Comments on: Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

By: scott

scott — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:53:50 +0000

I really hope this capability is built into the next version of sharepoint this request happens all the time. I have written console apps and ran them as scheduled tasks to perform operations that you think would just be built in.

I have tried various techniques like this including using one list to loop through another, but they seem problematic. I’m glad that some people were successful following your well detailed instructions. But I was not one of them. I only get one instance of the workflow to run. i.e. changing the emailremindercount does not fire off a new instance of the workflow.

By: Sphix75

Sphix75 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:05:02 +0000

Great example, I have followed this example step by step, but for some reason in the “send initial email” step, nothing after the Pausing statement gets processed, I get the email, and the “FirstEmailReminderSent” is set to YES, in the description the pausing is set to the right time, but the EmailReminderCount is still set to 0. I tried a different workflow example and i have the same problem nothing gets processed after the pausing statement. ANY help would be much appreciated. Thanks

By: jae

jae — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:12:00 +0000

I'm getting the same behavior. First test looped 4 times, second test 2 times, third test only interated once. No error message. Every stepped is logged properly. It seems to stop for no reason.

By: jeiku

jeiku — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:39:36 +0000

hi paul,
i tried using the Log message to workflow history but whenever I am vieewing it, the old message still appears..

any thoughts on how to fix this?

thanks!

By: jeiku

jeiku — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:37:56 +0000

hi paul,
i tried adding Log message to workflow history list option but whenever I am viewing the workflow history of a specific record, the old message is still the one displayed.
any thougths on this?

thanks!

By: Jesse

Jesse — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:09:13 +0000

This is a great article.

However, I was just doing some developing and I was testing a workflow and did not want to wait 24 hours so I set it to 5 minutes. It never sent me the email and it only looped 4 or 5 times before finally deciding to be Complete instead of In Progress. The workflow should remain In Progress right? I didn't know if this was a glich or something. Maybe not enough time has been given for the service to run correctly.

By: bob

bob — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:40:01 +0000

Nice work pagalvin…

By: tatchison

tatchison — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:39:14 +0000

Can't you just check the content type field of the item to determine what the content type is, and then either process or not?

By: Paddy

Paddy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:45:55 +0000

Great Article Paul. I want to send an email alert every monday. How can i do that. Which step in the workflow tells it that the email alert has to be sent after every 24 hours. Am i missing something

By: john

john — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:53:48 +0000

Thanks much pagalvin, very instructive! Now I don't want to go diverging off the topic of your post, but could this be adapted for use on a issues list, where an email is sent periodically when it's status isn't completed? The rub I see in adapting this is that you have to check the “Automatically start this workflow whenever this item is changed”, and hence any dicsussion on an issue starts the workflow email again. But for Tasks, it was very helpful, you taught me a lot!!

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:39:05 +0000

I used your example and it works great. One problem though, an Item has been changed email gets sent out after the counter gets updated. Is there anyway to get SP to not send the item has been changed email for the counter column.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:18:39 +0000

I think you're right, it is dangerous. One way to solve that is to “hide” the field in the content type that gets generated by SPD. Once it's hidden, it can't be edited but it can still shown in a list view.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:08:40 +0000

You're right, I think. I added that mainly as a colum of info to show. I like my systems to actively tell me stuff rather than try and infer it indirectly.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:07:42 +0000

It won't outright stop, but 2000 items is a strong recommendation in terms of max items in a list.

Some people say the practicle limit is even smaller.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:06:26 +0000

(Very late response, sorry!)

You can't attach a sharepoint designer workflow to a content type, at least not in any normal sense of it. If it's possible at all, it would require coding.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:05:31 +0000

(Very late response

I think that K2, Nintext and maybe some other 3rd party tools would be more than adequate to do this. However, many people are not going to get access to a product like that and that's why I wrote about this subject.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:54:20 +0000

Where is it documented that it's a bug?

MSFT already released many months of patches, SP1 and the infrastructure update so it seems like it's very low priority, if it is actually a bug they plan to fix.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:18:39 +0000

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:08:40 +0000

You're right, I think. I added that mainly as a colum of info to show. I like my systems to actively tell me stuff rather than try and infer it indirectly.

By: pagalvin

pagalvin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:07:42 +0000

It won't outright stop, but 2000 items is a strong recommendation in terms of max items in a list.

Some people say the practicle limit is even smaller.