already marked your answer as correct answer.

Many thanks 

Badge +5

Such a simple but efficient solution....and it works

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