How to restart a workflow

Question

_{Wednesday, August 27, 2014 2:50 PM}

Hi

I have created a SharePoint 2010 workflow for a custom list using SharePoint Designer.

The custom list consists of people who may be active or inactive (Yes/No field).  If active then they will have an expiry date (Date field).  An email needs to be sent when they expire.

My workflow has 3 steps and will run on demand, when record is created, when record changes

Step 1: Check to see if the user is active - If "Is Active?" = No, stop workflow

Step 2: Check if person has expired - If "Expire On" > "Todays Date, pause until "Expire On"

Step 3: Send email

Here is my problem, if person A is set to expire 27/10/2014 and I run the workflow, the workflow will pause until 27/10/2014 which is what I want.  However if I change the expiry to 27/09/2014, the workflow does not change and continues to pause until 27/10/2014.

How can I restart/reset the workflow so it changes to the new value? or is there a way to stop the workflow and start a new workflow?

Marc Collins www.QGate.co.uk

All replies (3)

_{Monday, September 1, 2014 8:14 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Marc,

Based on your description, my understanding is that you want to send the email when the expiration date equals today’s date.

Per my knowledge, we cannot automatically stop the workflow when the expiration date changes.

I recommend to use Retention policy to control the workflow to send email in the expiration date, and the workflow can still be started on the changed date.

Because there is a timer job called Expiration policy checks the date set in the Retention policy for the items at a schedule time(weekly by default), you can change the schedule time for the timer job to Daily in Central Administration.

There is only one step in the workflow and the step is Send an Email.

Please go to List settings > Information management policy settings > Items > Enable Retention > Add a retention stage.

More reference about Retention Policy:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ecm/archive/2011/10/12/policy-and-retention-in-sharepoint-server-2010.aspx

Thanks,

Victoria

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Victoria Xia
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_{Wednesday, August 27, 2014 6:58 PM}

You can manually terminate and restart workflows. One way to do that is to select the list item, click the Workflows button in the ribbon, click the workflow under Running worklows. There you will be able to terminate it, then restart it through your normal process.

Or if you actually have the workflow field visible, just click the link there.

_{Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:13 AM}

Hi John

Thanks for your input.  This will help when testing.

I was hoping to automate the process as most users wont know how to do this.

Marc Collins www.QGate.co.uk