Task status
is the status of the last comment in a task.
Task and comments
In the course of a discussion, a comment might contain some actionable items. For example, during a discussion on software, an issue may arise and require a developer to fix the problem.
To make this change natural and in order to provide useful background information, any discussion can be turned into a task by setting the status on a comment or reply to a comment.
The status of the last comment in the discussion is the task status.
Configuration
The task status is configured as part of the group or project configuration. See below for an explanation on PageSeeder's default configuration.
Status and roles
The status that a member can set on a comment is based on their role within a group. Each role can be associated with a list of statuses that will appear as an option in the comment when editing the Workflow.
Only the Approver is able to set any document status.
| Role | Permissions and workflow options |
|---|---|
| Approver | Has full control over the the lifecycle of task |
| Manager | Can report and resolve issues |
| Contributor | Can report and resolve issues |
| Reviewer | Can report issues |
When configuring task status, start with the 'Approver' role and remove statuses that other roles should not be allowed to set.
Status order
The task status has a natural order – all values must be entered in the same order and it should reflect the order in which the task status will be naturally changed.
For example, if the task status should start with 'Open', then naturally progress to 'Resolved' before being set to 'Closed', the status should be entered in the following order:
- Open
- Resolved
- Closed
PageSeeder defaults
The default task statuses in PageSeeder assumes a simple model where at least two people are involved. The first person is in charge of resolving the task, that is, carry out all necessary actions outlined in the task description. The second person is in charge of closing the task by ensuring that there are no outstanding actions.
A task can be opened by anyone. Contributors or managers can resolve the tasks but only approvers can close them.
Status and roles
| Open | Resolved | Closed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approver | |||
| Manager | |||
| Contributor | |||
| Reviewer |
State diagram
Status description
Open
The task requires some actions to be carried out before it can be resolved or closed. The list of actions to be taken are defined in the task description, that is, the last comment that has had its status changed to 'Open'. This status is considered active.
This is usually the initial state of a task.
Resolved
All actions required to resolve the task are complete pending verification by the approver. This status is an indication for the approver that the task must be verified.
In some cases, the approver can reopen the task and assign it to a member who will perform the test or verification.
Closed
All actions required to solve the issue have been carried out.
This is normally the final state of a task.
Notification
Normally, email notification is controlled by setting the Notify option to 'silent', 'normal' or 'announce'. This defaults to 'normal', except when using the 'Update this task' feature, where it is always 'silent'.
However, when a status is changed, the following Group Properties determine if an email notification is sent, even when Notify is set to 'silent':
broadcastStatusChange– Iftrue, then notification will be broadcast to all authors or assigned members for that task. This can be used to notify the assigned that they have a task to do. Default isfalse.broadcastStatusApprovers– If the new status is listed here, then notification will be broadcast to all approvers in the group. This can be used to notify approvers that a task is ready for them to check. Default is empty.
Example
The example below shows the lifecycle of a task to implement a new feature in some software as a result of a discussion.
