Service Catalog Tasks Assignment Change Based on Time Related to Custom Date Field

Question

I am in the process of automating my company's onboarding and offboarding Service Catalog items. My main goal is to eliminate the need for me to watch over large amounts of tickets to see if the Service Catalog's tasks can be continued or not. Instead, I would like the tickets to be assigned to me when they can be worked, and then assigned to a general group during times where I am waiting on time to pass before the next tasks can be worked on. (More information on this below) When we receive notice that someone is leaving our company, an email gets generated and sent to our Service Desk. From there, I fill out a Service Catalog item that contains a custom date field that we title "Departure Date 
 When it comes to the process/tasks of the offboarding service item, we have steps that need to be completed: - As soon as the offboarding Service Catalog item is created. - On the user's offboarding(departure) date (We term user's access at 4:00pm but I would be okay with the ticket appearing in my active tickets/tasks that entire day if necessary). - The day after the user's offboarding(departure) date. - 30 days after the user's offboarding(departure) date. - 6 months after the user's offboarding(departure) date. Ideally, I would like the Service Catalog/Ticket/Task to be assigned to me only when I have available tasks that need completing at that time. When we are waiting for the next set of steps, I would like the Service Catalog/Ticket/Task to be assigned to our Offboarding group so that it disappears from my individualized Service Desk ticket/task flow. 
 I have tried adding this automation to the Service Catalog item, but am unable to find where I can create/assign a task to switch the assignee based on a custom date-based field. I am unsure if this is just a feature not supported by Service Desk or if I am trying to use an unoptimized flow for our offboarding events. I know that the option for time-based automation exists within the Automation Rules section, but I want the ability to have individual tasks within a Service item to be tied to the time field requirements rather than creating separate Service Catalog items. 
 Any help would be appreciated!

joeybrown · Answer

Hi rshoemaker , thanks for the write up on your use case and it makes sense that you would want tasks and tickets to be in either in a certain state, like on hold, until a certain date in which they are actually needed. Right now this isnt possible directly in our platform but might be possible with using the API and building the timing mechanism outside of SWSD. Not ideal. 
 We are reworking tasks completely which could potentially give us the ability to do something more like this. The first phase won't be able to support it because delaying the timing of a task or ticket is a feature on its own but it will allow us to better support that new feature. I would recommend either upvoting an already existing feature request for this or creating a new one for us to track. 
 My thought would be that you could use the due in days field to say, "this task is due in 30 days after the request is submitted" and then we would build the timer on our end or give you the option in automations to look at that field to move that task into assigned when it hits that time. As we progress the automations engine and timing mechanism we would see things like setting those dates based on when the request gets to a certain point or state. So we wouldnt say 30 days from the start of the request but 30 days from when the task before it was completed or from when the request was set to in progress. 
 When you have time, let me know your thoughts on some of those solutions and maybe we can collaborate in the future more as we look to bring this type of functionality to SWSD.