Re-opened Calls

[Steve Giller]

In the Business Process, when a call has been resolved and the Customer uses the supplied buttons to reopen it - where does it "go" to?

Does it proceed to the next node (my expected behaviour) so that we can then check for the decision and act on it or is there a "re-entry point" that it jumps to?
If the former, can we have a "Previous Stage" node, because in this instance everything in the BP from your chosen re-entry point to the last point at which the call can be reopened must be on the same stage.
If the latter, is this point fixed or can we direct it to a certain part on the BP?

[Victor]

@DeadMeatGF call actions and BP are quite independent... you can "link" the two using suspend nodes...

2 hours ago, DeadMeatGF said:

Customer uses the supplied buttons to reopen it - where does it "go" to?

It does not go anywhere unless the BP is in a "suspend" state waiting for this "reopen" or another action... if is not, then the BP is completely unaware of what happens on the request...

 

2 hours ago, DeadMeatGF said:

can we have a "Previous Stage" node

I think there was a discussion regarding this and some possible limitations were identified... probably the best person to advise on this is @Steven Boardman or @James Ainsworth

[Steve Giller]

@Victor That was kind of my understanding.
I have used the Suspend nodes to allow the "traditional" Resolve ... wait ... close (unless reopened) in our IT calls, but building the Facilities BP either means having what needs to be a 4-5 stage process in one massive stage or having the option to jump back a stage or two.

I can imagine that there are potential problems with this, though.

In some ways it's more about having a readable process - there's no technical reason not to have everything in one stage.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi DeadMeatGF,

On 11/04/2017 at 11:45 PM, DeadMeatGF said:

can we have a "Previous Stage" node

Regarding this question about moving back to a previous stage, we have designed the workflow in a way that drives a continue forward progress of the process.  In a way this helps a workflow designers make solid decisions in their workflow to make sure each stage has a completed outcome before moving to the next.  Using an analogy with on-line shopping, if you were to purchase something from an on-line shop and it arrives at your door, broken, you wouldn't go back on-line and walk through the same steps as when you first ordered it.  You would be put into a 'returns' process.

If you have progressed to a "Resolution" stage in your process only to find out the the customer has re-opened the request because the provided resolution didn't work, having some logic within the "Resolution" stage may work to your advantage, in the same way as entering a "returns" process.  You may want a more focused attention to these re-opened requests and not just put them back a few steps.  Let me know what you think.

Regards,

James

 

[Steve Giller]

That's basically what I've done - however we do have some very nice boards in place, and when the logic of just one stage is like the attached you don't want to be rebuilding that for the reopen stage - but neither do you want 4 stages, each of that complexity, crammed into one stage just so you can allow for a customer reopening the call.

For the IT part, the shopping analogy works, but moving into Facilities (and possibly other areas) it's more like sending a teenager to tidy their room, checking it, sending them back to do it properly ... etc.

On the other hand I can completely see how jumping back a stage could defeat the object of the flow.

Can you copy/paste complete groups, by any chance? I can almost see them being used rather like the (very) old subroutines of my youth.

[James Ainsworth]

You are able to copy and paste a Group.  Grouping may help simplify the viewing of this impressive workflow :). Keep in mind that while I was looking at this it seems that if you delete a Group it does not delete the nodes inside the Group.  So if you copy and paste a group into another place and you then want to remove the group and the nodes inside you need to delete the group and then select all the nodes and delete these separately. 

Regards,

James