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Automation Rules Can Consult Calendars

Patrick Bakker
Automation

Automation rules can now access calendars in Xurrent, such as work hours or support hours calendars, or any other calendar.  That calendar can subsequently be used to calculate a target time using a start time and a duration.  The target can be calculated with the new target_at operator, and the duration between two times using the duration operator.

Automation calendar examples

To demonstrate how this may be useful, we can take an example from Widget Europe, Information Technology.  For the workflow template ‘Registration of a new Widget product in SAP’ an automation rule exists to notify an approver when the approval task takes too long, in this case 1 day.

Automation delay

This automation rule does not consider normal working hours. So if the task is assigned to an approver on Friday afternoon, the approver will get a notification on Saturday afternoon, when the approver is not working.  This can now be resolved by using the new target_at operator.  By retrieving a calendar (which can also include holidays), the automation rule can now be updated to take working hours into account.

Automation calendar