The Task Management function is designed to help you manage the tasks you must complete to meet your operational objectives, to maintain regulatory compliance, or to fulfill other goals. You can use Task Management to:
Help you determine what needs to be done to achieve a desired result
Assign tasks and electronically notify personnel, teams, and supervisors at the operational level
Track task progress to completion and manage resource requirements
Identify and isolate individual task information using a variety of query criteria
Avoid failures, such as completing tasks late or not at all, or with unacceptable results
Retain task feedback that you can use to identify subsequent tasks
Manage tasks that are directly or indirectly related to objects and data maintained in your Essential database, as well as tasks that are independent. For example, you can manage tasks that are:
Associated with compliance scenarios
Associated with regulatory requirements for entities
Associated with internal plant policies
Associated with work areas
Independent of any of the above
For additional instruction on task management, click the following links or use the scroll bar to scan the page.
Use the Defaults subsection of the Task Management section on the Enterprise Entity form to set defaults that determine how the Task Management function will handle four special situations within your enterprise:
Control whether a task assignment's state should be automatically set to Closed when a user changes its status to a status type of Completed. Choosing this option allows a user who is authorized to complete task assignments to close them also. Refer to Understanding Task States and Task Statuses for more information. When this option is chosen, an Enable Quick Close check box is displayed and selected on the Task Setup and Results form for each task assignment associated with the entity. The check box can be cleared to override the default for an individual task assignment.
Note: The Allow
Quick Close option is not displayed on the Task
Setup and Results form when the default is not set to allow automatic
Closed task states.
Control whether a task assignment's status can be updated directly on the Task List. When this option is chosen, an Enable Quick Complete check box is automatically displayed and selected on the Task Setup and Results form for each task assignment associated with the entity. The check box can be cleared to override the default for an individual task assignment.
Note: The Allow
Quick Complete option is not displayed on the Task
Setup and Results form when the default is not set to allow status
updates on the Task List; nor
does the Status field appear on
the Task List.
Tip: For Event Tasking, generic
task templates can be set up with the Enable
Quick Close and Enable Quick Complete
options. However, if the same options have not been enabled for an entity
and an event has been activated for the entity, the options will not be
available for live task assignments. The generic task template settings
do not override the entity-wide default settings. Refer to Event
Tasking Templates for additional information.
Control whether a task assignment's
Completion Evidence document links are carried over (1) to the next
instance of a recurring task and (2) to the new task if the Copy Task
When Closed option applies. On the Task
Setup and Results form, an option is available to override
this setting for each individual completion evidence document link
associated with a task. To override the option, the appropriate element
level security privileges are required for the Completion
Evidence Document Links section and the Copy
Link option.
Tip: For Event Tasking, the entity's Copy
Completion Evidence Links setting applies to a live task assignment
created from a task template with Completion Evidence document links.
Refer to Event
Tasking Templates for additional information.
To set entity-wide task
management default values
Click Data Entry > Essential Hierarchy > Enterprise Entities in the Navigation Tree, expand the Task Management section, and expand the Defaults subjection when necessary.
Click the Send Email Notification to the Task Supervisor when a Task Assignment configured for two-step close is marked Complete by the Task Owner check box to configure email notifications for a two-step review and close process. A Supervisor must be specified on the Task form to send notifications.
Click the Configure
system so that setting task status to complete will automatically
set task state to closed check box to enable the Quick Close
functionality for all task assignments associated with the entity.
When this option is selected, users who are authorized to complete
task assignments can close them also. Refer to Understanding
Task States and Task Statuses for more information.
Enable task assignment status updates to be made directly on the Task List by selecting the Allow Quick Complete option.
Click the Copy Completion Evidence Links check box to allow the documents links to be carried over to the next instance of a recurring task or carried over to the new task if the Copy when Closed option applies.
Click Save.
An entity can be configured so that a task assignment's state and a task assignment's status are either dependent or independent.
Task statuses are user-defined measures of task completeness that relate to one of four predefined status types: Not Started, In Progress, Completed, or Other.
Task state has only two values: Open or Closed. The initial task state for all task assignments is set to Open. The task assignment appears on lists and in reports of open task assignments. When a task assignment's state is changed to Closed, the database retains the task's historical information. Various filters can be applied to include or exclude closed task assignments from lists and reports so compliance can be verified and task assignments that require attention or resources can be identified.
When configuring an entity so that task status and task state are independent, both the task status and the task state must be manually changed to Closed for each task assignment. This situation may be desirable in certain work situations. For example, you might want a task assignment's owner to set the task status to report it is completed, yet leave the task state set to Open pending review by the supervisor.
When configuring an entity so that task status and task state are dependent, assigning a task status with a status type of Completed will also automatically set the task state to Closed. Therefore, a user who can set the task status can also close task assignments. This situation may be desirable if you want to avoid the two-step process of reviewing task assignments before they are closed.
Use the Task Management Defaults form to configure task status and task state dependency for all task assignments associated with an entity. When the default has been set so task status and task state are dependent, the Enable Quick Close check box is displayed on the Task Setup and Results form and is selected. To change the dependency from dependent to independent for a particular task only, clear the check box.
Tip: When the Enable Quick
Complete option is available, the task status can be updated directly
on the Task List.
