Closing Activities on Reassigned Requests

[AlexOnTheHill]

Hello,

There have been a number of instances where a request logged to team A also has an activity assigned to it for completion by team A and when assigning to team B that request cannot be closed without team A completing it. This has resulted in a few queries to be fired back and forth between departments and is less than ideal.

What would be the best way to prevent this from happening? Can I create a role that allows any team member to complete activities assigned to other teams? Can I make whichever team a request is logged to the new owner of the activity once a request is reassigned?

I was thinking that I might create a custom button that could complete all activities against a ticket however our change process creates multiple activities during the authorisation process and I'd be keen to avoid all of those being closed.

At the same time, our change manager does sometimes need to close multiple activities in a change where multiple teams are tasked to approve/reject/question a change so would a specific role help here?

Many thanks  

[Victor]

I know this is not answering the question about roles and such but

2 minutes ago, AlexOnTheHill said:

request logged to team A also has an activity assigned to it for completion by team A and when assigning to team B that request cannot be closed without team A completing it

Isn't this more of a problem whereby Team A assigns the request before completing a task assigned to the team? Why is the task not completed before reassigning? There could be a very valid reason here, I am just trying to see what that is...

[AlexOnTheHill]

You are quite right, there is a valid reason for the activity.

It is intended to ensure that Team A complete information gathering and quality checking before assigning to Team B.

Sadly, we find that the activities are often left incomplete and the re-assignment continues.

Team B often find themselves dealing with a heavy workload and have to reach out to Team A to ask that the activity be closed which delays the resolution.

There is an element of education and I have spoken with Team A a number of times but I was wondering if there is a better solution here.

[Steve Giller]

15 minutes ago, AlexOnTheHill said:

Sadly, we find that the activities are often left incomplete and the re-assignment continues.

If this is a major issue you can always lock the Assign action until the Activity is completed. (See the Access Control section of the wiki page.)

[James Ainsworth]

Something else that can also help is to assure that the owner field is set.  This could be set to a manager that oversees these teams.  As owner they can re-assign and complete the tasks on behalf of the assignee.  The owner can also see all of the tasks they own from within the Activities View as a way to oversee all of the activities that their staff are doing.  But in saying that, in this scenario it is best to enforce the completion of the task before it can be reassigned, and Steve's suggestion I think would be the best way forward.

[Berto2002]

@AlexOnTheHill we've campaigned for enhancements to stop this issue but our Request does not fit with the HB design. Only a small selection of our Activities *must* be done by a certain set of people (like Change Manager Approval) so we suggested the following in various posts:

1. An option to allow Activities to be configured to be reassigned to the same new team as the Request itself (a kind of 'tasks follow the request' approach)
2. A User permission that we could give to some or all people to allow them to complete Activities assigned to others (we do have an 'uber' Admin permission that does allow this but it breaks Supported Teams feature which is important for retaining confidentiality of Requests so we can no longer use it)

In the absence of those features, our choice has been to set certain Activities to be assigned to a generic Role and to have all our Users in that Role. An example is the Role of "Service Request User"; all our Activities that could be done by 'any first line' team are assigned to that Role from the get-go so if they need to reassign between apps and infra triage teams they are not stuck. The downside of this is that team leaders can no longer rely on the list of Activities to tell them their team's Activity workload because so much is now llisted only under the generic Role.

[Steve Giller]

6 hours ago, Berto2002 said:

An option to allow Activities to be configured to be reassigned to the same new team as the Request itself

If a Task has an Owner they can reassign the Task at any time, or if the activity is assigned only to a group, any user in the group is able to assign the activity to themselves or another user.

6 hours ago, Berto2002 said:

(a kind of 'tasks follow the request' approach)

It is important to understand that a Task is not part of Service Manager, they are Collaboration Activities that are linked to a Request but there is no requirement to do so. A Task may be linked to a Request, a Project, be completely stand-alone etc. so "following a Request" does not make sense in the same way that an email to me about a Request does not become an email to someone else if I hand the Request over.

6 hours ago, Berto2002 said:

A User permission that we could give to some or all people to allow them to complete Activities assigned to others

Any Role with the Advanced Request Task Completer Right (see the foot of the Activities wiki) will allow someone to complete tasks on a Service Manager Request that are assigned to another user, if they support the Service. (If they don't support the Service they can't be assigned the Request anyway.)

[Berto2002]

The issue we've had @Steve Giller is that "Advanced Request Task Completer" (which has been working fine for a year) over-rides "Supporting Teams" function in Service Portfolio meaning people with that permission can 'see' tickets they should not be able to see. Now we need certain tickets to be confidential (of sorts), we can no longer use it.

[James Ainsworth]

9 hours ago, Berto2002 said:

"Advanced Request Task Completer" (which has been working fine for a year) over-rides "Supporting Teams" function in Service Portfolio

Hi @Berto2002

Advanced Request Task Completer is a right rather than a role.  On it's own this right has nothing to do with access to requests and will not over-ride the "Supporting Teams" function.  How are you currently assigning the Advanced Request Task Completer right?  If a custom role has been created that contains this right, I would also have a look to see if that same custom role has had other rights associated to it that may be giving this unwanted access.  

[AlexOnTheHill]

@Steve Giller thank you for the suggestion of locking the assignment, I created a test process which team A have tested and it seems to achieve what I was looking for.

This locks the assignment, creates the activity and then has a decision node which either sees the activity completed and unlocks the assignment or on no match returns to the previous step.

That covers the problem of activities assigned to Team A still being present when assigned to Team B.

Thank you also for pointing out the Advanced Request Task Completer right, I have created a custom role with that right and added a key user to it. I expect to test this in the next week so fingers crossed both of these solutions are going to help with the issues we have with activities presently.

 

[QEHNick]

Can someone please tell me where this "right" or "role" is hidden? I cannot see it anywhere.

Many thanks.

[Victor]

@QEHNick rights are only visible on roles... you can think of roles as a collection of rights... so, for example, Incident Management Full Access

[QEHNick]

Ah great, thanks.

[Berto2002]

On 11/18/2022 at 9:21 AM, AlexOnTheHill said:

This locks the assignment, creates the activity and then has a decision node which either sees the activity completed and unlocks the assignment or on no match returns to the previous step.

Hi @AlexOnTheHill can you tip-me-off about which node combinations you are using to see if an associated Activity is completed or not?

[AlexOnTheHill]

23 hours ago, Berto2002 said:

Hi @AlexOnTheHill can you tip-me-off about which node combinations you are using to see if an associated Activity is completed or not?

The decision node looks for the task outcome "information complete" here:

 

 

Here is the branch for the Information complete outcome:

[Berto2002]

Ah, yes, specifically looking for the answer for that task, not generic.

I guess one would need to include that decision/lock/unlock loop on every outcome direction of every Human Task on every workflow to catch them all. Could be extensive so will try just weaning ourselves off this using assignment to Roles.