Difference between revisions of "Setting Up A Work Queue"

Revision as of 16:56, 12 March 2015

Charitylog allows users of the system to send actions to any other user. However, sometimes users want to have somewhere generic they can send work. This might be because;

• When sending actions, the user wants to send them to a team rather than to a specific person
• The user sending the action doesn't know the specific person that should pick it up, so they want to send it to a department (this often happens in large organisations)
• The action could be done by various part-time staff depending on who is in the office first, so the user sending the action wants to have the outstanding action displayed on more than one person's Action List

There is a way that this can be done. There are two steps:

1. Set up a user account for the department or team that you want to send work to
2. Configure the default Action Lists of the people in that department or team that will be notified, so that these people see the work sent to the department or team as well as their own specific actions

Example scenario

Suppose that the TLA Community Project runs a telephone counselling service. There are two members of staff that deliver this service, Kiersten Denmann and Colin Snider. However, they both work part time. The receptionist at the TLA Community Project takes incoming calls, so when people want to access telephone counselling, the receptionist sends an outstanding action to ask Kiersten or Colin to call the client back and arrange a session.

However, the receptionist doesn't know whether it will be Colin or Kiersten that needs to do this, because they both work part time and the receptionist doesn't always know who will be in the office next. Therefore, the action needs to be sent to both Kiersten and Colin, so it can be picked up by whoever sees it first.

Setting up the user account for the team or department

Click on Administration > Security > User Settings > Users. This will display a list of all users of the system (Colin and Kiersten's user accounts are boxed in red - we'll come back to them later). Click on "Create New User".

File:WQ 1.png

You can now create a user account for the team. Set the user up as follows:

General Details tab

• Full Name: can be anything you like. Using capitals will make the user stand out in the list on Record a Contact screen.
• Username: required, can be anything
• Password: also required, but can be anything

Note: nobody will ever actually log in as this user, so there's no need to keep a record of the login details.

• Group: place the user in a group with few or no permissions. You may like to create an "Inactive Users" group, as shown in the screenshot, so that even if anyone did log in as this user, they would not be able to use the system.
• Create or link to a People/Organisation record?: leave as "Unknown"

All other fields can be left blank.

File:WQ 2.png

Referrals/Actions Settings tab

Not relevant.

System Access tab

None of the System Access tab is relevant here either. You may like to un-tick all of the login time boxes, again ensuring that nobody can actually log in as this user.

File:WQ 3.png

Project Access tab

Again, this tab is not relevant, but you may like to prevent this user from accessing any projects, should anyone log in as that user.

File:WQ 4.png

Personal Tab Access

As above; not relevant but you may like to restrict access to personal tabs.

File:WQ 5.png

Save the new user

Click "Save Details" when done.

File:WQ 6.png

Check the user account appears correctly

Verify that the newly-created user account appears on the Record a Contact screen, in the "Who By?" box.

File:WQ 7.png

Configure the team or department members' user accounts

Colin and Kiersten will now need their Action List defaults changing so that they see the actions assigned to "TELEPHONE COUNSELLING" as well as actions assigned directly to them.

Click on Administration > Security > User Settings > Users, then click on the name of the user account to edit.

File:WQ 8.png

Click on the "Referrals/Actions Settings" tab, then set the first field - "Own, Selected or All Users" - to "Selected Users Entries Only". Then in the box below that, click on the name of the person.

File:WQ 9.png

Without clicking anywhere else, scroll that box to find the user you created for the team/department, then hold the "ctrl" key (on Windows) and click that user too.

File:WQ 10.png

The other options in this section can be set as desired, but a good starting configuration is:

• Days to show into past/future: 7
• View Selection: All Contacts Done Plus Outstanding Actions
• List Order: Newest On Top

Check that this works correctly for the user

Unless you have real actions to create for both the department/team and also the individual user, you should do this on a test system.

Assign an action to the individual...

File:WQ 11.png

...and one to the department or team.

File:WQ 12.png

Finally, get the user (in this case, Colin) to log in and verify that their default Action List view shows both their own actions and also those that have been assigned to the department or team.

We can see here that Colin's action list is working as we want it to.

File:WQ 13.png

Now set up the other members of the department or team in the same way.

Notes

Users can change their own Action Lists to display someone else's work - for example, if a colleague calls in sick. If the user does this, they will un-select the work queue actions. However, the work queue actions can be re-selected in the same way as above from their own Action List (in the "Own, Selected or All Users" box).

File:WQ 14.png

Even if the user changes it, their Action List view will revert to the default when they next log in.

Rob Kay - manual author (talk) 15:18, 12 March 2015 (GMT)