All your Task Hub questions, answered

Iress product manager Matthew Townsend recently jumped onto Advisely to answer all your burning task management questions.

Here are four of the most interesting conversations that came out of his AMA:

Q: I paid someone a couple of years ago to create our current threads in Xplan. They're great as they automatically open up emails and file notes at specific times of the thread. If I want to make changes to these, where would I go and do you feel this is something most people could set up without IT or Xplan guru support? How would someone get started setting these up from scratch as can make a real difference to a business!

I couldn't agree more with you when you say they can make a real difference to a business.

You can find all your workflow (Threads/Cases) templates by searching for
'Threads' in the navigation – it will be the first result that appears under Global – or by navigating to Admin > Site > Templates > Tasks & Thread template > Threads.

I'm not going to say there's not a learning curve because there is, but we see practices big and small creating and updating their own workflows without the need to hire others so it's definitely achievable – the deciding factor might be whether you have the time or not. Editing existing workflows can be a simple way to start.

Keep in mind you can also export your templates (use the action menu dropdown next to each template) so you have a backup and remove some of the risk.

If you want to start from scratch my main tip would be to pick a simpler workflow or process, build that out, get your automations and then tackle some of the more complex ones.

If you want to learn more there are a number of webinars and courses on the Iress Learning Centre that can help. This one can be a good starting place.

Q: When an email is sent when completing a task (task outcome), is it possible to have the email template open (to allow it to be edited) rather than sent immediately? Also, under 'Classic tasks' I'm able to search by 'Case / Thread Template' which I find very useful. How can I do this using the new 'Tasks' hub?

This is a great use of the automation and to answer your question - yes you can. when setting up the outcome and selecting to send email or sms from a template you have an option labelled 'prompt to edit', if you set this to yes, you will get the email loaded up in the Xplan email editor and can review/update before sending (managed to include a pic below).

Unfortunately, that filter is not there yet. Tasks has a number of filters and we started by introducing the most used and requested one but we are getting more feedback for this filter and are looking to see when we might be able to bring this one over into the new experience.

We don't have any tasks/threads set-up on our site, is there a "best practice standard" guide to set up from scratch? Or are we best to have an Xplan consulting company come in and review our site to see what we need?

Good question and I'm sure other clients would be in the same boat. There are a number of resources on the Iress Learning Centre that can help get you started with a view to understanding and building your own - they aren't all labelled best practice though. As an example, this one for an ongoing review process I've heard before was helpful.

Probably one of the best all-round workflow overviews I have seen was from @jessica.lamb and you can find the session she did on this over on YouTube here.

Q: Some workflow software tools generate a visualisation of a workflow/thread; to make it easier to understand, or to allow for intuitive editing (e.g. drag the box in the flow chart, instead of editing a long list of conditionally linked tasks). Could we ever see a feature like this in Xplan Tasks?

In the workflow research we heard a number of clients interested in something like this or we heard of friction points that could perhaps be solved by visualising the workflow. In my view there are 2 elements to it as you kind of alluded to:

Visualising the workflow: so you can quickly see and understand the flow of the process, where you are at, what comes next etc. We would be aiming to include something like this when we look at moderning the workflow layers in Xplan. It then could be incorporated back into Tasks so you can find out where you are at and see that whole process right when you need it.
Building workflow: Possibly, this one we see coming later and we also think there are a number of ways you could go about solving this - a kind of drag-and-drop flowchart may be one way, but there could be others which we'd need to explore but still a ways away at this stage.

So in short, yes something like this is part of our future thinking for workflows at least in terms of helping view and follow them

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Comments

brian.perrin

I find the tasks selections complicated and just too many that cause confusion.

I just want to use 6 selected task for my practice.

How do I do this and remove allmovther task selections?

Brian

kenny.foo

Hi Brian, by tasks selections do you mean the list of task templates you can choose from? You can manage this in the templates area (Admin -> Site -> Templates -> Tasks & thread templates) depending on your site privileges, or contact your Xplan site admin.

brian.perrin

no its the task descriptions.There are just too many and I want to have access to only six for staff to use .

kenny.foo

Hi Brian, it sounds like you're referring to Task types and subtypes. Again that's something your site administrator would control (perhaps your licensee), and I would reach out to them to query this. Otherwise, you can raise a query with the service desk on Iress Connect and a team member will be able to help you investigate.

melita

Hello Team,

Can we please please please have a 'Client Adviser' (designated roles) filter in Task Hub that can be used to see all tasks relating to all clients who have XX as Client Adviser irrespective of who is the Assigner or Assignee of the task? This is a major pain point for our advisers and their teams as they want to be able to see in one view all the work in progress being done on their own clients. It would make the task hub a more useful tool for WIP meetings within Business Units so that everything in progress for their clients can be reviewed and the adviser can see the progress of work that other teams (such as an Insurance Adviser) might be working on for their clients.

We've also had requests from our users, especially in our centralised teams and for Associates and Support Staff who support multiple Client Advisers that they would love to be able to see on the Task card in Task Hub view the 'Client Adviser' name (even if just in small text).

Please consider the above as development items. ??

If this functionality is already in Task Hub please let me know where to find it. Thank you.

carolyn.pretorius

Hi, you can set this under Filter, Task Role, select Client Adviser then tick the advisers you want to see. You can also select Administrators etc under this. If you save as a view then make main view you will just see the tasks you want to see.

Thanks

melita

Fabulous. Thank you!