How to get an SPD Workflow to Run at a Specific Time

REF: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2010/01/11/how-to-get-an-spd-workflow-to-run-at-a-specific-time-employee-vacation-reminder-part-1/

In this article, we’re going to look at how to fire off an SPD workflow at a specific time of day for a fixed number of days. Thanks to “IAIN” on the “STP Forums” (once again) for asking the question on how to build this out for use with an employee vacation tracking list.

The Setup
The question we have is, how do we tell a workflow to fire off at a specific time of day (8 AM for example) in order to send out an email reminder to let people know who’s on vacation for that day? Additionally (and adding in another level of complexity), how can we make it somewhat-automated so that when the employee returns from vacation, the workflow process ends?
Both pieces of this would be rather simple in the programming world, but for an SPD Workflow, we’ll have to get a bit creative in order to create this functionality (all “out-of-the-box” as well).