Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Tasks can also be automatically escalated, usually if not handled within
a specified period of time. This is specified in
Expiration and Escalation
Policy
, which forms part of the task definition.
Using rules to automatically manage tasks
Even though it's possible to manually reassign tasks, this can be inefficient and
time-consuming. An alternative approach is to automate this using workflow rules.
You can either define a rule to be applied to a particular task type (for example our
leave request) or to all tasks. In addition, you can also specify when a rule is active,
which can be during vacation periods, for a specified time period, or active all the
time (which is the default).
You can specify various filter criteria that are applied to the task attributes (for
example, priority, initiator, acquired by) to further restrict which tasks the rule
applies to.
Once you've specified the matching criteria for a rule, you can then specify whether
you want to reassign or delegate the task. Essentially, the same criteria applies to
whomever you are allowed to reassign a task to (if you were to do it manually, as
covered in the previous section, with the added caveat that you can only reassign a
task to a single user or group).
For rules defined for a particular task type, we have the option of being able to
automatically set the task outcome. In the case of our leave request task, we can
write a rule to automatically approve all leave requests that are one day in duration.
The final option is to take no action, which may seem a bit strange. However, this
serves a couple of useful purposes. Often you only want a rule to be active at certain
periods of time. One way to do this is to just specify a date range. An alternative is to
use this to turn the rule on and off, as required over time.
The other use comes in when you define multiple rules. Rules are evaluated in order
against a task until a rule is found that matches a particular task.
For example, to create a rule that reassigned all tasks, except say an expense
approval task, you would do the following. Define two rules, a generic rule to
reassign any task and a specific rule that matched the expense approval task that did
nothing. We would then order the rules so that the expense approval rule triggered
first. This way, the generic rule to reassign a task would be triggered for all tasks
except the expense approval task.
