Auto-Task Assignment

Regent Award can automatically assign tasks to users in specific user roles, as the tasks are being generated to create a workflow in which Regent Award end users are receiving and working tasks, in order to keep students flowing through the FA process quickly and smoothly.

• Each user role will be set up to have access to certain task queues. Within role setup, each task queue must be configured to set a max number of tasks to be assigned per queue
• Regent Award will look through the users assigned to the role to see which users are in need of more tasks.
• The process will assign tasks to users in a "Round Robin" fashion.
• The process will re-fill the user's pool to the max number of tasks – if there are enough tasks available to do so.
• The process will assign tasks to user's based on a ranking that is set first by the task due date, and then by the task createdDate (if two tasks have the same due date, the task with the oldest created date is assumed to be older, and therefore, a higher priority). 
• If a task's priority has been changed manually, from low to high, this will not necessarily cause the task to be auto-assigned as a higher priority task, as the auto-assign process is looking strictly at the task's due date. Regent Award assumes that if a user is going to change the priority of a task manually, they would also change the due date, and possibly manually assign this task to an end user.
• Lower priority tasks that are in the status of "Open" can be removed from a user's "My Tasks" queue, to be replaced with tasks that have a higher ranking. However, if the task is in any status other than "Open", Regent Award will not remove the task from the user's queue (the system assumes that these tasks are being worked).
• Tasks that are manually assigned to the user via the UI will NEVER be unassigned from that user but SHOULD be counted in the user's total. 
• In order to count the number of tasks the user is currently working, we'll count tasks with the status "In Process", "Re-Opened," and "On-Hold." The user may also have "Open" tasks, but again, "Open" tasks may be replaced with other higher priority items.
• If one of the users in the role has been marked as "inactive," no new tasks will be assigned to that user, however, Regent Award will also not automatically un-assign all of that user's tasks from their queue.
• If the max number of tasks per queue is updated to 0, further auto-assignments for that queue will cease. Regent Award will no longer automatically assign tasks from that queue to the role where the change was made.
• Once a task has been manually assigned in Regent Award, the auto-assignment process will not affect the task.  

This process can be scheduled for each customer environment. The scheduling does not have to be the same for all Task Queues. Each task queue can be auto-assigned on a different schedule. 

The process can also be kicked off by clicking the button "Run Task Assignment Process" on the Task Management Setup screen, under the Administration Menu, on the Regent Award UI. When the process is executed in this manner, it is executed on ALL task queues, immediately, with no regard to the schedule.

A Process Log entry is created every time the Auto-Task Assignment process is initiated.  The Auto-Task Assignment Process changes only the Task Assignee and Default Assignee fields.

Manually Assigned Tasks

Manually assigned tasks will not be re-assigned or un-assigned from the user to whom it was manually assigned.

Assigning Tasks

As the end user completes a task, they will be assigned a new task from the same queue, as long as tasks are available in that queue to be assigned to them. The first tasks to be assigned will be the highest priority tasks available in the unassigned "pool" of tasks for that task queue.

If an end user completes tasks in bulk, they will still only be assigned one task. This ensures that the highest priority tasks are distributed evenly amongst the team working the tasks pools – as we would not want a single user being assigned the 10 highest priority tasks, which are all due within three days, while another user has all low priority tasks, which are not due for 2 months.

If a user has a task in an "Open" status, the process will assume that the task is not yet being worked on. When the scheduled auto-task assignment process is run (or the button is clicked from the UI), the process will redistribute tasks. If the "Open" tasks in a user's pool of tasks are of a lower priority then tasks in the "Unassigned" pool, then the process can remove the lower priority tasks from the user's "My Tasks" queue, and replace them with higher priority tasks.

Opting Out of Auto-Task Assignment

In order for a school to NOT use this functionality:

• Do not set the process up to be scheduled on the school's instance of Regent Award.
• On Role setup, leave the "Maximum Tasks Per Queue" fields on the UI, blank for each queue.
• Hide the "Run Auto-Task Assignment" button on the Task Management from ALL users via permissions.  

Auto-task Escalation

Regent Award can automatically escalate the priority (Low, Medium, High, Urgent) associated with a task, as the due date approaches. The changes to the task priority are configurable on task setup.  

Manually Set Task Priorities

If the priority of a task has been set manually by the end user, the auto-task escalation process will not automatically change the priority of that task. Any task that hasn't been manually prioritized will be prioritized via the auto-escalation process.

For tasks that already exist in a customer environment, prior to the implementation of the auto-task escalation process - we have no way of knowing whether the priority was set manually, other than to see if the priority is different than the default.  Therefore, we assume, only for existing tasks, that if the priority value is something OTHER than the default value, then the priority was set manually. The auto-task escalation process will not alter the priority value on these tasks.

Determining the Task's Due Date

On Task setup, we have the ability to set the due date of the task based on one of the following two options, plus or minus a number of "offset" days:

• Task Creation Date (default)
• Admitted Date / Graduation Date

The "Admitted Date / Graduation Date" option was added specifically for UTI. UTI would like to send the Admitted Date and Graduation Date to Regent Award on the SBL file, and, in turn, have tasks escalate in priority as these dates approach the current date.

If the user has chosen "Admitted Date / Graduation Date" for the "Date used for Task Escalation", Regent Award is to look at both of these dates, per task, and use the following logic in order to calculate the due date of the task:

• If today's date is less than or equal to the Admitted Date, then use the Admitted Date to set the task's due date (with the option of also indicating a number of days offset). We'll still use the due date to escalate the task's priority per our original design. OR
• If today's date is greater than the Admitted Date, then use the Graduation Date to set the task's due date (with the option of also indicating a number of days offset). We'll still use the due date to escalate the task's priority per our original design.
• If the Admitted Date and Graduation Date are null on the SBL, the task due date will also be null.
• If the priority of the task is manually set, respect it; this process should NOT override it.

If the user has chosen "Task Creation Date" for the "Date used for Task Escalation", Regent Award is to look at the date the task was created, and add or subtract the +/- offset days entered on the UI, to calculate the due date of the task.  The count of days is based on calendar days; i.e., straight date math with no consideration for weekends, holidays, etc.

The auto task escalation process will set the due date of the task, based on setup, when the process is executed.  Any manually set due date should not be reset when the process is executed.

The process must then use the days entered on the UI for the "Days Prior to Due Date" for each task "Priority" level (Low, Medium, High, Urgent) in order to determine what the Priority of the task should be each day.

A Process Log entry is created every time the Auto-Task Escalation process is initiated.  The Auto-Task Escalation Process changes only the Task Priority field.