I have created a workflow on a document library. This workflow creates several tasks inside a replicator activity. Now I have another workflow on the task list, that has to start off when a new task gets added to the task list. The 1st workflow works fine, the tasks get created (by default on the “Workflow Task” content type). But the problem is with the second workflow. It simply doesn’t start off at all. I thought maybe this has to do something with replicator, so had a simple workflow with a single create task. But even then my second workflow doesn’t start off. I am hopelessly trying out why the workflow does not get initiated at all.

Please can you help.

Thanks

I guess one question is is the ‘Current Item’ the same item both times? I.e., is this an email reminder for another task step which has been created in the same way?

I’ve started creating a workflow attached to a task list. The first step includes an action to send an email message to the “assigned to” for a task. I’ve created a workflow lookup to look up the information in the “assigned to” column and send an email reminder–this step works.

When I created this step (Email this message), I clicked on “this message” and it brings up “define email message”.
In the “to” line, I clicked the “addressbook” icon
In the “select users” box, I clicked “workflow lookup…”
In “define workflow lookup” I selected “current item” as the source, and “assigned to” as the field
The action looked like this: Email test:Assigned To (”test” is the name of the task list)

I created subsequent email reminder steps and saved the workflow (it indicated no errors).

When I reopened the workflow later and wanted to create another email reminder action, I followed the same steps, but when I got to “define workflow lookup” and selected “current item” as the source, when I went to select “assigned to” for the field, it is not there among the options that can be selected.

Do you have any idea why this would happen?? I even tried creating an entirely new workflow attached to the same list (”test”) but the same thing happens…

HELP!

I’ll take a look and get back to you.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I am a developer and I feel that SharePoint workflows are beyond me sometimes (Damn InfoPath!)

Could you answer the question about whether or not the workflow initiation notices that appear in the 3-state workflow can be sent to another list or location in sharepoint so that they do not “clutter up” the task list with additional information? We would still want to know if the workflow stages have been initiated, and what the progress is, we just don’t want them in the task list along with hundreds of tasks!! This is something we really want to know, because if you can’t, we may not want to use a workflow at all and just use “alerts” by manually changing the status.
Thanks, again!

There are a number of options for what you want, and we’ve implemented similar, bespoke solutions, but as you’ve identified, out-of-the-box SharePoint doesn’t do what you’re asking for.

An “escalation” workflow is just the generic business term for the process you’re trying to implement. It’s not related to SharePoint or the technology side of things. I don’t think SharePoint comes with an “escalation” workflow in the same way as it comes with a “three-stage approval” workflow.

What you’re looking to build probably requires Visual Studio, although I’m no expert with SharePoint designer - it may be possible that way. However, even building workflows in SharePoint designer quite a steep learning curve anyway.

All of which leads me back to my original thought - you really want to engage with a specialist third party, or start training up to do it yourself - and workflow is a bit painful.

I’m afraid (being one of them), I’m not quite sure how you set about finding a professional services group. If you have a local SharePoint User Group, it might be worth asking there - there are also usually a lot of freelance consultants who I’m sure would offer their services. Here in the UK our local group is http://suguk.org/

Or, actually, looking at your email address, would you have an internal IT team who might be able to assist? If you guys don’t have a strong IT team, nobody does!

Other questions:
- We do not want our task list populated with any workflow progress items (”workflow initiated”, etc.) Is there a way to have those go somewhere else? a different list? a different view?
- Does sharepoint know when to start each stage of a workflow automatically once you set up the workflow, or will we have to manually change the status of an action item to initiate each stage (open, reminder, overdue…)?

What we would like the workflow to do is:
- at the halfway point between the date the action was assigned and the due date, generate the first email reminder automatically to the “assignee”.
- auto-generate the 2nd reminder approx. one week before due date
- auto-generate 1st Overdue reminder the day after the due date passes
- auto-generate 2nd Overdue reminder 2 weeks later
- auto-generate subsequent Overdue reminders every 2-3 weeks until the action is closed.

I would greatly appreciate any help/advice you can give me.

i will try your idea using events … it seems it can be done in this way.

thanks so much for your great post, you saved me a lot of time

Otherwise, if you’re stuck with SharePoint only, you could do something like:

- Have a ListItem with a URL field.
- When the ListItem is created, capture that event and create a folder in a document library somewhere.
- Store the URL to the folder in the URL field
- Attach your workflow to your ListItem

I’ve not tried that, but it might be worth a go at prototyping.

so what other third party products can give me such option?

Thanks a lot for all your help and support and feedback … I am really lost here and this functionality is a must

You can’t have many documents ’sharing’ a workflow in SharePoint’s Workflow functionality. A workflow has to belong to a single item.

I am not sure if i understand what you mean…

well …this is my case:-

we have a business entity (peice of information) that consists of multiple documents. we want to create an approval workflow for this type of information without approving each document separately.

it is like having “attachemnet” workflows. where multiple documents are attached to the workflow instance.

is this possible?

thanks alot in advance

My current thinking on this is that this sort of functionality would be best implemented using a Site for each workflow instance - this would give the location for many documents to be saved to and worked with. Some third party products allow workflows to handle site lifecycle - K2 and Nintex can do this, I believe.

The only other alternative that strike me - don’t use workflow. You can support a business process in SharePoint using just views and statuses.

We want to design a workflow that can be started on multiple documents which is not possible using sharepoint workflow designer or Visual Studio workflows as you mentioned

would you suggest a BPM engine that we can use to enable us starting such workflows on MOSS ?

Thanks alot in advance,

Best Regards,
Areej