Function Request: Delayed Task Triggering

A colleague and I were trying to brainstorm a way to make this simple, but couldn't find one so we thought we'd ask for it.

In response to a condition test (flow) we want to have another task run the next day or later.

For [an admittedly weak] example:
If the sum of the sales teams' deposits is over $49,999 we will send each of the team members a $50 check.
Task A downloads data from our sales application, feeds it to our database, and then runs a query against that database.
If TotalWeek > $49,999 we want to cut checks Monday morning -- provided the money was actually received by the bank.
On Monday morning, Task B would download data from the bank and, if deposits > $49,999 the checks would be printed.
If TotalWeek < $49,999 the sales team missed the weekly goal and wouldn't receive the bonus checks.

Our conditions are more complex than that, but the gist is that IF Condition = Y we want to launch a separate task several hours later. My understanding is that if we use a WAIT command, Automate is either counting down minutes (or seconds or hours or whatever) or watching a clock -- both of which are consuming CPU while doing nothing. We have a lot of other tasks that occur during the day, so we would rather not have that server preoccupied with count-downs or clock-watching.

One approach I (incorrectly) thought was available was a subset of the Task commands. It would be a "Set Task Trigger" command to adjust the Trigger property of the specified task and thereby run the job once at the calculated time.

The other approach I (incorrectly) thought was available was a subset of the Wait commands. It would wait until a calculated (+18 hours) or parsed (Format(Now(),yyyyDDmm, +9) time and then launch the target task when the time occurred.

I realize it's possible to set various triggers in a task's properties; the key to this suggestion is making it possible for one task to set or change the launch conditions or triggers for another task in response to certain conditions.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw the idea to your developers as a future feature. The ideas are easy in concept; they're probably a lot harder to actually program than to contemplate.



Ron Lee
IT Systems Operator

Hello,

I apologize for the delayed response, we have gone ahead and added your feature request to our database (23173).

Thank you for your input.

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Ricardo Castaneda | Principal Support Analyst
AutoMate | Division of HelpSystems
HelpSystems, LLC | T: +1.213.738.1700