Workflow Event Dependencies & Trigger Date

The trigger date of most workflow events is blank when they are first created. This is because the trigger date can only be set when ALL of the preceding workflow events on which it depends are complete. An example will help explain why this design is necessary. Consider the following example that shows a simple workflow process and its events:

This workflow process is meant to implement the following:

• On the first day, validate the incoming notification (the one that tells us about a new customer).
• If validation is successful, set up the new customer and their meter in the system.
• After the new customer and meter are set up, send a notification to the requester that everything has been set up. Also, send a letter to the customer.

The problem is that you don't want to execute event 20 until event 10 is complete. This is achieved by indicating event 20 is dependent on event 10. The system will only populate event 20's trigger date when event 10 is complete. Similarly, you can't set the trigger dates of events 30 and 40 unit the customer has been set up (event 20). So, when you set up a workflow event, you must indicate the dependent events. If you only want the next event to trigger X days after the completion of earlier events, you can indicate such.