Dynamic Deadlines based on form values

[Ant Erickson]

We have a Meeting Room request service that can be scheduled well in advance of the booking date; we'd like to set the deadline of a task to the time that the room is needed to ensure SLA compliance.

Hi all,

We have a service for setting up a meeting room as part of our Facilities Management catalogue and are stuck in an awkward situation.  We have given that service a deadline of about 3 days however, it largely assumes that the customer will submit it, 3 days before the room is booked.  It becomes awkward where customers start doing the right thing and booking a room a week or two in advance.  This means the service task is then due well before the room is required.

Re-scheduling the task has been discussed, however, it is a change in a Start time not the due date, so the teams have to work backwards to set it so the task becomes Active.  We would like some way of dynamically setting the due date to a value on the form (ie, Meeting start date/time).

Has anyone looked in to anything similar to this?  Please let me know, otherwise I'll log a feature request and share the number.

Thanks,

Ant

[Ed Contini - newScale]

Hi Ant,

Unfortunately, because due dates are calculated and set automatically by the business engine, we don't have a direct mechanism for accomplishing this.

However, you might be able to use a Scheduled Start task to accomplish this. It sounds like you already have a field on the form used by the requestor to indicate when they need the room. You could use some JavaScript to do a bit of date math (needed date less 3 days), write that date to a hidden field, and then use that hidden date to drive the schedule start date of your task/workflow.

[Ant Erickson]

Hi Ed,

I've had a bit of  grief with the forums recently - I type responses, hit 'Post' and it just sits there ticking over.  I got a screenshot this time, so I'll try and send it through to a support contact or something.

We did consider Scheduled Start Date, but the team ultimately want the task to be visible and active so they can get started on it and just align the due date.  Bearing in mind your comments on the Business Engine, I'll log a feature request with that expectation set.

Thanks,

Ant

[Peter Lee]

What about if you setup a primary task either as a Service Group Review or Authorization to autocomplete in these scenarios which would notify the group via an email notification of the upcoming work.  Then have the Delivery task setup as a schedule start date.  This will preserve the SLA calculation and notify the group of the request via email at-least.  

Also what about having the performing group setup a saved filter and search view to view the scheduled requests.