Complete a task
Goal
Find the work a business process has assigned to you, look at what the decision is about, and complete it with a decision such as Approve or Reject.
Prerequisites
- You are signed in to the Platform Shell.
- A process has assigned at least one task to you, to a role you hold, or to a team you belong to.
Where your tasks are
Your tasks live behind the tray button in the top bar, beside the environment and settings controls. It carries a count when anything is waiting. Selecting it pulls a list up from the bottom of the window; picking a task from that list puts it away again, so it never sits over what you are trying to read.
There is a bar along the bottom of the window as well, in any app that takes part in processes. With nothing in hand it says how many tasks are waiting; with a task in hand it names it. Selecting that bar opens the same list — so the queue is reachable from the sentence that names it, not only from the corner of the window.
Your tasks can also be on a page
An app can put the same list on one of its own screens — usually its home page, so opening the app is opening your work. It behaves exactly as the list below does: the same rows, the same columns, and selecting one takes the task and opens what it is about. It is not a second inbox; the count in the top bar and the rows on the page are the same tasks.
Whether an app has one is up to whoever built it.
Your tasks can also be on a page
An app can put the same list on one of its own screens — usually its home page, so opening the app is opening your work. It behaves exactly as the list below does: the same rows, the same columns, and selecting one takes the task and opens what it is about. It is not a second inbox; the count in the top bar and the rows on the page are the same tasks.
Whether an app has one is up to whoever built it.
What the list shows
The list is a table, one row per task, newest first:
| Column | What it says |
|---|---|
| # | The row's number. |
| Process | Which process the task came out of. |
| Task | What the step is called, and under it when it is due, where it has a deadline: Due …, then Was due … in red once that moment has passed. |
| Description | What the step is for, in the words of whoever designed it. |
| Assigned to | Who it is offered to, or who has taken it. It says Me where it names you directly. |
| Arrived | When it turned up, to the minute. |
| Waiting | How long it has been sitting there — 2 days, 3 hours, 30 minutes. Always the largest whole unit, so you can compare rows at a glance rather than working out that seventy minutes is longer than an hour. |
| Waiting | How long it has been sitting there — 2 days, 3 hours, 30 minutes. Always the largest whole unit, so you can compare rows at a glance rather than working out that seventy minutes is longer than an hour. |
Above the table is a row of buttons — Open, Hand on, Put back and Refresh — which act on the row you have ticked. Selecting a row's text opens it straight away, so you rarely need the tick.
Steps
- Select the tray button in the top bar to pull up your task list.
- Select a task. Four things happen:
- The task becomes yours. If it was offered to several people, opening it is what takes it — see below.
- The list closes.
- The thing the decision is about — a record, a list, a report, or a screen — opens in the main part of the window, at full size, with the app's own navigation and buttons. It is yours to read, scroll and explore.
- The bar along the bottom now shows the name of the task you are on, with a Decide button and a Leave button beside it.
- Take as long as you need. You can open related records, run a search, and come back. The bottom bar keeps the task you are on, so Decide is always one click away — you never have to go and find the task again. Selecting the task's name on that bar reopens the list, which is how you switch to a different one.
- When you have made up your mind, select Decide. A panel opens over what you were reading, with any details the process asks you to fill in.
- Fill in what is needed and choose an outcome — the buttons at the bottom of the panel, such as Approve, Reject, or simply Done. The wording is chosen by whoever designed the process.
The task then leaves your list and the process continues to its next step.
You are taken back to the app's home page. What the task opened was put there by the process — often a record you were only allowed to read — and the reason it was open has just ended. A task that had nothing to open leaves you exactly where you were.
You are taken back to the app's home page. What the task opened was put there by the process — often a record you were only allowed to read — and the reason it was open has just ended. A task that had nothing to open leaves you exactly where you were.
Some tasks ask for a reason
A process can require an explanation for one outcome but not another — typically a rejection. If you choose an outcome that needs one and have not written anything, the panel tells you which field to fill in rather than silently doing nothing. Fill it in and choose the outcome again.
Tasks with nothing to open
Some tasks are a pure decision — acknowledging a policy, for example. Selecting one does not move you away from what you were doing; it simply makes it the task named on the bottom bar. Select Decide whenever you are ready.
Tasks offered to several people
A process often gives a step to a role or a team rather than to one person. When it does, the task appears in the list of everyone it could go to, and the first person to open it takes it. There is no separate button to press: opening is taking.
For everybody else, that task then shows Taken and can no longer be opened — so you can see where it went rather than finding a row that does nothing.
If two of you open it at almost the same moment, one of you is told somebody else has taken that task and the list opens again. Nothing is lost; pick another.
Giving a task back
Pull up your task list, tick a task you are holding, and select Put back. It returns to everybody it was offered to, and any of them can take it. Use this when you have taken something that turns out to be for somebody else.
Passing a task to somebody else
Use this when the task should not come back to the same group — you are going away, or it is plainly somebody else's to decide.
- Pull up your task list and tick the task.
- Select Hand on.
- Start typing a name in the To box and pick the person from the list that appears.
- Select Hand on again.
The task leaves your hands and goes into theirs. It is an offer, the same as any other: they take it by opening it, exactly as you would.
You can only hand on a task that is yours — one you are holding, or one you are among the people it is offered to. A task somebody else has taken is theirs to hand on, not yours.
Leaving a task without deciding
Select Leave on the bottom bar. Nothing is recorded, and the task stays yours — you are simply no longer working on it right now, and it is still in your list to come back to. Whatever you had open stays on screen; leaving a task does not throw away the record you were reading.
To give it back to the other people it was offered to, use Put back instead.
If a task's screen is not available
A task points at something in a particular app. If that app is not installed in the environment you are in, the list says so instead of opening something else. Switch to the environment the work belongs to, or ask an administrator which app the process expects.
What happens behind the scenes
Completing a task records which outcome you chose along with anything you filled in, and hands control back to the process, which moves on to whatever comes next. If the process is running several branches at once, only the branch your task belongs to moves — the others carry on independently.