Tasks

The QBO Tasks module encompasses creation, management and completion of tasks.

Features include:

  • Creation of forms (from simple to very complex) for users to complete
  • Management of work lists, including load balancing, automated assignment, and performance tracking
  • Auditing work performed

Form Designer

Power users create their own forms, with custom layouts, complex fields and advanced behaviors.

Features include:

  • Create complex, multi-panel forms with responsive design
  • Include simple and complex fields, including document uploads and data-driven drop-down lists
  • Include AJAX-driven child panels
  • Update your tables from a form simply by following a naming convention

Smart Worklists

Every form you create will automatically have a Smart Worklist created in conjunction with it (though not all Smart Worklists need to be forms-based).

Features include:

  • Matrix assignment of Team, Person and Priority enabled you to control load balancing
  • Users can be preassigned work, or assigned work as they complete items
  • Managers can change priorities, teams or users assigned to item individually or in bulk
  • Dashboards show throughput and completion rates by team, individual and worklist

When a form is created (by a user, by a workflow, or by an API call), a work item is queued, with the team, person and priority optionally determined by a Matrix.

Auditing

Any worklist can be audited to verify compliance with your internal policies and procedures.

For example, you may take an existing worklist, and create an auditing rules like:

  • have a supervisor team audit 10% of the forms completed as part of Document Review
  • have a training team audit 25% of the forms completed by employees who have been on the job for less than 6 months
  • have a financial specialist team audit 50% of accounts over $1M, 25% of account between $750K-$1M, and 5% of all others

When an auditor drills down into an audit work item, they see the form they are auditing with a floating window asking them to ‘score’ the work done. These scores are created by power users.

Status Based Routing

A common use case is to submit a task for review and approval. Implied in such a use case is the possibility of rejection, or requiring a submitted to re-work the task to provide amplifying information. Thus, a single form may appear to multiple work lists, for multiple people, as it transitions between statuses.

StateTransition

Implementing this requirement in QBO is best done by:

  • Create a series of custom statuses for the task, representing the possible ‘flow’ of the task
    • e.g. Processor Review, Supervisor Review, Manager Review, Rejected, Accepted
  • Create a series of state transitions, representing what role is allowed to transition from one status to the next
    • Processor Review => Supervisor Review // submit for approval
    • Processor Review => Rejected // anyone can reject a task
    • Supervisor Review => Processor Review // supervisors can kick a task back to a processors
    • Supervisor Review => Manager Review // supervisors can submit a task for manager approval, but processors cannot
    • Supervisor Review => Rejected // anyone can reject a task
    • Manager Review => Accepted // only managers can accept
    • Manager Review => Rejected // anyone can reject a task
    • Manager Review => Supervisor Review // managers can kick a task back to supervisors
  • Adding a call to RenderStatusButtons template
    • This will render ‘save’ buttons labelled for each transition currently allowed, based on the current status and the user’s role

When an Import Form record is updated, QBO will:

  • Raise an error if the transition is not allowed (e.g. Process Review => Approved)
  • Complete any Smart Worklist Members bound to the task matching the old status
  • Insert a new Smart Worklist Member bound to the task matching the new status