About Tasks - General

Tasks drive the whole of your workflow. Within ASM there are 15 types of tasks you can configure that range from simple automations to full-scale integration tasks.

The Request is, in fact, merely the entity that houses the tasks. The tasks are where the real work and magic happens. In many organizations, most staff never even look at the requests apart from pulling key performance indicators and core data elements. The tasks represent the tickets, or work items, needed to fulfill a request. All the data from these tasks is rolled up into the request and held in consolidated perpetuity in a nice package should we ever need to go back and look at the whole of the fulfillment process start to finish.

Take employee onboarding, for example: Most organizations would have an HR staff member watch the overall progress of the request to onboard a new hire just to make sure its moving at an appropriate pace (this individual would be looking at the request itself), but everyone else responsible for actually bringing on the new hire is working from tasks (they may refer to them as their "tickets") as and when they become active in their respective queues.

Example New Hire Workflow for a New Employee Onboarding Request

While the above image may look frightening to a new user of ASM, it is really quite simple, and fun! All you need to do is drag your tasks onto the palette just like you would in Visio or any other application that does flow charting or diagraming, Then, click into the task and pick your options. The workflow above was drafted in an hour, and completed in 4. This included Screens and Unit testing.

Creating Tasks - The Basics

You can only create tasks within a workflow template, or a request. You cannot create a task independent of a request or workflow.

You must have Create Request selected in the Requests tab of your Workflow Management security role.

The ASM Workflow Polling Service must be running on the ASM server to execute any workflow-related activations.

1. Search for the Request Details window, if it is not already on your screen.

2. Select the Update Dependencies explorer option on the Request Details window, or the button from the toolbar.

The Task Dependencies window appears with icons for task entity types displayed below the toolbar.

1. If the workflow template you have used to create the request already has tasks defined in it, you will see these tasks here. You can open them and change their details such as dates, assignment, or expenses. You can add new tasks or delete them from the current request without affecting the template.

To add a New Task

1. Choose the task icon from the palette that you want to addd, and drag it to the window.

2. To open a task and add or update the details, double-click on the icon in the diagram. The Task Details window appears.

If you have not yet linked the task to a parent, ASM will automatically link the task to the start task. You can right-click on the link, delete it and then add the correct link by dragging a link from the parent task to the dependent task.

The Task Details

The Task Details window for all of the task entity types contains a set of common fields.

Since tasks are the workhorse of your request fulfillment, it is worth the effort to spend extra time here to give each value a meaningful setting.

1. Expand the relevant sections on the task details window to complete the fields in the section.

2. Add any remaining task details, which will differ depending on the task type. See also Completing Task details

3. Complete further details/actions using the explorer options if necessary.

Some of the options on the explorer pane are only available after the task has been saved.

Deleting Tasks

To delete a task from the workflow, you must first delete all of its links (as of HERMES 10.6.8 build 13498).

1. Select the task you wish to delete.

2. Right-Click on the link arrow and select to Remove Link

Ensure you relink any dependent tasks to the correct parent task. If you do not, ASM will automatically link them to the Request Start Task.

1. Highlight the task again, and select the delete icon from the menu, or right-click and select to delete the task.

Completing Task Information in the Workflow Template

Complete the common task fields in the Task Information section. If the section is collapsed, expand it by clicking on the title.

Task Title	By default, this field is set to the name of the task entity type. You can type over this title and modify it to suit your requirements
Order	Specify the sequence in which this task must be released in the workflow. This field allows only numeric values. If the field is to be used for sorting tasks, the order number must include leading zeroes, for example, 001, 002, …, 015, 016, and so on.
Task Priority	Select the priority of the task, that is, how important and urgent task is, from this drop-down list. Note that the higher the priority, the more urgent the task
Task Type	Select the category (profile) of tasks using the Task Type list
Task Phase	Use the drop-down list to select the phase is the point of the request at which the task will be implemented.
Request Status on Completion	This field only appears when you create a workflow template and add tasks to the template. You must have Set Request Completion Status on Task Closure selected in the Workflow Management Settings window. Use the drop down list to select the status that will be assigned to the request when the task is closed. If Unspecified is selected, the status of the request when the task is closed will remain unchanged.
Request Status on Approval/ Request Status on Rejection	This only appears when you are creating an approval as part of a workflow template. Select the request completion status that will be assigned to the request once the approval has been approved or rejected.
Planned Start	Specify the date and time at which the task is scheduled to begin. Click in the required list to use the calendar. This is only available when specifying details for a specific request. It is not visible when viewing tasks on the workflow template.
Target Date	This is only available when specifying details for a specific request. It is not visible when viewing tasks on the workflow template. This field will be grayed out if the Auto-Calculate Target Date option is selected. In this case, the Target Date is calculated using the Planned Start, Planned Time and the Default Time specified in the Hours Definition window Specify the date and time at which the task is scheduled to be completed. Click in the required list and use the calendar.
Planned Time	The total time (given in hours and minutes) allowed to complete the current task
Auto-Calculate Target Date	Select this option to ensure that the Planned Start date and Target Date of a task correspond with the Planned Time period specified for the task. When selected, you can only change the Planned Start date and Planned Time of the task. The Target Date is calculated from these dates, and the working hours and public holidays taking into account default working hours and public holidays (as specified by the system administrator). You may want to specify that a testing task should take place between, say, June 1 and June 5, but be of only four hours duration. In this case, you would deselect Auto-Calculate Target Date, and set the details manually. This field is not used by Resource Manager.
Recalculate Dependent Tasks	Dates are calculated based on delay and elapsed time instead of being absolute. Hence, if you extend the time for a task, this will recalculate the dates on any dependent tasks as well. If a particular task within the dependency chain overruns its date (such as, the target date is later then expected, or the planned start date has been later than expected, or the task elapsed time was greater than originally expected), the planned start and end time of any dependent tasks should be recalculat

Completing Task Description Details

Automated	This checkbox indicates whether the task is an automated task, or requires manual intervention.
Task Description	Type the description of the task being created. To view the description in a larger window, click on the full view hyperlink in this field. You can return to the task by clicking OK on the Text Editor window. If your system is enabled for HTML formatting, a toolbar with formatting tools appears with text formatting tools such as bold, italics, insert an image, and hyperlink.