Workflow for assigning a task and sending reminders.

  • 26 January 2016
  • 5 replies
  • 53 views

Badge +8

Hello all,

First of all thank you so much for all the help & guidance provided in these communities. It is really very helpful.

With so many options available in Nintex workflow, I am struggling to figure out the best option to build a workflow for a simple business process. Here is my workflow process flow.

  • An admin creates a list item with "Responder" people field filled out.  The person referred to in the "Responder" field will receive a notification informing him that he need to complete the list item with other fields that were left blank by the admin ( he just need to receive the link to the Edit form of the list Item).
  • Due Date is calculated based on Item created Date. It is usually 5 days from the Created date.
  • The Responder should start getting reminder emails if he did not complete the form 3 days before the due date and should continue to get the reminders until he is completed with the task.
  • The Responder or admin  should be able to delegate the task to other users.

What is the best way to achieve this with Nintex workflow actions?

Please advise,

Thank you.


5 replies

Badge +11
  • Let your workflow start on item created
  • drag a "Assign to-do task" action on your canvas
  • Configure the action to assign a task to the "Responder" ("Browse" right beside the assignees field -> "Lookup" -> "Item properties" -> "Responder")
  • This task action has a "notification" tab, use this to send the notification to your responder (the link to the item is provided by default)
  • This task action has a "reminder" tab, you cannot enter an infinite number of reminders, just enter any high number like 500. Even if reminders are sent daily, this should be sufficient

So far so good...

The delegation is a little more tricky if you want your admin to be able to delegate this task. Normally only the person this task is assigned to can delegate it. For example your admin can use powershell and/or nintex web services to delegate a task. See this thread for some instructions: Calling Nintex-WebService from Powershell

Did I forget anything?

This may not be "THE BEST" way, but this how I would have started wink.png

Greetings

Philipp

Badge +8

Hi Philipp,

This is how I exactly started, however below is the reason as to why I was looking for a different approach.

Thank you for your response. I Started with "flexi task" and "Assign-to-do" actions, however, My task out comes are "Not started", "In Progress" and "Completed". So, the above mentioned task action does not let me specify a condition as to when I should stop sending reminders. For eg: If my task outcome is "In progress" or "Not Started", I still want to continue to send the reminders. so this is the reason I set up my workflow as follows.

1) Assign a "Flexi task" and then define three outcomes. "Not started", "In progress" and "Completed".

2) if the user response is "completed", no further reminders should be sent. However, if the user response is "In Progress" or "Not started", then I inserted a seperate Task reminder action for In Progress and Not started outcomes and this is where I need the "Task Status URL" form in the email message, so users can updated the task outcome.

Please advise if I can stop sending reminders based on a certain task outcome using flexi task or Assign-to-do?

Thanks,

Badge +8

Hi Philip,

Another Issue that I have using "Assign a Flexi Task" action is that I don't have a way to specify at what time before the due date is reached should I start sending reminders.

Please advise,

Thank you.

Badge +8

Hi Philip,

As far as delegation issue goes, I can copy the delegation URL into a SharePoint field and have it visible to admin so he can delegate it.

Is there a way to automatically update the "Responder" field to the person who it is delegated to?

thanks,

Badge +11

Specifying your reminders date: not possible in this action. I recommend you create a seperate site workflow to check for the due dates of your pending tasks and send reminders accordingly.

Update responder field: I don't know a direct way to do that. You will probably need another workflow or an event receiver here. Whenever a task is delegated, there is a change to that task item that you can trigger a workflow or an event receiver on. However, you need to know which item belongs to which task, so you maybe would need to store your task id in the list item at the first place. But this is just one idea...

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