Xplan Expert12th Feb AMA: I'm Courtney Youngblutt, Xplan Design Consultant & efficiency expert, Ask Me Anything!
Hi Courtney, I'd love to know what's possible with allocating workflow to user groups rather than users or roles. Our CSMs work for specific advisers so it is fairly simple for their tasks to assign based on roles for clients. However, for our workflows like advice preparation and OFA renewal the task is not allocated by adviser, but generally shared out amongst 1-3 specific people depending on their current workload. If you assign tasks in a thread template to a user group instead of a role or person do those tasks appear in the to do list for all members of the group? If so, if they are then 'allocated' a specific member of the group can the rest of the group have easy oversight over all the relevant tasks so they can take over time relevant tasks if the other user is away for a day or more?
Xplan Expert
Hi susie.vincent , great question and I know there are others out there that don’t always organise work into ‘advice teams’.
There are 2 options for allocating tasks to a group of people: User Groups and Workflow Groups.
User group: If you assign tasks in a thread template to a user group instead of a role or person, while those tasks do not appear in the to-do list for all members of the group, they do show under ‘All Tasks’ and you could further sort or filter these to identify unassigned tasks. If you only use the user group assignee for tasks that need to be completed by the pool, then you can easily have visibility. You can save task views as well so users don't need to remember to select the right view.
The idea of allocating tasks to a user group in this way acts as a ‘pool’ of unallocated tasks that users can then pick up and assign to themselves. The positives are as you mentioned, easy oversight for all members to see work in progress. On the flip side, a task with no ownership runs the risk of being missed or users may be selective of which tasks they pick up. Users also need the capability to List/View Groups - whether you are comfortable giving out this capability will depend on what information you record against your user groups
Workflow Group: A workflow group works in a similar way, assigning tasks to a ‘pool’. You have control over the group name and the users that belong to that group and no additional capabilities are needed by users. The first task assigned to the workflow group goes to a nominated user who can then reassign to the appropriate team member. All tasks assigned to the workflow group are then auto assigned to the team member allocated to the first task. For details on how to set this up, see Task Management - Workflow Groups 💡 Tip: Another option for when users are away is to use the auto reassign function. You can auto assign new tasks that are activated to another user for a specified period of time.
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