Working with Ticket Workflows

Overview

In this video, you will learn how to work with ticket workflows, including applying workflows and interacting with workflow steps.

Learning Objectives

Test your knowledge by completing the following tasks in your own TeamDynamix environment.

• Find a ticket with an active workflow applied. You may want to use the standard filter "Awaiting Approval" on the left navigation menu in the ticketing application.
• Use the History button to look at the workflow history
• Use the View Progress diagram to explore where the ticket is in the workflow

Transcript

In this video, you will learn how to work with ticket workflows, including applying workflows and interacting with workflow steps.

In many cases, a ticket may be created for a more complex piece of work, which requires a series of smaller steps be completed before the ticket can be closed. These items may even be assigned to different people or groups. In TeamDynamix, you can keep track of these smaller pieces of work within a ticket using Ticket Tasks or a Ticket Workflow. In this session, we'll focus on Ticket Workflows.

Workflows can be helpful when the process of completing a ticket requires more than just tasks. For example, certain tickets may require approval before they can be completed. Ticket Workflows have a range of step types which can serve many different functions within a ticket. This may include getting approvals, evaluating conditions, sending notifications, and making choices, all to automate and enforce processes.

Your TeamDynamix administrator may have created multiple workflows to support business processes, and even configured them to be applied automatically when certain tickets are created. You may also be able to manually assign a workflow if the need arises. Note that a ticket can only have one workflow assigned to it at a time.

We'll get started by opening a ticket. You can open a ticket by clicking its ID or Title either from a desktop module or in the tickets home base in the ticketing application. In this case, we're going to click on a ticket in one of our desktop modules.

Let's assign a workflow to our ticket. You may want to just follow along on the screen rather than initiating a workflow in your own environment. First, we'll click on the Actions button. Then, click Assign Workflow. Using the dropdown menu, we'll choose a workflow to assign. Then, click Save.

When we apply the workflow, a box appears on the right side of the ticket details page with the name of the workflow and some basic information. If the workflow has any stages applied, the number of stages and their statuses will be displayed as icons. In this case, the workflow has three stages, so we have three icons. You can click on the icons to view stage names or hover over an icon to see the stage name and its status. An empty square indicates that the stage is in process, a line indicates that the stage has not yet started, and a checkmark indicates that the stage is complete.

You can click the History button to display the steps of the workflow including any past and future steps. You can also click View Progress to display a diagram of the workflow. The current step is highlighted in dark blue.

The Current Activities box displays the name of the current workflow step, the type of step, and who is responsible for this step. In this case, our first step is a choice assigned to ResTech. The choices are displayed below the step. If you are responsible for the choice step, you can choose one of the options by clicking on it. We'll make a choice so we can move on to the next step in the workflow and provide a comment justifying our choice.

As you can see, the Current Activities box changes to display the new current step in the workflow, which is a task. This appears very similar to any other task assigned to a ticket, except that it has Workflow Task under the title. Workflow tasks work the same way as normal tasks. We can click Mark Complete to complete the task, or click Update to change the percent complete of the task, add comments, and notify relevant people or groups. We'll mark this task as complete so we can move on.

The new current step is an approval step assigned to Sarah Director. Sarah will receive a notification email about the approval and can approve or reject the step in the Client Portal. If you are responsible for the approval, you can also approve or reject from here. We'll approve the request and provide comments.

Our workflow is now complete. We can see that a checkmark has appeared next to the workflow name and there are no more current activities. Let's take a look at the History and progress diagram to see how they've changed.

The Steps section indicates which steps were completed, and the order they were completed in. The History section at the bottom indicates the step, the person responsible, the result of the their task choice or approval, and any comments they made. For example, in the Steps section, we can see the step Evaluate Jack is complete. In the History, it indicates that the step was completed by Sarah Director.

The progress diagram highlights any completed past steps in blue, including the result of any choice for approval steps. Any skipped or unused steps and the paths between them are shown in gray.

Any workflow activity is also reflected in the Feed, including the responsible person, the step activity, and any comments they made.

Now you know the basics of ticket workflows. Explore the History button or the View Progress diagram to get more familiar with your organization's workflows.