What you need to know
Each property and engagement can have usual work: the template its department marked as the default for every property, or for every engagement. You can start that usual work in three places. Anyone can start it on a record that has no work yet; other kinds of work need a department manager.
1. When you create a property or engagement
- Create the record as usual: New Engagement on the Engagements list, Quick Create on your Dashboard, or Add Property on an engagement's property list.
- If the record has usual work, Workflow asks first. The work is ticked under Work that starts with it. For a new property whose engagement has no work yet, the engagement's work is offered too.
- Select Create (WorkFlow PM). To make the record with no work, select Create (Classic).
Good to know
“Starting this work sets the property to Scoping by default. You can always change it later.”2. On a record with no work yet
- Open the property or engagement. Its Work panel, on the right, says it has no work yet and shows Start work.
- Select Start work. The usual work for the record is ticked.
- Select Start work in the dialog.
A department manager also sees other kinds of work they can start, and the work already running. A kind of work that already runs on the record is not offered again. When some work is already running, the button says Start work anyway. Managers also have No Work Yet, a list of the records in their department that have no work.
3. Work for no record
A manager starts it from Workflow Projects: Start a project from the list.
After the work starts
- A message names the work that started.
- The record's Work panel shows a short guide: where the work starts and how many tasks it has. Select Got it to close it, or tick Don't show me this again.
- The new project is on Workflow Projects, with its status. Its tasks exist at once.
- Many of the tasks have their person already: see the next section.
Who gets each task
When work starts, each task goes to the person who holds its job role in the department. Job roles are recorded beside each person's role on Workflow roles.
- One person holds the job role: the task is theirs, and it shows on their My Tasks.
- Several people hold it: the task goes to the one already working on this engagement in that job role, on the engagement or on any of its properties. If two of them are, it goes to the one a manager put on most recently. If none of them is yet, the task shows Nobody yet until a manager assigns it.
- Nobody holds it: the task shows Nobody yet until a manager assigns it.
- A task the client does belongs to the job role that records the client's answer: data entry records the initial documents, the analyst the production documents. It goes to that job role's people by the same rules, and its card still names the client.
- A task with no job role goes to the people who hold the role its template names, if it names one. Otherwise it shows Nobody yet.
So once a manager puts an analyst on one property of an engagement, the analyst's tasks of a property added later go to the same analyst. The task's row shows the job role the person is on it as. Nobody gets an email or a notice about it: the tasks are on their My Tasks.
A task that shows Nobody yet becomes yours when you hold its job role and start it: you also take the job role's other open tasks that nobody is on. See Move a task to another stage.
Good to know
A manager can still put people on any task, take them off and reassign it, as before. Starting work changes nobody on work that is already running. See Assign or reassign a task.Limits
- You need an active staff record to start work.
- There is a limit on how much work one person starts in an hour outside their own departments. If you reach it, a message says “You started work on many properties and engagements in the last hour. Try again later, or ask a department manager to start it.”
- A Closed, Dead or Sandbox property has no work to start.