Housing options task management overview
In responding to a housing options enquiry received into the local authority, numerous activities will need to be triggered in order to progress the customer's housing situation and inform their decision-making process. Depending on the individual circumstances, any number of separate tasks may be required, and these potentially quite varied in nature. Typically, the process of documenting and responding to a specific enquiry will constitute the creation of a single case, and the inherent activities - the defined tasks - will be a series of discrete and chronological actions relevant to the selected workflow type, to be carried out by the allocated owner within a specified timeframe. To maximise the efficient progression of a housing options case, it might be acceptable to conduct some tasks in parallel i.e. the completion of one task being independent of another. Conversely, some tasks may be inextricably linked and therefore dependency rules must exist to define the task relationships and any in-built time lags i.e. dictating the commencement of one task in relation to the completion of its predecessor.
There is no limit to the number of tasks that can be created on the system, mapping the constituent elements of all likely housing options case scenarios to the progressive actions. These tasks would typically be created in advance, as part of the housing options configuration process, and then linked to different workflow types, as required. A single task - perhaps generic in nature - can be linked to multiple housing option workflow types but can only appear once within the same workflow. In the event that an individual task needs to be replicated within the same workflow, a clone of the original task definition must first be created and linked separately. Simply by adding the task definition to the workflow path, an end user is able to map out the critical progression route of an individual housing options case scenario through any combination of tasks. Thus, when a new housing options case is created in response to a customer enquiry, those tasks linked to the workflow path will be triggered automatically. Naturally, there will always be instances where the specific circumstances of a case demand that additional tasks be included; hence, these can easily be added manually, provided they already exist within the workflow type definition.
Before an individual task can be progressed, it must be assigned an owner, which will be identified through the allocated user accounts and overarching roles - representing the widest subset of end users that may be automatically assigned responsibility once the housing options case is launched.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of housing options task management, including:
In addition, separate help articles focus on the progression of housing options tasks, specifically: