Consider an employee holiday request scenario. When an employee submits the request, it is not certain that the manager is available and able to approve or reject the request. They may be on leave. In such a scenario, where human interactions are required, workflows can take a while – from a few hours to a few days. However, there will always be escalations if the holiday request is not dealt with within a couple of days.

Durable functions have the ability to set a long-running timer and trigger actions when the timer elapses: