Reminding a user every 30 days to complete the task in SharePoint

Question

I am using SharePoint features "out-of-the-box" only and require to repeatedly email the client every 30 days to remind him/her to respond to the customer care.

The customer care user will hit the complete task button once the client contacts him/her.

The task is intended for customer care user and not the client and he is not part of the system, but requires to be emailed when this particular task is in waiting.

This needs to be done without coding and using as much out-of-the-box features as possible. I am using Feedback task process in this step.

P.s. I am unable to find a solution on the internet.

Answer 1

I figured out a solution. The solution to this problem is:

1. Right click on the Task Process (the Feedback process in this case) and click on Properties.
2. In the properties window locate Parameters for "[Feedback]" section.
3. Set OverDueRepeat as Monthly to set the 30 days-ish period.
4. Set OverDueRepeatTimes as -1 so that it sets as infinity and repeats overdue action until task is completed.
5. Then again in the properties window locate Parameters for "[these users]" section.
6. Set Duration as 1, and DurationUnit as Monthly for 30 days over due trigger.
7. Then navigate inside the Feedback process and click Change the behavior of a single task.
8. Locate When a Task Expires step.
9. Add an Email action in that step to be sent to the Client.

This was my solution to this problem while confining to out-of-the-box requirements.

Answer 2

You can create a list - call it notification control with 3 columns - Title, NextRun Time, Enabled.

Attach a workflow to this list on create and on update, the workflow will initially check for enabled if false stops the workflow. If enabled then it will wait until current date >= NextRun Time.

When condition is true then it will execute the business logic - notification.

Finally it will set the NextRun Time field to current date + 30 days - this will kick of the workflow again. This is the general idea.

The only issues you will have is you can have multiple workflows running on the same item with this method.

To prevent this add another boolean column say:"Is Workflow Running".

Check this field on workflow start and stop it if it's true.

If it's false then continue and set the field to true to prevent the start of concurrent workflows. Finally in the end of the workflow after you set the NextRun time reset this field to false again to allow the workflow to start again.