Workflow concepts

Tasks

Tasks are steps in the workflow where a user or the system acts. The task is not complete until the action is complete.

Stages

You can group tasks together under headings called stages. Stages can help you with task organization. For example, you can create a stage that has all tasks your field marketers-specific do. In spreadsheet view mode or edit mode, stages are the headings in bold that group the tasks together.

Dates

Workflows contain the following types of dates.

• Actual dates specify when tasks start and finish.

• Target dates are dates that are used to plan the schedule. Typically, they are set at the beginning of the project.
• Anchored dates are fixed dates that cannot change, even if the dates of the tasks upon which they are dependent change.
• Non-work time represents dates when people do not work, so the system skips those dates when it calculates durations for tasks. Distributed Marketing currently supports system-wide non-work time that applies to all tasks. It is up to the List, On-demand Campaign, or Corporate Campaign manager to determine whether overriding any of these dates is necessary. System administrators enter and maintain these dates.
• Weekend dates are dates that you use to specify work that occurs on a weekend on a per-task basis. You can schedule work on a weekend date by using the Schedule Through option for each task.

Duration

Duration is the actual number of days that are assigned to a task. The duration control is in a DD-HH-MM format. You can enter up to 999 days value for the DD field, your applicable business hours that are based on the beginningOfDay and numberOfHoursPerDay configuration settings for the HH field, and a value in 30-minute intervals for the MM field.

Effort

The work effort in days (as opposed to duration) that it takes a user to complete a task. For example, a task takes three calendar days to complete, but the task owner spends only half a day on the task for each of the three days. In this case, the effort for the task is one and a half days even though the duration is three days.

Locked tasks

When you edit a task, the task is locked so no other user can edit it at the same time.

If anyone attempts to edit a locked task, they receive a warning message, indicating that it is in use.

People and roles

You can assign tasks to individual team members or you can assign tasks to all team members in each role. When you assign a task to one or more team members, they are considered to be task owners. You assign roles to team members on the People tab of the List, On-demand Campaign, or Corporate Campaign..

Workflows use the following concepts to identify people in the workflow.

• Task owners are the people responsible for running or managing workflow tasks.
• Roles are used as a bridge between tasks and people. When a role is assigned to a task in a List, On-demand Campaign or Corporate Campaign, all users that are associated with that role are owners of the task. Templates can contain roles for certain tasks. Then, when you create a List, On-demand Campaign or Corporate Campaign, some (or all) of the tasks have a default role that is already associated with them.