Recurring workflow tasks

A recurrent workflow step enables a recurrent task to be created.

When you complete a recurrent task, a new task is automatically created. Its dates are a defined amount of time later, which is based on the recurrence pattern.

When you complete this task another task is created in the same manner, and so on. The process occurs for a defined number of times.

To create a recurrent task in a workflow:

1. Check the Recurrent box for a step.

The Recurrence Editor appears.

2. Enter the recurrence pattern.
3. Enter the maximum number of occurrences and click OK.
4. If there is another step linked after this one in the workflow steps diagram, select an option from the Generate next task dropdown list to define when this step should create the subsequent task:
• after the first recurrent task is complete,
• after the each recurrent task is complete, or
• after the last recurrent task is complete.

Time and recurrent workflow-generated tasks

To understand the timing of recurrent tasks, we start with the diagram at Time and workflows and note that the lag applies only to the first of recurrent task.

Note that when we refer to dates here we mean the date and the time, e.g. 6/1/2017 at 9am.

A sequence of recurrent tasks is shown below.

Click image to enlarge/reduce.

1. The first recurrent task is created.
2. When this first task is completed, a second task is automatically created.

Its due date (2 in the image above) is calculated as the due date of the first task plus the recurrence pattern defined in the Recurrence Editor.

The start date for the new task is calculated by subtracting the duration from the task's due date.



For example when the recurrence pattern is the 28th day of every month, the due date of the new task is calculated by going forward until the 28th of the month is located. This might be in the same month or the next month.

If the recurrence pattern is the 28th of every two months it moves forward again to the 28th of the following month.

3. When the second task is completed the third task is created following the same process.

This process continues until the maximum number of occurrences has been reached (or forever if a maximum has not been set).

Notes

• The second recurrent task might start quite close to the first, depending on the recurrence pattern and the actual dates.

For example in this example when the first task is due on July 16, the second one will be due 12 days later on July 28. However, the third, fourth and any subsequent tasks, all similarly due on the 28th of each month, will each be separated by the month.

• If you need recurrent tasks to be separated by a fairly exact amount of time every time, e.g. a month, set the pattern to a large number of days. In this example, it would be 31 days, because recurrence uses calendar days, not working days.
• The completion date of a task can be any time after its start date. It can even be before this date if the setting that allows tasks to be completed prior to their start date+time is turned on.

As you would expect, once a workflow instance has 'created' a recurrent task for a case, any subsequent changes to the step's recurrence in the workflow template can have no effect on this particular recurrent task.