Cases and Tasks

When it comes to tracking work to determine who is working on issues and what is the status, you can use:

cases and tasks
only cases
or only tasks

What are cases?

If you use cases and tasks, then a case would be your top-level project and related tasks would be the individual items that need to be completed for the project. In this scenario, a task is a child of the parent case. If you only use cases, then any work that needs to be completed would require a case for tracking progress and assignment to team members.

For example, to onboard a new employee you could create a case and set the manager as the Assigned To person. Then you would create tasks that make up the project to include processing an I-9 form, setting up the employee benefits plan, and establishing the employee portal credentials. Each task can be worked on concurrently by different team members. This approach helps to delegate the work so that you can streamline the process.

What are tasks?

Tasks track individual work items – they can stand on their own or can be a child to a parent case. Tasks are the work items that need to be completed by the Assigned To person. When tasks are a child to a case, then the task may be assigned to the person who owns the case (owns the project) or could be assigned to someone else. Tasks can be standalone or can be subsets to a case.

Tasks are configurable assignment items with an Owner and Assigned To person and defined start and end dates. Tasks can also be scheduled using the template task scheduler for building complex workflows.

Tasks are standalone items of work. However, if you only use tasks with no parent case, then each task needs adequate information to convey what is expected of the Assigned To person. Additionally, if you only use tasks for an employee termination, then you must track each task to ensure that all work items are completed. That is why it may make more sense to create a case and then add tasks for the individual work items. When you have a parent and child relationship, it is easier to monitor the progress of the overall project.

In the scenario of an employee termination, we would create a case and then create tasks for the work that must occur, such as payroll and benefits tasks. For example, terminated employees must be closed out of the payroll system, and someone must ensure that the employee receives Cobra information. These items are more suited to tasks – they are part of a larger project, which is the employee termination case.

Tasks can be:

Related to a case.
This relationship then becomes a parent a child.
Linked to a workspace.
Linked to an associated dataform.