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What is a Task

Tasks are what the Mate should be working on when it is working.

Not all processes use tasks

There is some Processes that doesn't require tasks. If it always know what to do when it starts, for instance if they just take a list from somewhere. You can recognize these Processes in the overview that you cannot create tasks and that they do not have any queues.

Learnings from this page

  • Understand what a task is
  • Reasons and Comments
  • Reading Tags on tasks

What is a Task?

You put some information in a task and the Mate will do its thing based on that information.

For instance if the process is payments or billing you can have a field named Client ID and a field named Amount. A task could then be Client ID: 4001 and Amount: 200.

You can fill in these fields, create the task, and lean back and let the Mate handle the rest.

Reason

A task always has a reason which explains what the current status for the task is. There are many reasons and your developers can create the reasons you need for each process. If you are in doubt about what to do with a task, Check the reason. Usually reasons are like 'i am not allowed to solve for this amount', 'Old Goods Number', 'Excluded Customer', 'This good is in backorder' - something like this.

Reasons from Anymate

There are some reasons that Anymate reports:

  • Manual Control: This task IS solved, but has been randomly selected to be controlled by you. You should check that everything looks ok - that the task has been solved correctly. If everything is fine you click the Checked button to move the task to Solved. If something is NOT ok you need to talk to your Developers since you may have found something that does not work as expected.
  • Error: Errors can either be understandable text that tells you exactly what went wrong, or it can be nonsense to you. Try to look at it - perhaps you can help
  • Retry Limit Exceeded: The Mate has been trying to solve the task for some time but are not allowed to retry any more. This usually indicates that there is something in the process that you have not yet thought about or that one of your core systems is down.

Comments

A Mate usually comments what has been done so far. This comment is written directly under the Reason on the Task Card and can always be found in the Comments Tab.

Tags on Tasks

Tasks can have different tags on them that means different things

Locked Tasks

Locked or a lock symbol means that a Mate or one of your colleagues is currently working on the task. You can click the Tag and see who locked the task and when they did it. If you suspect that they just took the task and went to lunch, you can always click Force unlock so you can be the one who can make changes to the task.

Force Unlock when Mate is working

Please do not force unlock a task that a Mate is working on, in order to make changes to the task. The Mate has already taken the task and are working with the data - it will not get your update.

Overdue Tasks

Developers and Process Owners can decide what the deadline for a task is. Once this deadline is breached the task will be marked as Overdue. You should all agree on how you handle overdue tasks: whether you solve them or cancel them. You should not just leave them in the queue since that will make the queues look messy.

Urgent Tasks

Developers and Process Owners can also set a number of days before deadline where the task is marked as Urgent. You should focus on solving Urgent tasks first as they are the closest to deadline

Cancelled Tasks

Tasks can be Cancelled by you or by Mates. You can always Cancel a task directly from the Task Card or from the Queue.

When to cancel?

You should only cancel tasks if it is an error that they are there in the first place. For instance if someone accidentally created tasks that shouldn't be solved.

If a task is in the Manual queue and there is no work for you to do on the task, you should Mark it as Solved since technically the task has been solved (by you doing the right thing: nothing)

If Data is wrong you can mass edit the tasks in the Queue instead of cancelling them.

Cancelled Tasks behave like Solved tasks and are archieved. The difference is:

  • They dont count towards KPI's for Solved Tasks and Work time
  • When you look up the task you can see that it actually was not solved

Needs Approval

Tasks that needs an approval before they can be solved are marked with the Needs Approval tag. You can click the tag and see who are allowed to approve.