This tutorial takes about 30 minutes and is intended primarily for project managers and system administrators.
The workflow defined for an issue topic determines what happens to issues about that topic when they are created, the states that they must subsequently pass through and the tasks that must be completed for each state. Workflow is discussed in the Ketura Tour Step 8: Workflow.
This tutorial covers:
This tutorial assumes that you have the example database installed. This database illustrates various Ketura concepts applied to a fictional firm, XYZ, Inc.
The desired workflow for an issue will typically depend on what the issue is about. For example, what should happen to an issue about a company website will be different from what happens to a an issue relating to a company’s internal procedures. In Ketura, a distinct workflow can be defined for each issue topic. All the issues about a particular issue topic therefore have the same workflow.
Many organizations define processes or procedures for handling various types of situation. In Ketura, a particular procedure can be represented by creating an issue topic for it and then configuring that topic’s workflow. Various issue states can be created to represent stages in the process; the allowable transitions between states (defined by the workflow) ensure that the desired path through the process is followed. As each stage in the process is completed, a user changes the issue’s state accordingly and, if the workflow associates a task set with the new issue state, Ketura automatically adds its tasks to the issue.
XYZ wishes to define some workflow in relation to its quality management system (qms). A project to manage the qms was created in Tutorial 4: Using Projects to Achieve Long-Term Goals On-time and Within Budget, and that tutorial must be completed before commencing this one.
Workflow is configured upon issue topics. Since a unique workflow is needed for issues relating to the ‘Implement Quality Management System’ project, it follows that a new topic is needed.
Unless you have unchecked the Automatically create a topic for each new project checkbox on the Issue topics tab of the Manage Projects page, Ketura will automatically create a new issue topic whenever you create a new project. The automatically created issue topic will have the same name as the new project. Furthermore, Ketura will have configured the workflow for the topic so that any new issues about that topic will be added automatically to your new project’s ‘O1 – Review New Issues (ongoing)’ milestone. This means that you don’t have to worry about creating new issue topics manually, or about workflow, unless you desire more fine-grained control over your system.
It is therefore quite likely that a new topic was automatically created for your ‘Implement Quality Management System’ project. However, for the purposes of this tutorial, we will assume that one was not. This will enable you to understand how to create and configure topics of your own.
The new topic has been created, with its settings and workflow copied from the ‘General’ topic. Its workflow must now be tailored.
XYZ has decided that qms-related issues should be reviewed by Eric Samet, the partner in charge of the quality management process.
Reviewing a new issue involves deciding what to do with it. For example, should the issue by rejected? Is the issue a duplicate
of another? To which milestone should the issue be added?
Before this workflow can be configured, a new task set containing the desired task must first exist.
Go to the Manage Workflow and Task Sets page: global System navigation tab > System administration tab > Manage Workflow and Task Sets link.
In the Notes field, enter:
This task set is added automatically to new issues of the ‘Quality Management System’ topic by the workflow that uses it. This means that Eric Samet is tasked with reviewing all new issues about that topic.
Having created the ‘[Workflow] Review a new QMS issue’ task set, we now need to configure the ‘Quality Management System’ issue topic such that when a new issue is created, the task set is automatically added to it.
At this point, every new issue for the ‘Quality Management System’ topic will have a task assigned to Eric Samet for him to review the new issue.
Although new qms issues now have a task on them, they will not yet be added to milestone ‘O1 – Review New Issues (ongoing)’ of the ‘Implement Quality Management System’ project. This step is necessary to schedule the issue, so that Eric will see the issue’s task in his Pending task list. It is easily accomplished.
Select the New issues tab.
XYZ wishes to ensure that if an issue is resolved or rejected, its state can only then be changed back to ‘New’. This will mean that a new review task for Eric Samet will automatically be added to the issue. Thus, re-opened issues will be processed in the same way as newly created ones. XYZ also wishes to restrict the states that qms-related issues can be in to just ‘In Progress’, ‘New’, ‘Rejected’ and ‘Resolved’. Finally, it wants to ensure that a ‘New’ issue can not transition to ‘Resolved’, except via ‘In Progress’.
This tutorial has shown how to have a simple task set added to new issues of a particular issue topic. Much more sophisticated workflows than this can be created. For example, different task sets can be added to an issue when it enters different states. Each added task set can also contain multiple tasks, possibly assigned to different people. Nevertheless, the basic procedure for configuring such a workflow is merely a variation on that outlined above for adding a task set when the issue enters the ‘New’ state (that is, when it is created). It is not therefore necessary to discuss it in detail here.
