In-baskets

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You use an In-basket to view, open, and work with work items assigned to you or others. An In-basket displays IBM® Business Automation Workflow work items.

Important:
  • If you are upgrading from IBM Case Manager, the in-basket is different in IBM Business Automation Workflow. The IBM Business Automation Workflow in-basket is a federated in-basket, where the in-basket displays work items for IBM Business Automation Workflow process work items and FileNet® P8 workflow system work items. If you have any custom request or response filters for in-baskets, you need to make changes as the service endpoint is different from the federated in-basket.
Typically, the In-basket widget contains a separate tab for your personal In-basket and for each role In-basket that is associated with everyone who has your role.

The personal In-basket displays the work items that are assigned directly to you. You can select any work item in your In-basket, open it to complete the item, reassign it to someone else, or view its attachments or data fields. The application designer can prevent users from reassigning work items.

The personal In-basket also lists work items that are already claimed by the current user or are available to be claimed. Business Automation Workflow work items that were associated with a process external to a case solution is no longer displayed in the in-basket. For more information on how to enable viewing work items in the in-basket, see Including work items with existing processes in the in-basket.

A role In-basket provides access to work items that are assigned to a group of people who share the same role. The In-basket can be configured to display a list of work items from which anyone in that role can select the next item to work on. Alternatively, the In-basket can be configured to display only a button that you click to open the next item to work on. For more information, see In-baskets widget.

You can move a work item from the role In-basket to your own In-basket for processing. You can also process the work item from the role In-basket. Because access to a role In-basket is determined by the person who designed the application that you are using, you might not be able to see a specific role In-basket. Additionally, you might not be able to reassign work items or move work items to your personal In-basket.

The all assigned work In-basket displays a list of all the open work items that are assigned to or claimed by users. Work items that are assigned to roles are not listed. You can filter the list to display only the work that is assigned to a specific user. Only users in specific roles can access this In-basket. Access is determined by the person who designed the application that you are using. For Business Automation Workflow process work items, only a user who is a member of the tw_admins group can see all of the claimed work items that are associated with all users.

Important:
  • By default, the property values for FileNet Process Engine work items that are displayed in the In-basket are updated even if you merely save changes to a work item. This can be disabled if a business analyst updates the Event Update flag for properties to FALSE in FileNet® Process Designer.
Filtering items in the In-baskets
The number of IBM Business Automation Workflow work items that are displayed in your In-baskets can be large. You can filter the displayed items based on filtering criteria that were configured for you. Filtering reduces the number of items that are displayed for faster access and minimizes the time that you spend locating items in your In-basket. For example, you might have a filter for high-priority items. As you enter the filtering conditions, note that:
  • The conditions are case-sensitive.
  • If you exceed the maximum length of a string data field, you get a message that the In-basket widget cannot get the queue elements. Character limits might vary depending on your language.
  • The number of displayed items reflects the total number of filtered work items that are in the in-basket. Because many work items cannot be retrieved in a single query to the server, a pagination filter breaks down the large number into smaller batches. The default pagination configuration enables the retrieval and display of up to 50 work items per scrolled page. The paging size is configurable, and you can change the default value by using the Number of work items in In-basket page option in the IBM Business Automation Workflow client plug-in.
  • To include special characters in a filter entry, use the '\' character before the special character. Example, for nov_2014, enter nov\_2014. The filter values eventually pass down to the database and depending on the database, escaping single or double quotation marks are done differently:

    To escape a single or a double quotation mark for Db2 and MSSQL databases, you need to type the character twice. Example, for George's, enter George''s and for Top"Hat enter Top""Hat.

Note:
  • Scroll bar for the In-basket widget remains in the same position while moving through pages. For example, if on page 1, the scroll bar is at the bottom of the page, moving to another page, the scroll bar remains at the bottom.
  • Filter case sensitivity - For case sensitivity to work accurately with FileNet P8 work item filtering, you need to ensure proper settings in the database and set in the target object store of the Content Platform Engine.
  • To filter and sort the case properties and activity properties for process work items in in-baskets, see Filtering and sorting process work items in in-baskets.
You can perform the following actions with In-baskets by clicking My Inbox or another tabbed page:
Apply filters
Filters can reduce the number of work items that are shown.
Open work items
You can double-click a work item to open it. By default, the work item opens in a new page that is named Work Details.
Open the next work item
If an In-basket is configured to automatically display the next work item, you can open the next work item by clicking Complete.
View work item details
View more information about the work item on the Work Details page. Each work item can be associated with a case. From the Work Details page, you can:
  • View information about the work item and information about the associated case.
  • Edit work item data, including case properties.
  • View, check out or check in, and edit the properties of documents that are attached to the work item. You can check out, check in, cancel checkout, or view properties for documents that are stored only in the content repository. For FileNet P8 documents, you can select the version of the document that you want to work with.
  • Add a comment to the work item for others to read.
  • Attach another document to the work item by clicking Add.
    Restriction: You can attach any document, including system files such as workflows and entry templates, only if they are stored in the content repository.
  • Dispatch the work item to the next step by clicking Complete or one of the response buttons that are configured for the work item.
Note: In federated In-baskets, where large numbers of FileNet P8 and Business Automation Workflow work items can be combined in the same list, performance-related issues might affect the sorting and filtering of the list.
  • If the number of listed items is equal to or smaller than the default number of items per page, the sorting and filtering of the list are optimal. The list displays the expected mix of FileNet P8 and Business Automation Workflow items, which are sorted and filtered based on the specified criteria. The default page size is 50.
  • If the number of items is larger than the default page size, the sorting of the work items is different, namely FileNet P8 items are displayed first, followed by the Business Automation Workflow items. Legacy FileNet P8 work items are listed at the end.
  • To prevent inefficient filtering when using query filters, where rules are defined as filtering criteria, avoid the like operator in the rules.
  • For troubleshooting known functional gaps when using IBM BPM work items with Case in-baskets, see here.