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Case

What is a case and how does it work

Christer Husstøl avatar
Written by Christer Husstøl
Updated over a year ago

In Upwave Workflow, a case is an entity used to track progress of a predefined process until its completion. Each step in the workflow is associated with corresponding tasks that monitor the progress of individual cases.

Properties

  • Assigned - the person who is responsible for the case

  • Status - an indicator of the case’s current state

  • Case number - if a custom case number is not provided, the system will automatically generate a case number, starting from 1 for the first case. The case number may be edited at any time.

  • Title and Description - fields to describe the case

  • Start date - automatically set when the status is changed to Active. The start date may be edited at any time

Additionally, a case can have custom fields to hold data like email, address, and telephone numbers.

Status

The status property is used to signal what is currently happening with the case. This property is subject to sorting and filtering in the case list and Insights.

Providing a reason for the status change is prompted by the system, and if provided, it will be recorded in the activity log.

A typical lifecycle for a case could be the following:

  • A case is created and the status starts out as Not started

  • The case is assigned to someone, who changes its status to Active

  • When the case is considered closed the status is set to Completed and the case is now archived.

Other helpful statuses include:

  • Paused - when something needs to be resolved before progress can continue. In the background an accumulated pause timer will run which can be used in reports etc. Changing the status from paused to anything else will stop the pause timer.

  • Stopped - when the case is parked for a longer period

  • Rejected - to indicate that the case has been declined

Tasks

For each step in the Workflow, a task is listed on the case page. Completing tasks moves the case progress forward until it is fully completed.

The following actions are available on a task:

  • Complete (or uncomplete)

  • Set a deadline

  • Disable - If disabled, the task will be grayed out. This action is only permitted if the step has been configured as “"Can be set as not applicable".

  • Approve - This option is only available if the step has been configured with "Require approval". When approved, the task is highlighted as approved with a timestamp and the name of the approver.

A task can also have a guide, which may contain instructions for the assigned person or a link to additional resources.

Deadline dependencies

Steps from the workflow configuration can be set up with automatic deadlines. Deadlines are met if the task is completed within that time.

  • An automatic deadline can be set x days into the future from when the case was started (set as Active)

  • An automatic deadline can be set x days after the due date of a previous step

Activity log

All updates on a case are automatically tracked in the activity log.

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