Workflow - Wait Condition / Parallel Wait Branch Steps

Without having to do any custom code, the Wait Condition / Parallel Wait Branch steps work together to give you a powerful way to wait for data or time related events to occur.

The Wait Condition step allows you to indicate one or more data conditions that need to occur before the workflow will continue. The following is an example of sending an e-mail to notify users and then waiting for one of them to assign record.

In the above example once the wait condition is satisfied we stop the workflow using the Stop Workflow step.

The problem with this scenario is what happens if nobody responds to the e-mail and assigns the record. In that case this workflow would run forever waiting for someone to assign it.

The Parallel Wait Branch step help with this allowing you to add another condition that will cause the workflow to continue. This additional step could be another data check or a check based on time. For example, we could want to say, wait till assigned or 1 day has passed.

When setting the condition on the Wait Condition or the Parallel Wait Branch steps you can indicate you want to do a timeout by selecting Workflow in the first column when building the condition. The following shows how to indicate you want a Timeout condition.

The “Workflow” option is all the way at the bottom of the first drop down under Local Values.

Using the Form Assistant we can use to help calculate a variable date based on the data in the record. In the following example, we are calculating the timeout date based on 1 day after the record was Created.

Now looking at our workflow – we would have added a “Timeout” that will assign the record and notify the user of the assignment if nobody responds one day after the initial created on date.