Using Task Recipients and Responses

When you plan and design your workflow, you need to specify who receives a task and what the outcome of this task is. It might be as simple as sending the task to one person and that person needs to Approve or Reject the task. Or it could be a complex scenario where you send the task to three different departments and four people from each department needs to approve the task before the workflow continues. This is referred to as Destination and Responses planning. In the K2 Workflow Designer Task step, you specify the following:

who receives the task
what results / actions they can select from
how many responses are required
how to handle multiple recipient's results / actions
what happens if the task expires
does the task require reminders

You also need to consider how out-of-office (OOF) scenarios can impact tasks in your workflow and what happens when a recipient shares, redirect, or sleeps the task. This means you need to take many things into consideration before configuring a task step in a workflow.

This topic focuses on commonly-used scenarios to help you plan your task recipients and required responses. What happens to the task on the worklist and user's workspace? Who takes ownership of the task and how long it stays available for the users to action? These scenarios illustrates what to expect at runtime from a user and administrative perspective as well as examples of workflow Task step configurations.

For this scenario we use sample users. You can create your own test users to work with. Depending on the type of scenario you build, you may need to configure specific security settings such as Designer authorization for these users. For more information about managing your environment see the Administer section.

Scenario	Description
5 Recipients - 1 Approved response	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when one recipient responds with the Approve action
5 Recipients - 2 Approved responses	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two recipients respond with the Approve action
5 Recipients - 5 Approved responses	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when all of the recipients respond with the Approve action
5 Recipients - 5 Responses - 3 Approved actions	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when three out of the five recipients responds with the Approve action
5 Recipients - 2 Responses - 1 Approved action	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when one of the recipients responds with the Approve action
1 Recipient - 1 Group - 2 Responses - 2 Approved actions - Resolve group to individuals	The task is sent to one recipient and one group The group is resolved to individual users The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two of the recipients responds with the Approve action
1 Recipient - 1 Group - 2 Responses - 2 Approved actions - Do not Resolve group to individuals	The task is sent to one recipient and one group The group is not resolved to individual users The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two of the recipients responds with the Approve action
6 Recipients, 1 Approve response and routing task based on a variable	The task is sent to one recipient and one group The group is resolved to individual users The recipient rule uses a variable to determine who receives the task The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when one of the recipients responds with the Approve action
5 Recipients, 5 Responses using a rework action when someone rejects the task	The task is sent to five recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when all recipients respond with Approve If one recipient responds with Reject, the task is sent again to all five recipients
6 Recipients, 5 Responses, and using a variable in the voting rule to wait for 2 Approvals	The task is sent to one recipient and one group The group is resolved to individual users The voting rule uses a variable to determine how many approvals are required The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two of the recipients responds with the Approve action
3 Recipients, 2 Responses where 1 task is Redirected	The task is sent to three recipients One of the recipients redirects the task The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two out of the three recipients responds with the Approve action
3 Recipients, 2 Responses where 1 task is Released	The task is sent to three recipients One of the recipients releases the task The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two out of the three recipients responds with the Approve action
3 Recipients, 2 Responses where 1 task is sent to an Out of Office recipient	The task is sent to three recipients One of the recipients is currently set as out of office The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two out of the three recipients responds with the Approve action
2 Recipients, 2 Approvals where Task step is part of a multi-step containing 2 server events	The task is sent to two recipients The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when both recipients responds with the Approve action The task forms part of a multi-step that also contains two Send Email steps
1 Recipient, 1 Role (do not resolve group to individuals), 2 Responses, where 1 task is released by Administrator	The task is sent to one recipient and one role The role is not resolved to individual users The task actions are Approve and Reject The task completes when two of the recipients responds with the Approve action The administrator releases a task that was opened by a member of the role, but not completed