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When adding tasks for our staff, how can I enable a notification to be sent to the staff member indicating when the task is due?

Environment:

Tasks, Business Rules
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

When you first assign a task to a staff member, that staff member receives a Task Assigned notification at the console.  The staff member can double click the notification to open the task record to see when the task is due.

To notify staff of upcoming tasks that are already assigned to them, you can configure task escalation rules or create scheduled reports or alerts to be sent when a task meets specific criteria you define.

Task escalation rules:  As with other record types, you can create a set of rules to apply specifically to your task records.  From the Configuration options, select Site Configuration > Rules. Click the Tasks button on the ribbon. Click the Edit button on the ribbon to open the Task Rules editor.

As with other rulesets, it is best practice to have at least two rule states -- an initial rule state and an existing rule state.  Escalation rules are most commonly added to the existing rule state.  A single rule can be added to the initial rule state to simply transition the state to the existing state and continue processing rules.

Then, within the existing rule state, you can configure the two escalation rules.  The first rule defines when the task should be escalated; the second rule indicates the action to take when the task is escalated (send a notification).

For example, to send a notification 24  hours before the task is due, you can configure two rules as follows:

Rule: Esc 24 hours prior to due date (chain rule)

IF
Tasks.Status not equals Completed AND
Tasks.Escalation Level equals Unspecified

THEN
Escalate to Level: 24 hr notify (or whatever name you choose)
- 1 day relative to Tasks.Planned Completion Date
(1 day or 24 hours previous to the planned completion date)
√ Revalidate √ Recalculate

(Check the relative check box and check the Revalidate and Recalculate check boxes.)

Rule: Esc send notification

IF
Task.Escalation Level = 24 hr notify AND
Task.Previous Escalation Level not equals 24 hr notify

THEN
Send Escalation Notification to assignee with Subject Line "24 Hour Task Completion Notice"

(Enable the To Assignee box and enter the text for the subject line of the notification email send to the staff member)

With your task rules configured, activate the ruleset and test your rules.

For more information on configuring rule sets, refer to Answer ID 1842: Overview of Rule Functionality.  For more information on escalation rules, refer to Answer ID 2181: Setting up Escalation Rules.

Scheduled reports and alerts:  You can also create a custom report that lists the tasks assigned to the logged in staff member and then schedule reports to be send on a regular basis or create alerts to be sent when a task is within a specified time period of its planned completion date and time.

For example, you can create a custom report that filters tasks by staff member (task_instances.assgn_acct_id) and status type (task_instances.status_type).

Then, you can schedule the report to be sent at a specific frequency.

You can also create a data exception based on the planned completion date and send an alert when tasks are within a set time frame of their planned completion date. For more information on configuring alerts, refer to Answer ID 1854: Using Alerts when Scheduling Report Subscriptions.