How to Restart a SharePoint Designer 2013 "Pause Until" Workflow on list item update

Question

Hi,

I am developing a SharePoint Designer Workflow which will send an alert on a specific date let say 10 days from starting of workflow I am using "Pause Until" action to achieve this.

Now if user updates the list item and reminder date is now changed to 7 days from now, but workflow doesn't restarts as it is in "Pause Until" state.

How can i restart the workflow again if reminder date is updated. I need to achieve this functionality using SharePoint Designer as i am not allowed to used any other tool like Visual Studio or Visio etc

Answer 1

Hi Abdul Mannan Nasir - MCP,

About the “Pause Until” action, the workflow will pause until the original date and ignore the change of the date until the pause action completes.

So the workflow will not be restarted if the reminder date is updated.

You could consider to trigger a new workflow when the list item is updated by setting the start options “Start workflow automatically when an item is changed”. In the new workflow, it will use the updated value of the reminder.

And you could stop the old workflow manually, because there is no default action to stop workflow in another workflow.

More reference:

Workflow actions in SharePoint Designer 2010: A quick reference guide.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Workflow-actions-in-SharePoint-Designer-2010-A-quick-reference-guide-5a7ad276-0ed7-49b0-b652-e56a77dd96c6

There is a similar post:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/d8beef74-f511-403f-a9bb-fda6ec27a9b6/sharepoint-2013-designer-workflow-pause-until-date-time-not-working?forum=sharepointgeneral

Best regards,

Sara Fan

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Answer 2

Hi Abdul Mannan Nasir - MCP,

If the reply is helpful to you, you could mark the reply as answer. Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards,

Sara Fan

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Answer 3

Hi Sara,

I have marked the answer but i have found another way around. There is no way to restart the workflow using OOTB solution.

What i did is i use "Pause Until Duration" and set it to 1 day. Now in loop i pick the latest date from list after 1 day it again check the condtion which is now  the latest date so reminder is now send on latest date.

Thanks for your effort and time

Answer 4

Hi Abdul Mannan Nasir - MCP,

It is very happy that you have found the workaround.

Thank you for your sharing and it will help others have the same issue.

Best regards,

Sara Fan

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Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [e-mail]

Answer 5

Hi Abdul,

I am having the similar requirement, can you please explain in detail about how to achieve the workflow.

I am having the requirement as below.

List having two fields with start & Expiry Date, based on date of Expiry user get notified with an Email on -15 days , on Expiry Date& +15 days of Expiry date.

Here the problem is whenever the workflow sends an email it pausing to next stage even if change the Expiry Date.

Could you please explain how to achieve the above scenario in SharePoint 2013 using SharePoint designer.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 6

Well without the rest of the scenario hard to say.

I'd try this:

Create a Boolean fields for each notification, PreExpNotify, ExpNotify, PostExpNotify, or whatever you want.

Create a Stage for Notifications... not sure what else you're doing.

Loop with condition of PreExpNotify = False

Pause for 1 Hour (Change to whatever suits you, 1 day is not good as users could update the date to something that needs to send today. That's why I use 1 hour. You could use 2, 4 or even 5 Mins.)

Add time to Date -15 to Expiry Date output to Variable PreExpDate

Add If condition PreExpDate <= Today()

Send email

Update list Item change PreExpNotify to True

Add another loop to the same stage and repeat just using ExpNotify, then same for PostExpNotify changing the applicable values and variables.

So these will just loop on whatever time frame you set pausing for that duration. Checking the date and sending the notification when reached, then updating the Booleans so they stop running and don't send duplicate notifications.

This is as close as I could get to "Real Time"

Just be glad you don't have 20 Dates and notifications per item like my current project :) oh and throw in a color coded calendar and hide the times while you're at it. No problem.