Date Based Condition
Date based conditions can be used to start or delay a process for a number of days before executing the next task.
When setting dates, always use is less than or equal to as the operator.
When you want a task to wait and not be sent until 5 days before the New Hire's official Start Date for their job, use this formula: “<= -5”. The negative sign indicates the countdown before start date, while the equals sign indicates when it should begin. If preceding tasks finish early, the process will wait until 5 days before start, and then will assign this task. If preceding tasks finish late, this task will fire as soon as possible after 5 days before start date, due to the inclusion of the '<' character.
When you want a task to wait and not be sent until 5 days after the New Hire's official Start Date for their job, use this: “<= 5”. The positive number means that they have already been on the job for 5 days. If preceding tasks finish early, the process will wait until 5 days after Start Date, and then assign this task. If preceding tasks finish late, this task will fire as soon after 5 days as possible.
In date formulas, 0 or zero means now or the current date.
For example, to set a condition to send a correspondence four days before the start the field values for this equation would be:
Operator: Is less than or equal to
Value: -4
These date-based conditions can be configured to use AssignmentForCondition.StartDate, which refers specifically to the start date for the job, Process Start Date or LastPreviousStepEndDate.
LastPreviousStepEndDate is useful for waiting until a certain number of days after the immediately preceding task is completed. This means that negative numbers cannot be used with LastPreviousStepEndDate, as it is impossible to trigger a task days before its preceding task is supposed to be completed. Other dates such as “Expected Start Date” may be less reliable, and any changes that were made in Recruiting after the process was started will not be transferred into Onboarding (Transitions). However, Start Date changes are immediately transferred from Recruiting into Onboarding (Transitions).
When calculating a condition start date, only working or business days are considered. That is, if working days are from Monday to Friday, then Saturday and Sunday are not considered in the equation. For example, if Saturday and Sunday are not checked ON in the Calendar Days area of the Settings, then these days will not be counted. Therefore a task that is assigned on Thursday the 5th and is defined to take 2 days in duration, will have its due date automatically calculated to be Monday the 9th.