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I am using SharePoint Designer 2013.

I have a workflow which sends email notifications on the following times:

After creation of the List item I used pause until Start Date / Time. 1: On the task start date / time it sends an email. Then pause until End Date / Time.

2: On the task end date and time it sends an email. Then when I do pause for 5 minutes and then send an email

It is working when the both items Start Date /Time and End Date / Time is filled in but it doesn't send any email if any of these two value is empty or not filled in.

I am attaching Screenshots as well. If someone know how can I fix this if any of the above two fields are empty, it would still send an email. This will be great.

My biggest challenge is that SharePoint Designer does not provide an "Is Empty" conditional option for Date fields, like it does for other fields. How can I conditionally Pause my workflow only when the Date field is non-empty?

Thank you.

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    How would the new logic work? If the workflow determines is Pause times on those two columns, then if those values are missing, what you prefer the behavior be?
    – willman
    Feb 28, 2020 at 18:43
  • Hi Willman, the new logic will work like I have two columns, start date / time and End date / time. How it is working at the moment is if the start date/ time is empty, it will not the perform any action which is defined at the end date / time. As both values are using pause until loop. That's the issue I want to resolve at the moment. I want the it to perform the actions on the end date / time even if the start date / time field is left empty. Which at the moment is not working. I hope this makes sense. If you need further clarification then please let me know.
    – Noman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 9:52

2 Answers 2

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If I am understanding you correctly, you just need to put you Pause action in the condition, but everything else outside it. Since "empty" date fields end up looking in SharePoint Designer workflows like '1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM' you have to perform a 'less than' comparison to see if that date is valid.

It would look something like this: 

If Start date is greater than 1/1/1990 then
        Pause until start date
Send Email

So that the Send is not inside the If block, it is after. The only action inside the If block is the Pause.

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  • Hi Willman, Yes you are right, but the problem is I have both the values start date / time and end date / time which are the date / time columns. So the options it comes up with are: If Start Date / time is (equals, not equals, is greater than, greater than or equal to, is less than, is less than or equal to, equals(ignoring time) so the If start date / time gives me these values to select from, empty is not there unfortunately as it is date / time column.
    – Noman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 10:30
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    You are right, I had forgotten that SPD workflows treat empty Dates as '1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM', I updated my answer with the workaround for testing whether the field is "empty".
    – willman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 10:53
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    yes, sorry, I put the condition backwards, you only want to Pause when the date field value is greater than.
    – willman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 11:02
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    Yes, the If block does not stop the workflow executing, regardless of whether you have an optional else block, it will always continue on the execute actions that are outside and after the conditional block.
    – willman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 11:26
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    yes, you got it.
    – willman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 11:32
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You can add If conditin above the pause action.

If the start date is empty, send email or other actions, else, pause until start date.

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1
  • Hi, I think you have missed my whole point. I have two columns, start date / time and End date / time. How it is working at the moment is if the start date/ time is empty, it will not the perform any action which is defined at the end date / time. As both values are using pause until loop. That's the issue I want to resolve at the moment. I want the it to perform the actions on the end date / time even if the start date / time field is left empty. Which at the moment is not working. I hope this makes sense. If you need further clarification then please let me know.
    – Noman
    Mar 2, 2020 at 9:54

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