I would like to be able to associate a timeout with a  workflow step.

For instance, I have many tasks and many of them are in the 'on hold' workflow step becuase I am awaiting further information in order to proceed. Perhaps I have sent an e-mail or made a phone call and am waiting for a response.

 As far as I am concerned these tasks have been dealt with for now and so I remove them from my view of outstanding tasks using an appropriate filter.

 It would be nice if I could configure them to revert back to 'In progress' after some configurable time (2 days say) so I know this task needs chasing up. In fact I would probably create a new workflow step called 'Need to chase up' for this purpose.

After some investigation, as far as I know, I can almost achieve the desired effect using filters, but this seems overkill (and doesn't work anyway)

• Set up a filter that matches tasks in the 'On Hold'
• Set up a project wide alert to myself based on this filter - 'Send alert event for items that have not changed' (problem here is that I only want the items that have not changed!). Schedule it every 2 days.
  
• On the 'Other Settings' tab of the 'On Hold' workflow step, respond to the e-mail alert by changing back to 'In progress'

 
Is there an existing way of achieving what I want, that I don't yet, or is this a new feature?

 

There is currently no built-in way of achieving that.  Alerts would be your best bet as far as finding out which items need to be addressed, but actually setting up the email service to read those alert messages and match them to the items so the workflow can change, is, like you said, overkill.

For the filter, you probably also want to add the condition 'Last Modified Date is older than 2 days', which should give you all the items you want.  Then the alert can be scheduled more often so you can be kept up to date.

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Dan Suceava
http://www.axosoft.com

Thanks for that. I hadn't thought about making use of the 'last modified date' field, so I can at least see those task that have been on hold beyond a certain length of time.

 

The original requirement still stands though a I will want to associate individual timeouts to each task.

For instance, only this morning I was following up an outstanding task with an external supplier and was told to expect a release by 16 Jan 2009. I would love to be able to put a reminder on this individual task if it is still 'on hold' after this date.

In my initial post,  I suggested a more generic method of timing out workflow steps which may have wider application (and is more in keeping with the OnTime design).  Any other mechanism that allows reminders for tasks would be great though.

Keep up the good work.

I am enjoying using the Beta.

 

 

 

The way that I handle this situation is to make use of the Follow Up Date.  I have a Filter and Alert set up to search for and/or send an email with a list of your Follow Up items.  It isn't automatic, you have to set the Follow Up date, but it is pretty close to what you want.

On a related note, I have a feature request in with Axosoft to be able to do "formulas" when setting fields on Workflow.  For example, when an item moves to a workflow step of say Needs Customer Follow Up, the Workflow would set the Follow Up Date to Today + 2 Days.  I think that would be pretty close to your 'time out' idea.  Unfortunately, they have pushed the Feature to "Review Next Cycle" which I think is Axosoft code for "It doesn't sound like as much fun as programming Wiki's and Scrum"

Hi

Can you send the URL of the feature request as I would like to vote for this as well.

 

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Regards
Graham Wade

I'm getting an Error trying to bring up the Feature detail (oh, the irony!!) So I can't seem to post a link.  It is Feature Id 3431.

Hi,

I can't see a Feature Request 3431. There are only 3428 followed by 3471. I also would like to vote for this request.

Smartboy

Today I can get to the detail, but the URL is just http://community.axosoft.com/iframe.aspx?Tab=Features and doesn't seem to change so I guess they are doing some fancy AJAX stuff or something in there now.  

I also can't see the Request when viewing "Show Public Features".  I don't see any setting that would allow me to change this either.  Can someone from Axosoft field these issues for us?

Make sure you don't have a Target Release filter selected, so select 'All', then you can search for 3431.

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Dan Suceava
http://www.axosoft.com

Dan Suceava:

Make sure you don't have a Target Release filter selected, so select 'All', then you can search for 3431.

 

No go.  I have All selected and searched for "3431" (no quotes) and it says "There are no items to display"

And your 'Features List' filter also has All selected?  The feature is marked as public so I'm not sure why you are not seeing it.

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Dan Suceava
http://www.axosoft.com

If I have All or My selected, I see the item, if I have Public selected I do not see the item.