Reassigning Tasks and Notifying Users

Start by going to your Streams Management area and unlocking work stream.

At the last Skill Station, we learned how to send the task to a higher-level supervisor if the amount requested was more than $5,000. However, we used the user present in the Send for Approval to field to determine the supervisor. If the original request approver assigns that task to someone else, the Send for Approval to field would not contain the correct value. Today we are going to update that.

We will start by editing our Event Actions to create a task reassignment event. On your Stream Definition canvas, click on the Review Request step to open it.

Inside this step, which you will notice in the title is a User Task, we have a few tabs. Pulpstream gives you the ability to configure actions to happen when multiple events occur. We do this on the Event Actions tab. For our use case we want to configure conditions for the task reassignment event. Click on the Event Actions tab.

You will see an event we created at a previous skill station.

Click on the Add an Event button in the top left corner to add another event. Here there are pull-down menus that we need to change. In the Event field pull-down menu, select “Task Reassigned.” In the Event Condition pull-down menu, select “Always.” In the Event Actions we have many event options.

Let's get familiar with the 3 that are related to our use case.

1. Task Accepted - This is when a task has multiple owners and one of them claims the task to complete it later. When a task has been claimed, others will stop seeing it. (We will learn more about that at Skill Station 8.)

2. Task Released - This is when someone who previously accepted or claimed a task is no longer able to complete it. They release the task back into the task pool, so someone else can complete it.

3. Task Delegated - This is when a task assignment is automatically assigned to someone else because at the owner is not available. The task owner may be on vacation. A user can establish a vacation schedule and set someone else as the party who is responsible for their tasks during that period. This can be accomplished in the “My Settings” area of Pulpstream. All delegations can be seen in Account Management. (To do this, click on the gear icon in the main navigation menu. Click on Account management in the pull-down. Click on the Delegations tab.) A Stream Designer can prevent task delegation from occurring by checking a box in the Assignment tab of a task dialog popup.

Back in our Review Request User Task step, on the Event Actions tab, go back to the second event we are configuring. The Reassigned event is the one that is relevant to our use case.

In the Event field pull-down menu, select “Task Reassigned.” The Event Condition will be “Always.” The Event Actions will be “Update Fields.” When a task is reassigned, the new task owner is updated in the Task Acceptor field. To get the information in that field, we will use an expression. In the Field pull-down make sure choose “Send for Approval to” is selected. The Map Type will be Expression. To the right of the Value/Expression field, click on the magnifying glass icon to search for the appropriate merge field value.

Since it is a task we are reassigning, we will click on the “Task Meta Fields” tab to find the right one. Look for the “Accepted by” option. Select it. Since this is a user field, clicking on it will open a User Fields option. Click on the “ID” field to get the merge field value that will get the User ID of the task owner. Copy that merge field value. Paste it into the Expression box. Now that we’ve done this, the “Send for Approval to” field will always contain the correct reviewer.

We need to notify the requester that the person who is reviewing their request has changed. So, let's add another action to the Reassignment event. Below the Event you will see the text “Add another action.” Click on that. In the pull-down menu, choose "Send Email." We are going to need to build an email template for this use case later and specify that it gets used here. You have already learned how to build email templates, so you can do this on your own.

Create an email template called “Reassigned Notification.”  Select the template “Record Creation Email” to be a placeholder.

The Send Email action allows you to send emails to multiple recipients. The Recipient pull-down menu contains many choices. Each caters to a different need:

1. Specific Email Address - You can hard code an email address here. i.e. This would specify that the person whose email address you type here will always get the emails.
2. Record Submitter - This is the person who submitted the request, which is a record.
3. Manager of Record Submitter - This is the supervisor of the request submitter. It’s determined by the Supervisor field that is present in the User Record, which is located in Account Management.
4. Task Owner - This is the current owner of the task.
5. Email Address Present in a Field - All the email addresses in the system will be available for selection here.

Choose “Record Submitter” to accomplish our goal today. And with this, we concludes configuration of that task reassignment notification email event. It should look like this:

Now that we’ve completed that, we want to create an event to handle situations that would raise red flags. What if someone requests approval for an expense that exceeds what's in the budget? We would want to send a red flag email to the CFO.

Add a third event. Let's configure it. Choose “Task Created” in the Event pull-down menu. In the Condition pull-down, choose “Match All.” Underneath that in the Field, choose “Amount.” The Operator will be “Greater Than.”  The Value will be $10,000. Don’t put a comma or a currency sign in here. Simply use the number.

In the Event Actions section, we will again tell Pulpstream that we want to send an email to a specific email address using the appropriate email template. Choose “Send Email” in the pull-down menu. Choose the template called “Record Creation Email.” The recipient(s) will be a “Specific Email Address.” Type in the email address of the person that should be receive this red flag email. For testing purposes, type in your email address or the email address of someone who has an active email address and is willing to test this stream with you.

The third event will look like this after you have configured it:

We now have 3 events in our Event Actions tab. Click on Save Changes to the Task. Save your changes to the Stream.

Now, we almost are ready to test these 3 events and wrap up this Skill Station visit.

Create a Reassigned Notification email template and add it to the Task Reassigned Event Action that is in your Review Request Step. Remember to call it “Reassigned Notification.” (Email Templates are in your Components Catalog on your Stream Definition Canvas.) Make sure that your task owners have supervisors.

The 3 events that you will test on your own are:

1. Create a request of more than $10,000.
2. Reassign the request and see if the record submitter receives a notification that the request was assigned
3. Complete the task. Make sure that the task is assigned to the supervisor of the person to whom the task was reassigned.

When you're done with this, visit Skill Station 8 where we will be learning how to automate approvals.