To see how to let users set their own deadlines, see Allow users to set instance deadlines.Need to know how to send internal reminders? See Schedule a step start and deadline

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Set up a deadline and reminders

  1. Click on a workflow you want to update.
  2. Click … > Edit workflow.
  3. If you don’t have this already, create a form (+ Add step > Form) and add an Email address input form field. Assign this step to an external user.
This is the step in which the external user will provide their email address. You can select this data reference to send a reminder.
  1. Click on the step for which you want to create a reminder.
  2. Under the step name, click Add deadline.
  3. Use the dropdowns to set the deadline for the step. If you set the deadline in days, select the days of the week that should be included. You can optionally also exclude public holidays for a country and a specific region within this country. 🧠 For example:
    • The deadline is set 4 days after the instance starts. The instance starts on Dec 25, 2025, at 14:00 hours.
    • The days counted in the deadline are Wednesdays over to Saturdays (with Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays excluded).
    • Public holidays in Germany are excluded.
    The deadline falls on January 4th, 2025 at 14:00, because:
  • Dec 25th, 26th, and January 1st are excluded as public holidays.
  • Dec 29th, 30th, and 31st are excluded as Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
  • We calculate deadlines in full days.
    Image showing day exclusions
  1. Click Add reminder.
  2. Select the participants you want to send the reminders to. To send the email to the email address the external user provided in a previous step, assign the step to an external user, and in the deadline pop-up, select the Email address input data reference.
    For the data reference to work, the email address needs to be provided in previous step of the workflow.
    Image showing exclusions based on regional holidays
  3. Specify when the reminder should be sent out in relation to the deadline. 🧠 For example, if the deadline falls on January 4th, 2025 at 14:00, and the reminder is due 1 day after the deadline, then the reminder will be sent out at 00:00 on January 5th, 2025.
    When you set days to be included in the deadline and excluded public holidays, these inclusions and exclusions don’t apply to reminders.
  4. Click Save.
Tip: To set up a reminder to be sent before and past the deadline, set up two reminders with different date parameters.
Now the assignee will receive a reminder at the time you specified. The email might look like the following:
Image showing reminders
For internal users, step deadline information is also displayed on your Next Matter dashboard.
Image showing pending tasks on the dashboard
If a step is overdue, you Next Matter users can see it in the Attention needed tab of their Inbox.
Image showing attention needed tab in the inbox

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Import deadlines from previous steps

To speed up setting up deadlines and reminders for steps, you can copy the deadlines you’ve already set up in the workflow.
  1. Click Add deadline.
  2. Click Import deadline.
  3. Select the step from which you want to copy the deadline.
    Image showing importing deadlines
  4. Save your changes.
Your deadline will be copied over together with any reminders it contains.

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Deadlines and conditions

If you create a step deadline (for example 1 day after the completion time of a previous form step) and also set a condition to skip the step if the form is empty, we’ll evaluate the condition first. If the previous step completes with an empty form, the step with the set condition will be skipped immediately and will not send a deadline reminder.

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User-defined deadlines and priority

When you start a workflow manually or create a recurring workflow, you can ask the person starting the workflow to set a deadline and a workflow priority.
  1. Open Workflows.
  2. Click a workflow to open the overview.
  3. In Workflow start options, click Manual.
  4. Decide on the deadline and priority settings.
Priority setting in Workflow settings
If you set deadline Require, the user triggering the instance will have to set a deadline before they can start the instance.