Timer Expired and Tool Policy Example

The following example illustrates both the timer expired event and the timer tool policies. This workflow is initiated when the system receives an order. Then, an account manager must access the relevant ordering system, review the order details and either approve or reject the order. If the order is not reviewed within a certain time threshold, then the users within the Account Manager group are notified by e-mail up to three times before the order is escalated and reassigned to a senior manager. The remaining workflow activities are similar to those in Basic Approval Process.

Timer Expired Process Diagram

See the e-mail example for an example of SAS Templates usage.

The following figure shows the process tree for the Timer Expired process:

Timer Expired Process Tree

The timer policy associated with the initial Review Order task (Timer Expired->Send Workflow Notification) has the following parameter values:

Policy Parameter	Value
Event	Timer Expired
Action	Send Workflow Notification
Description	This policy is used to send a notification. Each recipient is addressed in their own notification.
Recipient(s)
Group Recipient(s)	${../Account Manager}
Description
Template	SAS_Email_Message
Directive
Notification Variables	../MSG, ../DESC
HTTP Parameters
Action on Expiry	None
Policy Label	Timer Expired`->`Send Workflow Notification

The schedule parameter values in the following table trigger an e-mail notification after three minutes (schedule expression) and twice (number of repetitions) more after two minutes (repetition interval).

Policy Parameter	Value
Schedule Expression	+3m
Recurrence: Number of Repetitions	2
Recurrence: Interval of Repetitions	+2m
End Timer	Disabled

The timer policy associated with the main workflow has the following parameters:

Policy Parameter	Value
Schedule Expression	+10m
Recurrence: Number of Repetitions	0
Recurrence: Interval of Repetitions
End Timer	Disabled

The schedule parameter values in the table above will trigger a transition to the Review Escalated Order activity after 10 minutes (schedule expression) without repetition (0 or –1 for number of repetitions). This activity has another policy associated with it to stop the initial Review Order task because the order has been automatically reassigned.

See the examples provided with SAS Workflow Studio for details of this example.