WorkFlow: Sending two different emails with a delay between them

SuiteCRM Forum - English Language Advanced OpenSales, Workflow, Portal support
1

I just saw this very useful tutorial on creating WorkFlows:
https://youtu.be/wuGElTjkoLg

It really helped. One thing I want to do is to add a second email to the workflow after a few days. I’ve got the first email to send ok and both email templates ready, just not sure how to schedule the 2nd emai. Everything else I think I’ve got a handle on.

Here’s what I’m trying to do:
Workflow (on save)1. (Check conditions: if yes:

  1. Send 1st Email (email 1 template)
  2. Add record to target list
  3. Create reminder to do thing
  4. Send 2nd Email (email 2 template)
  5. Call 1 month later

How would one schedule the 2nd email?

2

Hi Phil

sometimes the way to simplify complex workflows is to add custom fields to keep track of the state of each record throughout the process.

So, suppose you add two custom fields (one would be enough, but this makes things clearer, I believe): “processed” and “dateToSend”

So when you run the first workflow, for the first email, you set “processed” to false, and you set “dateToSend” to have the date when you want the second email to go out. This can be done with a Calculated field setting the date to “now plus a few days”.

Then you have a separate workflow that runs “on scheduler”, tests if the dateToSend has passed AND processed is false. It sends the second email and sets “processed” to true.

I hope this is understandable and helps.

3

Sounds good - where does one add these fields? To the leads panel?

4

You add them in

Admin / Studio / (module) / Fields

You don’t need to add them to any views, unless you want to show it to the users, or to let users edit them directly.

If you only plan to use the new fields in the Workflow, they don’t have to be in any view, they just need to be created as custom fields.

5

Is the “processed” field a checkbox?

6

It could be, yes. Or it could be a simple one character string where you put a “0” or a “1”.

7

For the 2nd Worklow, the conditions would be:

Module Field Operator Type Value

Leads -> “Processed” -> EqualTo -> Value -> “0”

Leads -> DateCreated -> EqualTo -> Date-> Now -> “+” -> 3 Days

Would that work?

8

I am not sure, I always do Workflows by trial and error.

For Date comparisons I recommend to avoid using “equal”, use a “lesser” or “greater” comparison to make sure it works even if for some edge cases, like if the the scheduler skips a day, or if people edit dates manually. That’s why use the second field (“processed”) to make it more robust and ensure it only runs once. Date comparison sometimes are tricky.

9

Conditions are used to select leads, not to schedule tasks!

So your conditions will select leads that were not processed, but created 3 days from today!!