Workflow Sample: Episode 482: Making A Notification at Later Date Independent as "Reminder Mechanism"?

"Reminder notification of Maintenance service contract renewal on the same date in 12 months later."

When I design, for example, a Contract Process, I would want an Email alert (Email reminder). That is, I want to arrange an Event to transmit an email at the most downstream of the business flow. That is referred to as [Throwing Message Event (Email)] in the terminology of "Process Modeling" (BPMN terminology).

However, the Process will take one year for all the Steps to be completed, if you have setup naturally.
(Even though any other Steps have been completed up to Conclusion of contract...)

Although this may depend on personal preference, I feel uncomfortable that the status of the Issue remains in "Running" just for not yet sending the "Reminder email". If the "Time until all the Steps to be completed" is measured as KPI in your organization, it will truly be an "annoying presence".

The following Workflow is a Business Process of Email reminder part that is independent. (It is too simple to refer to as a Business Process, though.) In short, it is a mechanism that just to accept "messages" from various Business Processes, and to transmit them at "Reminding date and time".

[Remind Notification]

[Remind Notification: "1. Confirm reminder" screen]

Introduction of timed mechanism like this may remind you 'at' and 'cron' of scheduling mechanism, if you prefer UNIX type Operating System.

cron ; the persistent repeater
at ; the one-hit wonder that regardless errors

These are the ones that executes "registered job" automatically by specifying start time. I remember that I was really excited for its "mechanism of timed processing" when I met them about 20 years ago.

Setting Season greeting email
Butch processing for"Sales summary"
Reservation of Shutdown that kills me myself

I wonder how can I say? I probably felt some kind of adventurous spirit.

Incidentally, although I am introducing a Business Process that is similar to "at", you can isolate a mechanism like "cron", of course. However, there are a variety of methods of designing, and always there is a risk of "Occurrence of computer runaway" by a small mistake. Therefore, I would like to mention about it on some other day. (Eventually, you had better use cron-like feature of [Timer Start Event] for safety's sake, rather than separating.)

[Data Items list]