Sequential tasks

With Planfix, you can create chains of tasks that assignees will see and complete sequentially. The main benefit of sequential tasks is that the entire chain is stored as drafts until the appropriate time, so "future" tasks don't clutter up assignees' lists. This keeps employee workspaces simple and clear.

How it works

To process tasks sequentially, the tasks must have the same parent task, and they must have the Sequential task checkbox checked. The order of the tasks in the parent task checklist is determined by their completion order in the chain.

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Tasks should have the status Draft if you don't want them to be available to assignees ahead of time.

Here's how sequential task completion works

• When the parent task is activated (when its status is switched from Draft to New) the first sequential subtask in the chain (with the attribute Sequential task activated) is automatically activated.

• After the first sequential subtask is completed (or it's switched to any inactive status) the next sequential subtask in the chain is automatically activated.

• This goes on until every sequential subtask in the chain has been completed.

Creating a chain of sequential tasks

It's best to create the chain starting with the root task:

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As soon as you activate the Sequential task attribute, Planfix automatically changes the status of the task you've created to Draft. Planfix also lets you manually change the status of the task you've created to New.

Subtasks can be created within the parent task using the full form or using quick create in the "Subtask" panel:

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If the parent task has the Sequential task attribute and has the status Draft, the subtasks created will also automatically have this attribute and status. If you created a parent task with the status New, the first of the subtasks will also have this status, while subsequent subtasks will be created with the status Draft. All subtasks created will have the attribute Sequential task by default.

To start the completion of a chain, all you have to do is change the status of the root parent task to New:

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Additional information

• You can create a subtask template with the "Sequential task" attribute and use it in your business processes. When creating tasks using this template, the root task and first subtask will be active, and remaining subtasks will wait until their position on the chain is reached.

• Subtasks can be assigned to different assignees; this works well when, say, a coder's task should be assigned once a designer's task is complete. Moreover, the designer and coder need not be aware of each other's role in the process or the existence of such dependencies: only the creator of a task chain can see the entire chain, and each assignee sees only their task(s).

• You determine yourself whether or not subtask assignees need to know that the parent task exists. If you don't give assignees access to the parent task, they won't see it, which is a standard way of using Planfix. What looks to you like one task in a chain of sequential subtasks could look to the assignee like an ordinary task.

• You can create complicated trees out of sequential and parallel tasks that provide you with the business processes you need.

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