Traditional user portal basics — Using the Process Work workspace

Click the bar to access the Process Work workspace. Use the controls in the home view (described below) to select a work pool, find work, enter work, or access your worklist.

As you use the links and controls on the home view, additional forms or displays appear in the workspace.

Click the home button () to return to the home view.

The User portals identify a current work pool name at the top left of the navigation panel, below the logo. In this example, the current work pool name is Sample Work.

The work pool name determines the types of new work you can enter and the scope of Find searches. If your access group lists more than one work pool name, select a value from the drop-down list that identifies the application for the types of work you plan to enter next.

The choice of work pool name does not restrict the types of assignments you can see or process on your worklist.

Work pool names appear on this work pool selector list in the order that the corresponding work pools are listed on the Work Pools array on the Access tab of the access group. If the list is long, consider reordering the Work Pools array to present the applications alphabetically, or in another order meaningful to users.

Depending on the portal rule being used, the work pool name and work pool selector area may not appear. The logo and links in this area may also differ from the default presentation.

To create a new work object, select a work type from the New drop-down list on the navigation panel:

This list displays all the work types in the current application. If the work type you want to enter does not appear, select a different application name.

Select a work type from the list. The entry form for that work type appears in the workspace. For general guidance on work object forms, see Using work object forms.

If your workstation is supported by Windows 2000 and a scanner device is attached to the workstation, you can scan in a paper document to create a new work object. Click the Scan Station link in this area to open this facility. (This link appears only for managers). See About the Scan Station. A Scanning support in Windows XP workstation is provided by a separate tool, the Image Viewer. See About the Image Viewer.

Use the Find area of the navigation panel to search for and access an existing work object or assignment:

• When you know a work object ID, enter this in the By ID field and click  Find  . This search retrieves the open or resolved work object (in the currently selected application).
• Select an approach from the Search for Work drop-down list to find unresolved work objects you entered, work objects identifying you as a party, work objects in a specific workbasket, or work objects that you recently updated. You can customize the criteria. (Additional search facilities are available within the workspace area.)
• Click Get Most Urgent   to let the system find an open assignment that you can work on. The results depends on settings in your Operator ID data instances. The system may search first through a specific list of workbaskets, or may take the top assignment from your worklist. (This button also appears at the bottom of work object forms presented by the standard harness rule Work-.Confirm.)

By default, the  Get Most Urgent   button is linked to a standard activity named Work-.GetNextWork, which calls the standard activity Work-.GetNextWorkObject, part of the Process Engine API. Your application can override the standard activity, or use other Process Engine API calls to set parameters for the standard activity. See Maximizing user productivity with GetNextWork.

This area contains the top portion of your worklist. Each row of the worklist identifies one assignment routed to you.

Interacting with the worklist

You can interact with the worklist in five ways:

Click..	To..
A row	Access the work object form and begin processing the assignment.
Where am I? arrow ()	See a flow diagram and the location of the current assignment in that flow.
(Preview)	If your worklist display supports assignment preview, hold the mouse pointer over a work object ID. A pop-up preview of the assignment may appear. (This capability is available only when the optional Smart Info Settings values are configured on the Format tab of the list view rule that supports worklist display.)
Expand..	View additional assignments.
Expand and select a Work Type	Limit the display to assignments arising from a single work type. This is useful when a worklist contains many assignments. Select ALL as the Work Type or click the home button () to return to the consolidated view.

Columns of the worklist

Columns of the worklist identify aspects of the assignment:

The My Group area is available to work managers, to review current assignments. You can examine the worklists of each user in your work group, and the contents of each workbasket associated with your work group.

Viewing an operator's worklist

Select a name from the View List for combo box to list the assignments on that operator's worklist. The list contains all operators in the work group.

Viewing the assignments in a workbasket

Select a workbasket from the View Queue for combo box to list the assignments in that workbasket. This list includes those workbaskets for which the Work Group field matches the Work Group field in your own Operator ID instance.

Managing operator schedules and profiles

You can mark a user as unavailable, record scheduled absences, and change their skill profile.

1. Click the Manage Operators Schedules and Profiles link
2. Select a row of the resulting list that contains the Operator ID. (The list shows all the operators who are in the same organization and in the same work group as you.)
3. Click  Availability   to update availability, absences, or substitute operator processing. You can identify a single substitute operator, or a decision rule that computes a substitute operator.

Operators who are unavailable can still sign on, enter work, and process assignments. They can receive assignments through transfers, but not through routing.

Click the  Skills   button to review or revise the application skill profile. Routing activities may match assignments to users based on this information.

Managing workbaskets

Click the Manage Workbasket link to access the Data-Admin-WorkBasket data instances that define workbaskets associated with your work group.

This list includes those workbaskets for which the Work Group field matches the Work Group field in your own Operator ID instance.

The My Process Actions area is available only to work managers. Use this area to apply an action to all the assignments on a worklist or workbasket. This function is known as bulk processing.

For example, you can transfer assignments from one operator (within your group) to another, from one workbasket to another, or apply a flow action repeatedly to all the assignments on a worklist.

See WorkManager portal basics — Processing assignments in bulk.

This area allows you to search for work objects (in the currently selected application) based on work object status and one other criterion. In contrast to the Search for Work queries in the navigation panel, this query lets you search by attributes (property values) such as work object status, customer name, and so on.

1. Optionally, select a comparison type such as Starts with for the status value. Select a status value.
2. Select a work object property such as Owner Org Unit
3. Enter a comparison type and a value.
4. Click  Search  .

This facility identifies properties by the Short Description. If the Short Description that appears is not meaningful to the application user, in most cases you can override the property with another, choosing a more appropriate description. In most cases, choose a work type or work pool for the Applies To class of the new property.

You can search by any top-level property that is an exposed column in the database table holding the objects in the work pool. A database administrator can in most cases expose additional (non-aggregate) properties by changing the database schema, after which they appear here. When appropriate, a database administrator can create database indexes to further speed searches on specific fields such as account numbers, telephone numbers, or other heavily used properties. See Pega Developer Network article PRKB-20152 Create a database index to improve performance of searches for background on this feature.