Specifying activity due dates

Activity due dates are used to calculate the expected completion time for an activity. This completion time is used during process execution to establish which tasks are overdue or at risk of being overdue.

About this task

In IBM® Process Portal, tasks are listed according to their due date status. Activity due dates and the projected path are also used to calculate the expected completion time for a process instance.

By default, the due date of a human task is 1 hour from the time of task creation. You can modify this duration for each activity in your process. Administrators can also change the default duration after deployment. If projected path management is enabled for the process, authorized business users can change the due date for individual tasks and the overall process instance in Process Portal.

The calculation of the activity due date is also affected by the working hours that users are available to complete work. The working hours depend on the values that you specify for the time schedule, time zone, and holiday schedule.

Do not set a due in value greater than 800 Hours, Minutes, or Days as it decreases performance, and the calculation for the due date takes a long time. Instead, use a JavaScript expression to directly set the due date and avoid the costly calculation that includes multiple checks for the time or holiday schedule. To set the due date, click JS, and use the variable selector next to the text box to pass either an existing Date variable, or create a new one, for example new TWDate('2020-12-01 09:08:06.02').

Note: When you pass a fixed due date, IBM BPM ignores any time or holiday schedule.

Procedure

Select an activity in the diagram and go to the Implementation tab of the Properties view.
In the Priority Settings section, specify the expected duration of the activity in the Due In field. If you select Days for the duration, you can also add hours and minutes to the elapsed time, for example 2 days, 4 hours, and 30 minutes.
In the other fields in the Priority Settings section, specify values for the properties that affect the working hours that are available to complete work.
You can leave the Time Schedule, Timezone, and Holiday Schedule fields set to the default value: (use default). If you use the default values, the time schedule, time zone, and holiday schedule that are specified for the business process definition (BPD) are used for the activity. For more information, see Setting the work schedule for a BPD.
- The Time Schedule field specifies the normal business hours. For example, if you expect the users who work on the task to be available Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, you can select this schedule from the list.
- In the Timezone field, select the time zone that you want to apply to the tasks that result from the current activity. For example, if you expect the users who work on the task to be in California, you can select the US/Pacific time zone from the list.
- The Holiday Schedule field contains a list of dates that are exceptions to the normal time schedule. If you use a JavaScript expression to define a holiday schedule that is specific to users who work on this task, enter either a String (or String-generated JavaScript) or JavaScript that returns a TWHolidaySchedule variable. If you use a String, then IBM BPM looks up the holiday schedule by name according to those rules. If you use a TWHolidaySchedule variable, then it is assumed that the holiday schedule is inserted appropriately. To view the parameters for the TWHolidaySchedule variable, go to the System Data toolkit and open the variable.

What to do next

If you plan to enable projected path management for the BPD, keep in mind that variable-based due dates used in the implementation of activities are not detected in the projected path.