This functionality allows us to configure the stages through which a task may pass until it is completed. It will allow us to better reflect the lifecycle of an activity, while collecting metrics for each step.
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It is mainly aimed at teams that manage tasks in the field, to know exactly what is happening at each moment of the task, being able to also account for travel time, effective work time, closing time, and more.

This new development will help to more easily reflect the comings and goings of an activity.

Status of a task

Up to now, the states of a task were 5:

• Open
• In process
• Completed
• Completed with earrings
• On Hold
• Canceled

These stages are simple but very useful for most of the "short" activities that exist in a project. However, if you are looking to identify an activity that may be interrupted for different reasons, or if it is in progress but in the final stage, it is not possible to do so just by seeing it in the "In Process" status.

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The new flexible status functionality allows you to customize stage names and choose their behavior, to reflect what is actually happening in the task. For example, a task can now be in the "On Trip to Site" status, which gives us more information than just "In Process".

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Transitions

To go from one state to another we will use "transitions". The transitions will have the name of the action that takes us to the next state of the task. As an example, a technician could have the task in the "On Trip" state and from there choose two possible transitions: "Arrived on site" or "Delayed", in case for some reason, he has had to deviate from his activity. The "Arrived on site" transition will move the task to the "On Site" state; the "Delayed" transition will move it to the "Delayed" state.

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Transitions also allow us to avoid paths to certain states. For example, a task in the "Working" state will not be able to go (if configured) to the "Traveling" state. It may have perhaps two possible transitions: that the job has been completed or that it has been interrupted for some reason.

These processes provide consistency of information, but also help to simplify the task of each technician. If the process is well defined, the technician will have among his options one that reflects exactly what he is going to do.

Installation task flow

Taking an installation task as an example, we could customize and mirror the process with the following flow:

Each new status will have an original "status type": Open, In process, Completed, etc. That is, we will have several "Open" statuses, but with different names. In the image above you can see three "Open" statuses: Created, Assigned, Taken.

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Continuing with the example... the status "On Trip" is from the category "In Process".

In order to simplify some system processes, such as required documents and other functionalities, we have allowed for the moment to have only one final, or closing, status, i.e. only one status of the type "Completed".

Each state, in addition to the multiple transitions it can have, can be configured with the property "It is accessible from any state". This feature allows the state to be available from any of the states of the process.

As part of this change, we decided to merge the approval processes in the configuration of new states. Now everything is a state and the transition between one and another may or may not have an approval process.

We hope that this functionality will help improve the customization and tracking of activities to work more efficiently every day.

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