Adding a notification step to a workflow if there has been no activity for 5 business days

Hello,

I have a very complex work flow for Faculty Pay approval that I've been asked to put a notification step in at the initial approval when the request has sit idle for 5 days. The work flow itself is working fine, it's just that sometimes people forget that they need to approve something.

the first step in the work flow, once the request is created, is to notify the supervisor that the ticket exists, and the second step is an Approval of the request. I want to add something at the second step that will re-send the initial notification after 5 days of idle. Basically, an automated process for the manual process of clicking the "re-send notification" link.

My first attempt was to create a timer step off of step 2, set for 5 days, and that would trigger a notification step and an email to the approver. What was happening is that the work flow stopped after 5 days because of the timer. I would then need to "skip" the timer step, which would move the approval forward.

Is there an easy way to set this up:

Set up a step to notify the approver that they need to take action. If they do so, the work flow moves on. If they continue to ignore these, the notification should be send every 5 days unitl the step is satisfied and the work flow moves forward.

Thanks for any consideration given to this!

Eugene McGeehan

UNH