Due dates for processes and activities

The due date for a process instance is the expected date and time when all activities related to a process instance are complete. Similarly, an activity due date is the expected completion time for an activity. You can use due dates throughout Process Portal to determine if processes instances and activities are on schedule or whether they are at risk of not completing on time.

In Process Portal, process instances are listed by due date and marked as at risk or overdue when the due date expires. To list only those process instances that are due on a certain date, in a specific time frame, or that are overdue, you can use process instance due dates as search filters in saved searches. Administrators and members of the instance owners team can change a process instance due date after the process instance is created if, for example, they want to bring the instance back on track.

Tasks are listed by due date. Task due dates are also used to calculate the expected completion time for a process instance. Administrators can change task due dates in Process Portal.

How due dates are calculated

Business Automation Workflow calculates due dates at run time. The due date calculation is based on the start date of the process instance or the runtime task, the values specified in Process Designer for the due-in time, and the properties of the work schedule. Default values of the work schedule properties are specified in the 99Local.xml file and are configurable. Administrators can customize these default values for the properties of the work schedule in the 100Custom.xml configuration file. For information about the 100Custom.xml configuration file, see The 100Custom.xml file and configuration.
Due-in time
The expected length of time required for an activity or an entire process instance to complete. For performance reasons, do not specify a due-in time greater than 800 hours, minutes, or days because such values result in multiple checks of the time and holiday schedules. Instead, use a JavaScript expression to directly set the due date, which avoids these checks. You can also use a JavaScript expression to specify a fixed date. In this case, work schedule settings are ignored.

If the due-in time is specified in days, the default value to the right of the Days selection is 00:00. This is 0 hours and 0 minutes, which is 12:00 AM. For example, assume that today's date is November 2. If you specify 3 as the number of days and you accept the default value of 00:00, the due-in time is 12:00 AM on November 5, which is the third day after the process instance or task starts. (Based on the 24-hour clock, if you changed the value 00:00 to 14:15, you would be specifying 14 hours and 15 minutes, which is 2:15 PM.)

Attention: The due-in time is handled differently for processes and activities:
Processes
The default due-in time for process instances is 8 hours. You can specify a different time in days, hours, and minutes. For example, a due-in time of 2 days, 4 hours, and 30 minutes means that after a process instance starts, it is expected to run for this length of time.
Activities
The default due-in time for activities is 1 hour. You can specify a different time in days, hours, or minutes. If the due-in time is in days, you can use the field to the right of the Days field to specify the start time for the due date calculation. For example, if you specify 1 day and a time of 11:00, the runtime task is due at 11:00 AM the day after the task starts.
Work schedule
The time schedule, time zone, and holiday schedule properties determine the business hours that users are available to complete work. You can specify work schedule values for individual processes and activities or keep the default values. If you use default values for an activity, the values for the corresponding process settings are used.
Time schedule
Normal business hours. For example, if you expect business users to be available Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, you can use the predefined 9AM-5PM M-F time schedule.
Time zone
The time zone in which process instances or activities run. For example, if business users who work on tasks are located in California, you can use the US/Pacific time zone. The default time zone for due date calculations is Central Standard Time (CST). If you use the default time zone, and it differs from your system time zone, you might get unexpected results when due dates are calculated or when you use the JavaScript tw.system.calculateBusinessDate() method to calculate business dates.
Holiday schedule
A list of dates that are exceptions to the normal time schedule. If you use a JavaScript expression to define a holiday schedule, enter either a string (or string-generated JavaScript) or a JavaScript expression that returns a TWHolidaySchedule variable. If you use a string, then Business Automation Workflow looks up the holiday schedule by name according to those rules. If you use a TWHolidaySchedule variable, the holiday schedule is inserted. To view the parameters for the TWHolidaySchedule variable, open the variable in the System Data toolkit.
For an example of how to use JavaScript expressions to dynamically set work schedule properties, see Creating and managing time and holiday schedules.

Examples

The following tables show examples of due date calculations for both activities and process instances. In all examples, the system time zone and the time zone in the work schedule is Central Standard Time (CST).

Example: Definition of a business day

If you specify 9AM-5PM M-F for the time schedule and 24 hours or 1440 minutes for the due-in time, the activity or process instance is expected to take 3 business days to complete, because a business day contains only 8 hours of available work time. However, if you specify a 24x7 time schedule, a business day corresponds to a 24-hour day, and the runtime task or process instance is expected to take a calendar day to complete.
Table 1. Business day definitions
Start date Due-in value Due-in unit Hours and minutes Time schedule Holidays Due date
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1440 Minutes Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 10:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 24 Hours Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 10:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1 Days 10:00 9AM-5PM M-F None Thursday, 2017-03-02 10:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1440 Minutes Not applicable 24x7 None Thursday, 2017-03-02 10:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 24 Hours Not applicable 24x7 None Thursday, 2017-03-02 10:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1 Days 10:00 24x7 None Thursday, 2017-03-02 10:00

Example: Due-in time is outside normal business hours

If the result of adding the due-in time to the start date is outside normal business hours, the remaining hours and minutes are added to the beginning of the next business day.
Table 2. Due-in time outside normal business hours
Start date Due-in value Due-in unit Hours and minutes Time schedule Holidays Due date
Friday, 2017-03-03 16:15 60 Minutes Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 9:15
Friday, 2017-03-03 16:15 1 Hours Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 9:15
Friday, 2017-03-03 16:15 1 Days 16:15 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 16:15
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1 Days 10:00 9AM-5PM M-F 2017-03-02 Friday, 2017-03-03 10:00

Example: Start date is outside normal business hours

If the start date is not a business day, the due date calculation starts at the beginning of the next business day.
Table 3. Start date outside normal business hours
Start date Due-in value Due-in unit Hours and minutes Time schedule Holidays Due date
Saturday, 2017-03-04 10:00 60 Minutes Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 10:00
Saturday, 2017-03-04 10:00 1 Hours Not applicable 9AM-5PM M-F None Monday, 2017-03-06 10:00
Saturday, 2017-03-04 10:00 1 Days 10:00 9AM-5PM M-F None Tuesday, 2017-03-07 09:00
Wednesday, 2017-03-01 10:00 1 Days 10:00 9AM-5PM M-F 2017-03-01 Friday, 2017-03-03 09:00

Example: Due-in time includes days, hours, and minutes

If you specify days, hours, and minutes as the due-in time, the time is handled differently for processes and activities.
Table 4. Due-in time with days, hours, and minutes
Start date Due-in value Due-in unit Hours and minutes Time schedule Holidays Due date Type
Monday, 2017-03-06 10:00 1 Days 10:30 9AM-5PM M-F None Wednesday, 2017-03-08 12:30 Process instance
Sunday, 2017-03-05 10:30 1 Days 10:30 9AM-5PM M-F None Tuesday, 2017-03-07 09:00 Activity
  • For processes, the value of the hours and minutes is added to the elapsed time to give an expected duration of 1 day, 10 hours, and 30 minutes.
  • For activities, the start day is the day the runtime task was created and the hours and minutes value denotes the start time for the due date calculation. Because the start time is on a Sunday, the calculation starts at the beginning of the next business day.

Example: Time zone differs from system time zone

You can specify a time zone in the work schedule that is different from the system time zone. For the due date calculation, the start date of the process instance or task is converted to the specified time zone. The result of the calculation is converted back to the system time zone. In the following example, the system time zone is set to Central European Time (CET) and the time zone used for the due date calculation is Central Standard Time (CST).
Table 5. Different time zones
Start date Due-in value Due-in unit Hours and minutes Time schedule Holidays Due date
Monday, 2017-03-06 12:00 1 Days 12:00 9AM-5PM M-F None Tuesday, 2017-03-07 16:00
  1. The start date is converted to CST: Monday, 2017-03-06 05:00.
  2. Because the start date is outside normal business hours, the due date calculation starts at the beginning of the next business day: Monday, 2017-03-06 09:00.
  3. One business day is added to the due date calculation for the due-in time: Tuesday, 2017-03-07 09:00.
  4. The due date result is converted back to CET: Tuesday, 2017-03-07 16:00.