Workflow Rule and Time Dependent Email alerts

Question

I am having an issue with getting my email alerts to work. i have got them to work however they only work upon creating and editing.

story: I have created a custom object with a custom field called Bureaux date. I have added a workflow with this formula criteria: Bureaux_Release_Date__c = Today()+14 . i have created two workflows that are the same however one with Time-Dependent Workflow Actions and one with an Immediate Workflow Actions which should send us an email update 14 days before the bureaux date, however it only sends out an email if we create a record with a 14 day gap to the bureaux date.

we have an professional edition license.

Answer 1

This is expected behavior. Immediate workflow actions only fire when records are inserted or updated, so the workflow fires and the immediate email alert is sent only if the criteria is met, and you are telling it only to send when

Bureaux_Release_Date__c = Today() + 14

This would be expected behavior as you have it set up.

If you want this to send an email 14 days prior to the release date, then set up a WFR with eval criteria of 'everytime a record is created or edited'. Then set your rule criteria just to

NOT(ISBLANK(Bureaux_Release_Date__c))

Then you set up a time trigger of 14 days before Bureaux Release Date and then a time dependent action of sending the email.

You can immediately test this by created a new record with a release date sometime in the future, then navigate to

Setup -> Monitor -> Time Based Workflow

Then you can search and find the record you just created and ensure the email is scheduled to go out 2 weeks prior to the Release Date