Send email notification 5 business days before activity set triggers on employee start date.

[chetanasand]

Hello Everyone,

I am working on lifecycle event onboarding for new hire. I have created lifecycle event names onboarding and add activity set to it names Prepare, Day 1, Week 1 and so on. Prepare activity set triggers immediately when the HR case is created and Day 1 activity set triggers when it matches the employee start date mention in HR profile form. I have to send an email notification to manager 5 business days before day 1 activity set is triggered in the lifecycle event. 
Please help me the ways to set "when to send" condition while creating a notification so that emails triggers on correct time. 
Note: Table used while creating notification is sn_hr_le_case

[Rafael Batistot · Accepted solution]

Hi @chetanasand 

ServiceNow notifications don’t have a native “X business days before” condition, but you can achieve this in a few ways:

To send email by ServiceNow, you need configure an event and link in your notification 

After that use a Scheduled Job to trigger this days 

1. Create a Scheduled Job that runs daily (e.g., at midnight).
2. In the script, query sn_hr_le_case records for onboarding lifecycle events:
   
• Check the Employee Start Date (u_start_date or profile reference field).
• Compare with today + 5 business days (you can use GlideDateTime.addBusinessDaysLocalTime(-5) if you’re on a recent release).
3. If match found, trigger your email notification by:
   
• Calling gs.eventQueue("your.custom.event", caseGR, managerSysId, "");
• Configure a notification listening to that event.

[GlideFather]

Hi @chetanasand,

for scheduled triggering, you will need to change the notification to be sent when an event is fired or via flow

[J Siva]

Hi @chetanasand 
You need to use either a Scheduled Job or a Scheduled Flow to trigger notifications 5 business days before Day 1. Run the job daily and iterate over the records. If a record meets the condition, trigger the notification event. Try using the script below

function isTodayFiveBusinessDaysBefore(dueDateStr) {
    var dueDate = new GlideDateTime(dueDateStr);
    var today = new GlideDateTime();
    var tempDate = new GlideDateTime(dueDateStr);
    var businessDaysCount = 0;

    while (businessDaysCount < 5) {
		tempDate.addDaysLocalTime(-1);  // subtract 1 day
        var dayOfWeek = parseInt(tempDate.getDayOfWeekLocalTime(), 10); // 1 = Monday, 7 = Sunday

        if (dayOfWeek >= 1 && dayOfWeek <= 5) {
            businessDaysCount++;
        }
    }

    // Compare the calculated date with today's date
    return tempDate.getDate().getValue() == today.getDate().getValue();
}


var dueDate = '2025-08-25 00:00:00';
var isMatch = isTodayFiveBusinessDaysBefore(dueDate);
gs.info("Is today 5 business days before due date? " + isMatch);

Regards,
Siva