Flow Designer : Making the flow wait until a specific date time based on a catalog variable

[Harneet Sital]

Recently I was working on a requirement to make the flow wait until a specific date/time is reached and then trigger the next action. I initially thought it would be an easy configuration but couldn't find how because out of the box there are two conditions -

• Wait for a condition
• Wait for a duration

But they didn't have any straightforward option and I was trying to not get into scripts to do this.

Here is what worked for me - 

Used the wait-for-duration activity, changed the duration type to relative duration, and then used 1 second after the variable value to make the flow until the specified time and then triggered the next action. 

Thought I would create this as an article so they can utilize it in case someone is looking for it. If this has helped you, please like the post!

[elaine10]

I appreciate this post a ton. I tried to use a few other methods to kick off my flow and had been unsuccessful. This worked for me! Cheers!

[Josh Barbour]

Worked great, thank you!

[Gaurav Vaze]

I really Appreciate this workaround, amazing

[Diogo Ramos]

You can also use percentage duration, and make it wait until 100% of {Datetime}

Cheers

[MartinKj]

I had a timer like this, that waited for 20 seconds after trigger record's Due date.

It didn't work.

When I deleted it and created it again, like yours, it works.

On the first timer I didn't use a schedule and I suspect that it is required for it to work.

[Jamie Stroud]

Great, simple solution. You're right. This solution doesn't just jump right out at you, but once you implement it, it's quite graceful and easy. Thanks for the post!

[AshokK534660413]

Use Case
We have created a custom field called Validity, which allows us to select a specific date. The intended behavior is that a notification should be triggered based on the selected date. However, the notification is currently being triggered immediately when the RITM is created, rather than on the specified "Validity" date.

[kartikey]

Hi @AshokK534660413 , did you try to implement it using a schedule?

[kartikey]

Hi @Harneet Sital , what should be the format/type of field for the date? should it be date or date/time? or should it be a string field?

[Akash Kajro]

what if the variable is of string type

[Jamie Stroud]

Hopefully it helps those on this thread. This was our scenario: wanted to be able to schedule the activation of a record. Table has an Active (true/false) flag, as well as an Active On (date/time) field to indicate what date/time in the future to activate the record. So use case is record is currently Active is false and Active On is <some future date/time>. By using a flow with the Do the following in parallel flow logic, the flow both waits for the specified future Active On date, but will also cancel the flow if either the record is manually flipped to "active" or the Active On field is emptied, cancelling the scheduled activation. The "Run trigger" is For each unique change in case the Active On is updated from one future date to another. I have a separate BR (not pictured) that cancels any previously running flow on the record so the most recent update takes over.

[Wayne Richmond]

Does anyone have a suggestion for waiting for a date that might change?

If you have a wait for a relative duration, when the wait is triggered in the flow, it cannot be changed, even if the original date is updated. 

My use case is this: I have a flow that waits for a leaver's end date. At which point, it raises tasks to remove access to their accounts. However, if the leaver decides to stay for an extra week, the request has to be cancelled and reraised with the new end date. What I'd rather happen is the flow just wait for the new date.

[Brian Bouchard]

Once the wait is complete, you could re-load that variable and validate the date is not later than current date before moving on. If it is later than current date, wait until that date and continue that loop until the person has left.

This won't address if someone leaves earlier than the date, but should support someone leaving later than initially expected.

[Josh Pirozzi]

Hey @Wayne Richmond, 

Have you tried setting your Flow to run daily and is queries the User Table looking for Users with an End Date of Today and triggering the Tasks from there?

1. Initiating Condition: Daily at a specific Time
2. Look up Records Flow Step: sys_user Table
   1. Condition: sys_user Records with an End Date of Today
3. For Each Flow Step: Set to parse each of the found sys_user Records and add a Split Function.
4. Look Up Record Flow Step: Pull each found Record from the 'For Each' Step
   1. Condition: Where sysID = sysID of the found Record on the 'For Each' Step.
5. Catalog Task(s) as necessary.

[Jamie Stroud]

@Wayne Richmond , I'm pretty sure that's the scenario I explained. If you have a business rule on the Flow Context table that cancels any previously running flow on the record, and your flow is triggered when the "wait date" is modified, then the running flow on the previous wait date value will be cancelled (by the BR) and the updated date will trigger a new running of the flow.