Workflow action: Set target date calendar days

This action allows you to set or update the target date for a particular stage. Calculated as any number of calendar days before or after various reference points within the job and client data.

Each workflow action has the following options:-

1. Sub-system: You can choose the sub-system you wish to update. Often you may only have a single sub-system; however, if you have multiple then it is possible for a workflow action on one sub-system to set a target on another.
2. Number of days (before)/after: You can enter the number of days before (negative number) or after (positive number) the reference point that you wish the target to be set to. For example 10 would set the target date to be 10 days after the reference point you choose. This workflow action calculated target dates in calendar days, there is another one that works in working days.
3. Reference point: Here you choose the reference point (i.e. in the example above, what are we adding 10 days to). Options include:
   1. Execution date (the day the target is calculated, essentially "today")
   2. Job date
   3. Any job fields
   4. Any deadline
   5. If you have number client fields then you can also choose a special option that calculated as job date / execution date +/- the number contained for the client in this field, the number of days field (above) in this case becomes a fall back/default in the case that the client field is empty. This is discussed here.
4. Stage: This is the stage that you wish to set a target date on.

There are some best practice tips for using this workflow action:

• A lot of reports in Glide such as the Upcoming targets widget, the jobs held with a target widget, the job held tab on the staff profile and the Next target column on the jobs grid output the Next Target Date. Glide calculates this by looking at all incomplete stages on a job (defined as stages with an order value bigger than or equal to the current stage) and taking the earliest target date. Therefore if you wish for your job to always have a next target date then you should ensure there is always at least 1 target date on any incomplete stage.
• Having an automatically calculated target on the job creation step ensures the Next Target Date value exists from the very moment the job exists. When you create targets on the creation step we generally recommend setting these targets by reference to the job date or a deadline. This is because these values will exist (though do consider client type filtering on deadlines). Additionally the execution date setting is not recommended on the job creation step for automatically recurring workflows, this is because a user may create a job earlier than the auto-creation date which would potentially calculate a date you were not expecting.
• If setting by reference to a job field then ensure that the field will have a value in it. Other than on the job creation step you can ensure this by also having a traffic light (field completed) workflow action.