Reminder Mail incl. Approval

  • 10 October 2017
  • 9 replies
  • 3 views

Badge +2

Hello everybody,

I'm new in the Nintex technology and need some support from your side at a journey I have to work on.

We need to implement a workflow in SharePoint where people should enter some information for a meeting and the person where this tasks is assigned to should be informed 7 days before the meeting will start (as a reminder), if this person didn't approve this task already. Categories should also be set by the people that set up this meeting. After a special meeting (depends on the category) is over, the workflow should continue going to the next person (Assigned Manager) that this person can approve this task too. Else the meeting has another category, an approval bei the manager is not needed. I hope this is understandable.

So what I thought could be: Using a SharePoint Calendar with some additional fields, like Assigned To, Task done (approval status), Assigned Manager (people picker), Manager done (approval status) where people enter a meeting that everything will be on a Calendar basis.

Is this possible and if yes, could you tell me how?

I also read these two articles but didn't get forward: Site Workflow - Document Review Date Approaching Reminders‌ | How do i initiate email reminder 30 days from the date in a field?‌

This would help me a lot.

Thanks in advance.

Attached: Colums in the calendar + View of the form (that should be adjusted - if possible)

Best regards,

Matthias


9 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hi Matthias,

I'm not really sure if I understood your scenario so please excuse my question. You have a calendar and you want to run some kind of approval on single items/events and have a reminder sent if the approval hasn't been given 7 days before?

What Nintex version are you using? on prem? Office 365?

On a calendar create a new list workflow and set it up to run if new items are created.

Add a flexi task for the approval

As the flexi task reminder cannot do something like "remind 7 days in advance" but only x days/hours/minutes after the flexi task has been assigned, you will need a different mechanism.

Here you could create a site workflow that queries the calendar list where

start time is 7 days in advance and task done is not approved

This will get you a collection that you can iterate through and notify people about the upcoming events.

Does this make any sense?

Best regards

Enrico

Badge +2

Hello Enrico,

thanks a lot for your feedback.

I'm using Nintex 2013 onPrem.

This sounds good - and yes, you got it right. Just there is one more step after the first approval must be sometimes a secound approval. This approval should only be at some special category and of course if the first approval has been done.

Is it also possible, linke I mentioned in the screenshots, that some field can be hidden and appear if they are needed or maybe the won't appear at all?

Best regards,
Matthias

Badge +2

Hello Enrico,

I now created a WF with a FlexiTask and it is running fine.

Now I stuck at the point to create the site workflow for the reminder.

Do you have an example how to set up such a reminder site workflow that it only runs with the calendar list workflow?

Thanks in advance,

Matthias

Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Great. For the second approval you can go with another flexi task to do the approval.

For the reminder, you might want to do something like this:

I hope it's a bit self-explaining.

Does this make sense?

Badge +2

Yes, the secound flexi task is also working fine - thanks for that!

From the logical part yes it's making sense to me.

I'm sorry, but I'm not that familiar till now with Nintex so the implementation is the part where I stuck. Right now I don't know how to set up the parameters:

There should be a reminder 7 days before the start date of the meeting that is placed in the calendar. So this will be the reminder date. But how to set up this calculation? The next thing is "how to set up the start time for the query list?" The next point is the iteration in the calendar - I'm not familiar till now how to implement this with the right parameter.

Can you support in that please?

Badge +2

Hello everybody,

I'm still looking for support on the reminder workflow. I'm getting more and more in touch with Nintex, but am still at the beginning.

Best regards,
Matthias

Badge +2

Hey,

still nobody who could give me some support?

Enrico helped me a lot with the first part, but the second important one is still missing and I do not know how do solve it?

Best regards,
Matthias

Userlevel 5
Badge +14

So this will be the reminder date. But how to set up this calculation?

it might look like this

210453_pastedImage_1.png

The next thing is "how to set up the start time for the query list?"

I think you don't need to consider time in your scenario.

query list (resp. CAML behind) by default ignores time in comparison. and this is what you need - to get all the events on a given date regardless of time

210470_pastedImage_7.png

The next point is the iteration in the calendar - I'm not familiar till now how to implement this with the right parameter

you do not iterate the calendar (list) but rather collection(s) returned by query list action.

within the query list action you have to specify which list fields it should return. configure all the fields that you will need in notification later. configure the action to store each field into a separate collection variable (see bottom part of previous screenshot.

then you need to configure for each loop action to iterate over one of collection

configure the action to store current collection element into a variable, and likewise to store loop index.

210471_pastedImage_10.png

to get values out of other collection you will need to use collection operation (within the loop).

loop index variable will point you to proper element within the collection

210473_pastedImage_12.png

Badge +2

Hello Marian,

thanks a lot for your support and the detailled description of the points. this makes sense for me and will help me.

If I still have some open things, I'll come back to you

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