Hello,
I just recently used the "Stop schedule" option an a recurring workflow and it didn't exactly behave the way I was hoping.
Although I had the workflow rule set to re-run for 12 hours, it stopped as soon as the "stop date" was reached effectively overriding the repeat duration.
I was expecting that the Stop Schedule On value would simply stop it from initiating a new "cycle" but it actually stopped the active one as well.
I can understand how it may make sense to have it work that way in some cases, so I'd like to see enhancements that would allow you to have it finish the current "cycle" and just prevent a new iteration rather than stopping immediately on the set date.
For proper context, if I have a workflow set to run every 10 minutes for 12 hours starting at 11pm, then I'd consider each time it reached 11pm to be the start of a "cycle" and I'd like to allow it to finish an active "cycle" even if the stop date has been reached and instead just prevent a new cycle from starting.
For example, if I have a 12-hour rule set to stop on 10/31, then I may want it to continue running from 11pm on 10/30 until 11am 10/31 and then have the "stop" date kick in at 11pm on 10/31.
I can understand how you would sometimes want a hard stop date regardless of the re-run settings, so I think a good option would be one of the following:
- A checkbox for "Continue active cycle" or something along those lines that will tell it to keep the re-run option active until it plays out and just avoid starting a new iteration.
- A time field so you can customize exactly when the workflow schedule stops.
My use case is as follows:
We are performing maintenance on one of our main workflow servers but we have a critical process we need to keep running.
To prevent disruptions, I published the same workflows to a secondary server and set a rule that would start shortly before the maintenance window and run until after it is completed.
Then, on the main server, I set one schedule rule to stop on the date of the maintenance and another to start after it was complete.
The idea is that it would essentially create a scheduled hand off, but because the stop date interrupted the re-run every X option, I had to set a new rule this morning to start it back up for the required amount of time.
If I had a time option for the stop date, or the checkbox to finish out an active "cycle" then I wouldn't have to worry about that in the future.
I know this can be accomplished by creating multiple rules, but it would be much nicer and easier to manage if one or both of these options were available so I can make an single rule more robust.
Perhaps even a "stop for" date/duration option that could be used to pause the schedule during maintenance windows and have it start back up automatically.