Execute Workflow without user interaction

Question

I have a requirement where I need to trigger a workflow without user interaction.

I created a workflow that sends an E-Mail notification to the Opportunity Owner if Opportunity.CloseDate equals TODAY, which is working fine as long as the record is edited manually and closeDate is manually set to today's date.

My problem now is, that when I set the closeDate to somewhere in the future, two weeks for example, the workflow will not be triggered, because nobody edited the record.

How can I archieve a solution for this?

I found a quiet simillar question here, but this seems to be old and not following best practice. Is there a solution without apex?

Answer 1

The easiest solution is to create Apex Class that implements Schedulable and make query there SELECT Id FROM Opportunity WHERE CloseDate = TODAY and just update the records.

However, I recommend you to move from workflow to another Apex Class (handler) and make all necessary actions in it, because nothing will be updated in opportunity records along the way.

After creation of the Scheduler, schedule it to run every day at specific time through Setup -> Apex Classes -> Schedule Apex.

Draft implementation for better understanding:

public without sharing class RunWorkflowScheduler implements Schedulable {
    public void execute(System.SchedulableContext sc) {
        List<Opportunity> opps = [SELECT Id FROM Opportunity WHERE CloseDate = TODAY];
        
        //for workflow
        update opps;
        
        //if you move workflow into code
        /*write your email notifications sending here
        * do not update opportunity records*/
    }
}