2079471 - Reminder Notifications for Stalled Workflows in Employee Central

• What is the Reminder for Stalled Workflows feature?
• When will the Reminders for Stalled Workflows notification be sent?
• This KB article provides an explanation of the Reminders for Stalled Workflows functionality in Employee Central

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SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central - Workflow

Reminders About Stalled Workflows

To make sure that workflows are approved promptly, you can set up reminders for workflow requests that have been stalled at a step for too long.

You can define a period (in days) and when there is no action from approvers for the defined period, a reminder is sent. The period can be defined in either the workflow object itself or the recurring reminder job that triggers reminders.

Defining it in the workflow objects allows you to be flexible with different workflows. For example, you might want to have more frequent reminders for promotion-related workflows than for job relationship-related workflows. For simple data changes, you might even decide not to have any reminders at all.

Defining it centrally in the recurring job offers a simplified way of setting up reminder intervals, because the number of days defined there applies to all workflows in the systems.

However, if you have defined Remind in Days at both places, the value entered for the job prevails.

Recurring Reminders:

Prerequisites:

• Reach out to your Implementation Partner to enable the feature in the Corporate Data Model.
• A quartz scheduled job that triggers the notifications needs to be set up. It is recommended this job runs once daily.

Reminder for Stalled Workflows can be used if a workflow is not processed within a certain timeframe. A notification can be sent to the current approver(s), and then be sent again after the same period, and so on, whilst the item remains outstanding.

Also, as an Admin, if you want to make sure approvers take action on workflows assigned to them for approval, use this feature.

• Workflows can be configured via Admin Tools > Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures > to set the ‘Remind in Days’ value:

• Above, Remind in Days is set to 2, meaning a reminder notification will be sent every 2 days since the last action on the workflow item. Here, action means, it could be either adding a comment on the workflow or changing any approvers in the workflow, for example. 
• When the Initiator Initiates the workflow, at that time, we do send an email notification to the first step approver that there is a Pending Action for them (see Admin Tools > System Properties > E-Mail Notification Templates Settings > Workflow Action Pending Notification). So, when we send the reminder notification (as per the Remind In Days feature), we again use this same Pending Action notification this time with the subject prepended as "Reminder:" 
• Similarly, if an approver sends back the workflow request to a participant (see E-Mail Notification Templates Settings / Workflow Sentback Notification), we do send a Sent Back email to the initiator. So, when we send the reminder notification (as per the Remind In Days feature), we again use this same email template Sent Back with the subject prepended as "Reminder:” 

NOTE: If it is desired to have the same Remind in Days value for all workflows then this can be set globally on the quartz scheduled job, and if set this value always takes precedence - and the xml change is not even needed to enable or set in Admin Tools the Remind in Days field.

Procedure:

1. In Admin Center, go to Scheduled Job Manager> Manage Scheduled Jobs and create a new job.
2. Specify a job name and a job owner. The job owner has the authorization to submit or start a job. They will also be the default user to receive email notifications about the job status.
3. Select the Workflow Action Reminder as the job type. Afterwards, the Remind in Days setting is displayed as a job parameter.
4. Specify a number of days and the job will remind approvers if they haven't acted upon the workflow requests after the specified number of days.
   Leave the field empty and the job will use the number of days you define in an individual workflow to determine when a reminder is to be sent to the approvers.
5. Indicate whether you want to include the workflow initiators in the reminders as well.
6. In the Job Occurrence & Notification section, specify how often and when the job is run.
7. In this section, you can also define an active period for the recurring job. If you do not have any specific end date, enter 99991231 as an infinite future date.
   Add additional recipients of job notifications (for example, HR admin) and whether a notification is sent when the job starts.
8. Click Create Job to save it.
9. If you are the owner of the job, in the job list, submit it so that it starts running.

Summary on workflow reminder:

If workflow is NOT in sendback status, email reminder should go to current approver (workflow action is workflow_initiated and workflow configuration is enabled for sendEmail. In case of standard email template, it should be workflow pending approval)

If workflow is in sentback status, email reminder should go to initiator (workflow action is workflow_sentback and workflow configuration is enabled for sendEmail. In case of standard email template, it should be workflow sent back)

See Chapter: Creating a Workflow Email Configuration

: Go to manage data / select:WorkflowEmailConfiguration 

Go toManage Workflow Email Configuration

Job Failure due to Execution Limit: 

If the job fails due to execution limitations it will detail the following error in the Job Details:

• job failed because it exceeded the daily scheduling threshold for execution

If a job fails due to this job execution guardrails, it is recommended to review the configuration of the job and adjust the recurrence to ensure it complies with the job execution guardrails detail in the WNV: ECT-207756: More Employee Central Jobs on Job Scheduler in Scheduled Job Manager

To do this please ensure you have the required permission to access Scheduled Job Manager from the Admin Center.

This requires you have the permission:

• Administrator > Admin Center Permissions >  Monitor Scheduled Jobs
• Administrator > Admin Center Permissions > Manage Scheduled Jobs

Different job types might have additional module-specific permission controls. Check module guides to know all the details, please review the links with the "Related Information" of the WNV page for links to each of these relevant jobs: ECT-207756: More Employee Central Jobs on Job Scheduler in Scheduled Job Manager

Steps to change the recurrence of a job:

1. Ensure you have the required permission detailed above 
2. Navigate to Scheduled Job Manager
3. Select "Job Scheduler" Tab 
4. Filter for the desired Job Type
5. For the desired job select Actions> Cancel 
6. Once the job is canceled select Actions> Edit 
7. Adjust the recurrence to comply with the job execution guardrails
8. Ensure all required fields are filled out 
9. Submit

FAQ - Additional Information

Q) Where can I get Guide?

A) Guide: Employee Central Workflows: Implementation and Administration

Guide - Chapter - Creating a Recurring Job to Send Batch Reminders About Stalled Workflows Chapter - Reminders About Stalled Workflows

Q) How to  check Workflow Email Configuration

A) Go to manage data / select:WorkflowEmailConfiguration

Or

• Go to Manage Workflow Email Configuration
• Select Workflow Email Configuration

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