Task and Workflow Configuration - Task Templates
This section of AdviceOS allows you to create templates for any tasks you want your office to have available. Once a task template has been designed and saved here, it will be accessible for your staff to use for any clients as required.
These tasks can automatically trigger based on certain events using Event Mapping, can be assigned to Workflows, or can just be manually created by your team as required.
Accessing Task Templates
To access the Task Templates section of AdviceOS, navigate to:
- Settings > Task And Workflow Configuration > Task Templates
On the page you have a few things available, including:
- A full list of all existing task templates created by your team
- The ability to edit or delete any existing task templates
- The ability to create a new template
- A drop down option to filter the view of templates based on their Category
Creating a task template
To create a task template, press on the button available on the far right of the screen titled +Create template
This will open a new template, as per the below screenshot.
In this dialog there are several areas that can be modified. We’ll go into detail for these below.
Three tabs within the template
Along the top, you can see three tabs:
Main
- This is the main section of the task template which allows you to determine most of the settings. We will go into further detail of this area further in the article
Custom Fields
- Here you can include other fields that are relevant to this task that may not be included within the ‘main page’.
- For example, you may have a task you want your advisers to confirm certain compliance requirements.
- To create these custom fields, navigate to Settings > New Configuration > Custom Field Management and make sure the Type = Task
- Note that you can make the custom fields mandatory so that it forces your staff to complete these fields before closing the task.
Task outcomes
- This section allows you to configure the outcomes for your task.
- For example, you may have a task to call a client, and want to include a number of outcomes including (1) completed call, (2) no answer send email, (3) make follow up call
- This can be used for two reasons:
- Can be reported on to see what the outcome of the task was
- Can be used to trigger a workflow, in case closing this task requires additional work to be completed
- Note that ‘Outcome’ and ‘Status’ are different fields. The Status field tells the user whether the task is closed, in progress, cancelled or awaiting more info. However, the Outcome field is used to determine the outcome.
- By default N/A is the selected Outcome and this is not a mandatory section of the task if you do not wish to include any outcomes.
Left side of main tab
The below two fields will directly impact how your staff will locate this task when they wish to create it.
- Name: Allows you to name the specific task
- Category: Determines the specific category that this task will be saved under
Email Attachment Button & Letter Attachment Button
You can attach an email or a letter template to the task template.
- This may be helpful in situations where a specific task requires a follow-up email or letter to be sent to the client.
- It provides your users with quick and easy access to the email or letter template to download
- You can then update the attached email or letter within the original task template, which will update for any future versions of this task created
Attachment Button or Drag and Drop
You can also attach any other documents in the drag and drop field
- This may be useful in a scenario where there is a relevant document related to this task that you want your staff to have access to.
- For example, you may have a task to call a super fund for completing research on the clients account. You could include a template as an attachment with all the relevant questions you want your staff member to ask. Again, this can be updated at the ‘task template’ level and all future tasks will have the updated attached document.
Top of main tab
These include:
- Subject: This is an additional field to capture the purpose of the task. It can be used for reporting. It can be the same as ‘Name’ field or further information can be included in this field
- Assigned to: this is a toggled between ‘User’ and ‘Position’
- User: If User is selected, it will default select the user who is creating the task template, but can be changed to anyone within the Practice.
- This will mean that every single version of this task that is created will be assigned to this specific user.
- This may be useful in certain scenarios where you want all of these tasks to go to one person, irrespective of the client (for example a compliance officer or manager)
- Position: If position is selected, the task will be assigned to the person in that specific position.
- This is determined by the ‘team type’ and ‘position’ within that team type
- An example might be where you have 4 CSOs within your business, who handle work for each of your advisers. The task can be assigned to the CSO assigned to each adviser.
- Another example could be creating a compliance team and having a compliance officer and head compliance manager within the positions.
- For more information on creating positions, please see this section of the knowledgebase.
- User: If User is selected, it will default select the user who is creating the task template, but can be changed to anyone within the Practice.
- Associate with client: If this is ticked, it will automatically associate the task with the client you currently have selected (when creating the task). If this is unticked, there will be no associated client to the task. Unticking this option may be beneficial insituations such as standard office tasks that are unrelated to any specific client.
- Type: This can help with reporting and categorising your tasks
- Sub-Type: This can help with reporting and categorising your tasks
Due date & due time: These fields will directly impact the due date of the task when it is created, and it is directly related to the time and date of when you create the task template originally. This also impacts any tasks linked to Event Mapping.
In the screenshot below, you can see that the due date has been set as 15/09/2024.
In this example, the actual, live time and date that the user has created this task was on 15/08/2024 at 3:45pm. This means that the due date will be one month after the task has been created. You will be provided a warning message before saving it. You can see below the warning message indicating this.
Continuing on with this example, when this task is added to Event Mapping, the due date will determine how many days before the specific event a task is created. So you can see in the below ‘Review’ example, the task is created 61 days before the relevant review date.
You can set this due date value at any point. So for another example, if on the 15/08/2024 a User is creating a task template with the due date of 16/08/2024 then that is 1 day difference. This means that whenever this task is created it will be due 1 day after the date of creation. So in the future, if a user creates this task for one of their clients (let's assume the date is 22/10/2024) then the due date of the task will be the 23/10/2024 (one day later).
Bottom of main page
In this section you can include the body of your task, might would include context and content relevant for your team.
When building the template, the status / start / default outcomes will all be greyed out. These will be available specific to the task after it has been created
Priority: Allows you to determine the priority of a task, either High Medium or Low.
Email reminder: You can choose to send the User who is responsible for the task an email as a reminder.
- This can be sent immediately when the task is created, otherwise a certain timeframe prior to the due date of the task.
- Alternatively you can elect to not have any email sent to the user.