Please guide me on create a sending report site workflow

Question

I am new to Sharepoint designer 2013. What I am trying to do is:

• there is a list "report items" with a Yes/No column "Report sent"
• create a workflow and trigger bi-weekly to check "report items" list.
• if 1 or more row with "report sent" is NO, the workflow will send all these records to someone (in one single email). The row's "report sent" will be modified to YES.

It sounds easy at beginning. But I am strucked at first part already.. I don't know how to query multiple records and store in some variables.

Could you please give me some guidance? Many thanks.

Mark

Answer 1

You asked in a comment in another question if this could be done with HarePoint Workflow Scheduler. Yes, you could do that. There are several possible approaches. Off the top of my head:

Create a list called vStorage with a multi line plain text field and an "EmailSent" column as a Yes/No field. This list has only one item. Let's say the only item's ID is 1. This list item will be used as intermediate storage while the workflow runs through its steps.

Set up the workflow like this: - change an item in the vStorage list where ID = 1. Append the current list item title to the vStorage item text field. Set the "EmailSent" field in vStorage to No. - set the Report Sent column of the current item to Yes

Use HarePoint Workflow Scheduler to run on the report items with a filter set to show only items with "Report sent" set to No.

Create another workflow on the vStorage list. If "EmailSent" = No send an email and include the text field that now contains all the items from the report list. Then set the "EmailSent" field to Yes.

Use HarePoint Workflow Scheduler to run on the vStorage list with a view or query that contains just the one item.

Make sure to schedule the two workflows so they don't overlap.

Answer 2

If you use SharePoint 2013 all described functionality without creating list level workflows. You can use just single site level workflow.

SharePoint 2010 workflows don't support loops, but SharePoint 2013 workflows support.

I would recommend 3rd party products developed by my team:

• SharePoint workflow Scheduler
• Workflow Actions Pack

I would recommend to create single site level workflow, then query list items form reports list using Get items by query workflow action from Workflow Actions Pack. Then get count of queried items. If count is more then 0, iterate through results, then modify list item as you need and send e-mail to someone.

Finally, create schedule to start site level workflow periodically using SharePoint Workflow Scheduler.