Stump the Panel

Paul Grenier, Lead Moderator

Stump the Panel » Site Managers and Site Collection Managers

1. 

   NancyCentury
   Member

   Our company does a Meals on Wheels route each month. We have a site to help manage this, which will kick off in April.

   Our route takes place the second, third and 4th Thursdays of each month. The goal is to allow the Meals on Wheels coordinator to schedule who will deliver every month on the 3 days in question, and use SPD workflow to automate notifications to the delivery team members for their specific date(s).

   I unhid the Event base content type and created a Meals on Wheels Event Content Type containing 2 fields, "Volunteer 1" and "Volunteer 2", which are "name with presence"-type fields. These are blank at item creation, awaiting values which will be entered later by the Meals on Wheels coordinator after confirming who will cover which instances over the next few months.

   I then added three recurring events using that content type- April 9th, 16th and 23rd- as the initiating dates using the "recurrence" checkbox and "recur monthly on the 2nd/3rd/4th Thursday of the month" as appropriate to set up the year's delivery events, three per month through December.

   For each one of those instances, 2 volunteers will be assigned to cover the route. The coordinator won't know every date's team names right away, so she needs to be able to edit each instance individually, NOT by editing the original "master" event (the first April date used to set up each of the three recurrences).

   I created a workflow to run off "item change" in the Calendar list, since with all the recurrences in place, any addition of names to the two Volunteer fields would constitute a change.

   My default view is "Current Events" since this is the only view in which all the year's dates appear. Ideally, the coordinator would open the calendar in Current Events view, select "Edit Item" for a particular date, then choose names for the two Volunteer fields for that date. (In theory), this change would then trigger the workflow, and send an email to those 2 people stating, "You have been assigned to deliver Meals on Wheels on ____ date," etc.

   However- instead of one email for that specific date, the 2 volunteers get something like 20 emails as the workflow is running off not just the original date selected, but every subsequent instance of that date's recurrence.

   It almost seems like the only way around this is to NOT use the Recurrence feature, but to manually enter every individual instance of delivery for each month. If so, I am greatly disappointed. Just because an event recurs regularly it does not mean all elements associated with that event also recur. To not be able to modify a recurring event's parameters seems like a significant flaw in the design of that feature. Am I missing something?

   I hope the explanation is clear. Thanks in advance for all help!

   Posted 3 days ago #
2. 

   AdamCarr
   Member

   I have checked this my end and it seems to do what you need.

   On Item Changed workflow triggers every time someone saves changes to that item, this can lead to a loop occuring if you update the the list via a workflow (as the change re triggers the workflow). So it's good practice to include logic checks to make sure it doesnt happen.

   Also if you have two volunteers what happens if the person altering the appointment only adds one volunteer on the list and then adds a second volunteer at a later date. You may end up sending the same email repeatedly and confusing the users.

   If you add in a logic check that the Volunteer One field is not empty then send the email, this would be much better. You can then add another additional step in the workflow for the Volunteer Two field as well.

   To achieve this in SPD do the following.

   1. Add a condition Compare Calendar Field select the Volunteer one field and set it to is not empty.
   2. Add a Action, Send Email. Set the To field to Workflow Lookup, Current Item then the volunteer one field. Add the rest of the information on the email, like subject and the body.
   3. Add a new step
   4. Repeat 1-3 in the new step but for the Volunteer two field.

   There are some drawbacks to doing the checks this way, like geting the workflow to send emails if you change any of the volunteers (but thats a different subject and a more complex workflow).

   Try these changes and post back if it solves the issue.

   Adam

   Posted 2 days ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.