Workflows are one of the most important tools available to you in your Salesforce Org. Along with immediate workflow actions, Orgs can also set time-based workflow actions to fire at a time of your choosing. Maybe you want to set reminders for your sales teams to update/follow-up on specific Opportunities? Perhpas you need to set reminders for your Support team to respond to specific case submissions? Or maybe just create a simple task to follow up on a prospect based off a specific marketing action? Whatever the need, time-based workflow actions are a great way to help ensure your users don’t allow any items to slip through the cracks.
To get a better feel for time-dependent workflow actions, let us review some of the most frequently asked questions:
· Can I have time-based workflow on custom objects?
o Yes, and on any object currently supported by Workflow.
· What units of time are supported?
o Currently, days and hours are supported.
· Can I have my time-based workflow action count only business days?
o Standard functionality is based on all days and cannot exclude weekends.
· How does time-based workflow impact my existing records?
o Workflow rules are not triggered retroactively. If you create a rule now, the rules are not applied to previously created records.
§ Example: When you create an Opportunity reminder rule, it doesn't run against existing Opportunities. The new rule only applies to records created or updated after the rule is activated.
· What workflow actions can I use with time-based workflow?
o All existing actions will be available: Email Alerts, Field Updates, Tasks, and Outbound Messages.
· Can I configure multiple actions to occur at different points in time for the same rule?
o Yes, you can create a timeline of actions by configuring multiple time triggers and defining actions for each one.
· Are there any restrictions for time-based workflow?
o Yes, it's not possible to configure a time-dependent workflow action that's set to evaluate criteria "Every time a record is created or edited."
· Can I see which time-dependent actions are pending executions?
o Yes, all pending actions to be triggered on a future date appear in the Workflow Queue.
As you can read, there are many features your team can take advantage of, today, to start putting guard rails in place to ensure your team addresses each business need – in a timely fashion.