Taking Action Upon Reaching Warn, Late, and/or Escalate DatesLast Updated: 12/04/2015 Introduced in Verision: 2.0 |
When assigning a form, there are date options available that when set, offer opportunity for taking action upon reaching that date. This functionality makes it possible to apply Service Level Agreement (SLA) timeframes for completing a task. A reminder email to the assignee or a manager with a link to the task can be sent, or additional assignments made to the task, for example.
In order of intended execution:
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Start Date – The date/time of task assignment; this is not necessarily the date/time of execution of the flow. A flow can execute and have the form step complete, yet task assignment will not appear for the assignee until the start date is reached.
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Warn Date – The date/time for a warning.
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Late Date – The date/time for when the task is considered late.
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Escalate Date – The date/time for when the task becomes escalated.
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Expiration Date – The date/time for a task to expire, which creates a new outcome path out of the form.
None of these dates are required. However, taking advantage of these dates makes it possible to hold users accountable for completing tasks in a timely manner. By default, the Current Assignments report that display’s in a user’s Home page include each of these date options.
Example
In this example, a parent (“wrapper”) flow creates a form assignment for the user Nancy to contact a potential customer. The assigned form is configured to take action upon reaching a warning date. The action is to call another flow that sends a reminder email containing a link to the task. The example assumes two flows exist:
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A Contact Customer flow containing simply the Contact Customer form
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A Warn Date Action flow that sends a reminder email
The Contact Customer flow containing the Contact Customer form is configured as follows:
The Warn Date Action Flow is configured as follows…
…and the Start step has input data of type Assignment, which is a requirement from the wrapper flow that will call this flow:
The first step to taking action is to set the form assignment, if not already established.
From a Designer Projects folder, open the Contact Customer flow containing the Contact Customer form.
Click on the form, and from the Properties panel for the form, set the form assignment type to Assigned and select a specific user in the Assign to Users field.
Check the Specify Warn Date option. This causes the Mapping Type field to appear.
Select Compute Date, and set the Compute Type to InFuture.
Per the company SLA, potential customers need to receive contact within 24 hours. Therefore, the Start setting will be set to the current date and time and a calculation of 24 hours from that date will be applied.
From the Start field, Mapping Type drop-down menu, select Current Date Time.
From the Offset field, Mapping Type drop-down menu, select Constant. Set the offset value to 1 day.
Next, under Flows, select the flow to run in the Assignment Warn Flow drop-down list. Note that in order for the field to show valid, and therefore be properly configured, it is necessary for the flow selected to have input data of the Assignment data type on the Start step of the flow. Now, the calling “parent” flow becomes a wrapper for the flow Warn Date Action Flow.
Under the Assignment Warn Flow Type we have couple options: SharedFlow and Private.
Note, that this option is also available for the External Form Step (Assigned) as well.
Pick the Warn Date Action Flow and click Ok to continue…
In this example, the Warn Date Action Flow simply sends an email. The email contains a link to the original task. Add a Send Email component to the workspace, which is found under the Communication category in the Toolbox panel.
The Assignment data type contains data passed in from the wrapper flow that created the assignment.
To set the To address for the reminder email to the assigned user of the task, under Email > To, set the Mapping Type to Select Value. Select the AssignedUsers attribute of the data and click OK. This provides the collection of assigned users (and can be used even if only a single user was assigned).
If a group was included in assignment, the AssignedGroups attribute of the data type could be used.
The body of the email is configured with a link to the original task. Expand the Assignment Info data, and drag and drop AssignmentInfo.URL into the workspace to provide the link. Click OK.
Save and close the flow.
Run the Contact Customer flow and allow the timeout “warn” time frame to be reached. A warning email is sent to the assignees.
