Creating a Workflow That Can Loop Back If Needed

[chrisinhoff]

I have a catalog item that is to review security exceptions. This also has an associated workflow that creates an SCTASK for my security team to review the security exception. Once the exception has been reviewed, the owner of the ticket (SCTASK) must approve it or deny it, and then decide on a timeframe for when this exception should be reviewed again.

To do this, I have created two new fields in the SCTASK record and placed them in a tab in the Related Lists section on the bottom. One field contains the approval part, and the other field contains a drop-down list of timeframes including no review needed.

I would like for when the SCTASK is completed, I want the workflow to evaluate the timeframe selected on the new field, and if no review needed is selected, it will continue on and complete the workflow, which does have a few more activities to complete before it should end. If a timeframe is selected, I want the evaluation to set a timer for the time that was selected, and then I want it to loop back to the original create SCTASK activity and kick it off again using all of the same parameters except it will now be a new request that will follow the same workflow until no more review is needed. (the timeframes are 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year...along with no review needed)

Some of the things I am running into that are causing issues:

1) I am unable to evaluate the needs review part. When I set an If statement to work off of the new field and evaluate if a timeframe was entered or the no review needed was entered, it is not seeing the value correctly. When it evaluates as no review needed is true, it should continue on to the other ending workflow activities. It is always going to the loop part I have created and failing. I am not certain why it will not recognize a selected item as being chosen.

2) I feel like the issue is with the new field, as it is somewhat difficult setting up that If condition in general. It is hard to find that field within the slush bucket.

So, ultimately, I want someone to be able to submit a security exception, the security team reviews it, they approve or deny, it should be approved with a timeframe set, if the timeframe is null the workflow ends, if the timeframe is anything else it kicks off a timer and makes a repeat SCTASK to be reviewed again. This will either allow the exception to continue as long as it is reviewed occasionally or allow for a one-time exception.