Using the Task List

Task List

The frevvo Task List is an electronic listing of workflow tasks that require a user's attention. It is similar to an email inbox. Tasks appear on the task list for one of three reasons:

  • You clicked the save icon on a form or workflow which had the save/load feature enabled.

  • workflow was assigned to you to perform the next step in the workflow. 

  • A workflow was assigned to a role (i.e. Manager) to perform the next step in the workflow, and you have that role. 

View the Task List

There are several ways to view your Task List. Users must log in to frevvo to access their task list.

  1. frevvo app:

    1. Non-designer users will see the task list immediately upon logging in and it serves as their "home page".

    2. Users with the frevvo.Designer role must click on the My Tasks tab to view your tasks.

  2. In a frevvo portal, users will click on the Important Items tab to access the Task List. 

  3. It is also possible to embed the Task List on your own website

Tasks display in a small area on the left side of the screen. Clicking on an icon to perform a task-related function will display any associated screens to the right. Selected tasks will display with a blue background.

The Task List automatically reformats for optimal user experience on a mobile device.

My Tasks Menu

The My Tasks page lists your saved forms and workflows and all the workflows pending to be performed by you or pending to be performed by someone with one of your assigned roles. The header provides a menu of actions you can take:

  • Toggle the left side navigation bar.

Toggle the User Menu

The icon expands and contracts the user's navigation menu. When you click it, the left-side menu will appear with the option tabs available based on your frevvo role. Contracting the menu displays just the Task List and any selected tasks, giving you more screen real estate for your tasks.

  • Refresh the Task List. The expanded/contracted state of the refreshed task list will not change. 

The Task List does not automatically refresh. Users who rely on their Task List instead of Task Notification emails should manually refresh the list regularly.

  • Inbox displays a non-expanded task list.  

  • Recent displays all tasks you acted upon in the past 7 days. The task list is color coded. Tasks with a green background have been submitted, while those with a white background are pending/saved. A red background indicates tasks that have been aborted. 

  • Saved displays all tasks currently saved by you.

  • Search for tasks you have performed in the past.

  • Embed your task list in another web page.

Number of Tasks

When you view your Task List's  Inbox, Recent tasks, and Saved tasks, you will see "# to # of #" at the top of your task list. This gives you a quick, at-a-glance view of the total tasks shown in this view. Pagination is not currently supported, so you will always "1 to <total tasks> of <total tasks>" at this time. This will also display at the top of the screen on mobile devices. The number of tasks does not appear in Task List Search results.

Task Order

Your tasks will be grouped by workflow. For example, all expense reports waiting for manager approval will be listed under the Expense Report workflow and vacation requests listed under Leave Request. You can manually expand or contract the tasks for a specific workflow by clicking anywhere on the workflow title bar.

Task Details

Each task displays information to help the user identify and prioritize the task.

  • The frevvo user that sent the task to your Task List displays in the top left.

  • The date/time that the task was navigated to the user's task list is shown on the top right. Task List time is always displayed in the Task List and Audit Trail in the user's browser's local time zone.

  • The Task information message provides additional information about the task and appears in the bottom left. Task Information messages are configured by the designer for each Workflow Step, and can include run-time data from the workflow.

Pending Task Menu

The Tasks page displays a list of all your pending tasks by form/workflow name. Each task has its own menu of actions:

  • Quick View allows the user to review the task, add a comment, approve or reject, sign and pass it to the next user in the workflow without viewing the entire form. This icon will appear when Quick Approval is enabled by the designer.

  • Perform the task. This icon is red when the task is locked by you so that only you can perform it. No other users with your role can perform this task unless you unlock it. The icon is blue

    when the task is shared between multiple users, for example when the task is assigned to a role i.e. group of users.

  • Abort the task. The abort icon will only display if the user is a workflow administratortenant admin or a designer user. 

  • Modify allows you to send the task back to a prior step, abort, reassign or reset the task. The Modify icon will only display if the user is a workflow administrator, tenant admin or a designer user. 

  • Lock the task so you can perform it later. This is visible on tasks assigned to a role and allows a user to "take" the task.

  • Unlock the task and return it to the task pool. This is visible on tasks assigned to a role to the user who locked the task.

  • Audit Trail displays the event history for this specific task. For workflows, you will see all the users that have participated in the workflow thus far. For saved forms & workflows you will see an entry for each time you clicked save.

Not all tasks have all the action icons listed above. For example saved forms will not have the lock, unlock or modify icons because saved forms can only be performed by the user that saved them. They are inherently locked by you and cannot be unlocked back to any other user. Modify and Abort task icons only display on workflows, and only display if the user is a workflow administratortenant admin or the workflow's designer. 

When a task step is assigned to a role rather than a specific user, that task will simultaneously appear on the task list of all people with that role. The first person that clicks the perform or lock icon will in effect claim that task and all other users with this role can no longer perform this task. They will see the perform icon change to light blue and disabled as shown below to indicate that it cannot be clicked. View the audit trail or hover over the icons to display a tooltip with the username of the person who currently has this task locked, i.e. "locked by: sue".

Perform a Task

The Perform icon allows you to execute a task in your task list. This icon is red when the task is locked by you and it is blue when the task is available to multiple users to perform. Clicking Perform loads the task at it's current step in the display area. When you click the perform icon for a saved task, the form/workflow will load back into your browser with all the form field values as you left them when you last clicked save.

If the Perform icon is disabled, this indicates that the task is currently being performed by another person or that another person has clicked the lock icon to reserve the task. When this is the case, the only person that can complete this task is the person with the lock. View the audit trail or hover over a locked task to see who holds the lock. You can ask that person to unlock the task if you want to perform it. You can also ask your tenant administrator to unlock a task.

If you see the error "Access Denied. Authentication required. Are you trying to access a private form or flow?" when clicking the Perform icon, there may be an error in the task assignment, form/workflow Access Control, or Task List URL in a portal. Notify the form/workflow designer that you are receiving this error.

Quick Approval

The Quick Approval feature is particularly suited to workflows designed for mobile devices. The Quick View icon will only appear for tasks where Quick Approval is enabled by the designer. See Setup Quick Approval for the details. Clicking the  icon shows a Quick View of the task. Quick Approval provides an easy way to add a comment, approve something in your task list and pass the task to the next person, or reject the task and send it back to the previous step. 

Quick Approval does not lock the task.

Let's consider a Leave Approval workflow with two activities: the first step is a form which collects the pertinent information about the Leave request - employee name, starting date and duration of leave, etc. This step is filled out by any employee requesting a leave. The second step is a form that has a section named Manager Approval with a text area control for comments. The designer has setup the Quick Approval feature for this step in the workflow and assigned the role of manager to it. When a manager clicks the Quick View icon, the Manager step displays as shown:

You will see the following on the Quick Approval Screen:

  • A summary text area that can be used to give a description of the task at the top. This is configurable by the designer and can include form data. See Setup Quick Approval for the details.

  • A text area in which the person who is viewing the task can enter a comment. Entering a comment on the Quick View screen is the same as typing the comment directly into the form.

  • The Approve button flashes a "Please Wait" message and then displays "Task successfully approved" when clicked. The workflow moves to the next step. The task will disappear from your task list.

  • The Reject button returns the task to the step selected from the Prior Activity dropdown. A reason for the rejection must be provided. The message "Task successfully rejected" will display.

  • The Details button will display the form as usual. This action is identical to clicking on the perform this task icon. Clicking on the Details button will lock the task.

Audit Trail

Click the Audit Trail icon to view a task's event history. A new event is added to a task's history each time:

  • The form/workflow is saved

  • The form/workflow is submitted

  • The form/workflow is aborted

  • The workflow is continued and becomes pending for the next person

  • The workflow is modified and reset back to an earlier step and becomes pending again for the person that previously performed that step.

The Audit Trail has five columns that provide information about the event history.

Event Icon

Event State w/ Message

Performed By

Date/Time

Assigned To

Event Icon

Event State w/ Message

Performed By

Date/Time

Assigned To

The Event Icon helps you visualize the various events.

Describes the state of the task, i.e. Pending, Saved, Submitted along with the History Message configured for the step.

The user or email who performed the task.*

The date and time the task was performed are displayed in the user's browser's local time zone.

The user, email, or role to whom the task is now assigned and awaiting action.* 

*The Performed By and Assigned To columns truncate the name of the user, role, or email but you can see the full name by hovering your cursor over the text.

In the event an anonymous task for a form in one tenant (Tenant A) is performed by a user who is logged into a different tenant (Tenant B), the audit trail will only show "Anonymous" or their email (if assigned to their email address) rather than their user id. This security measure prevents data from being shared between two separate tenants.

Event Icons

The event icons provide information about what event occurred at this step. 

  • The task was or can be performed.

  • The task or form was saved.

  • This task was rejected by the user or reset to this step by the workflow admin. This will display the Reject/Reset Reason message instead of the Task History message.

  • This task was submitted.

  • The task is locked by a user.

  • The task was aborted.

  • The task has been reassigned to another user or role by an administrator. This will display the Reassignment Reason message instead of the Task History message.

  • Users can view any completed task that they performed. Refer to View My Task for the details

Event State

The event state describes each audit trail entry. See also the Submission Status documentation.

  • SAVED: This will return only those tasks which were created when users clicked the Save button on the form/workflow to save their partially filled forms

  • PENDING: This will return all tasks which are pending, meaning someone else put these tasks in the users task list

  • SUBMITTED: This will return all tasks which are completed, i.e. the form/workflow for which this task was created has been submitted

  • ABORTED: This will return all the tasks that were deleted/aborted so the form/workflow never got submitted

  • WAITING: The WAITING status can be used to find workflow tasks that have an HTTP activity. Workflows designed with the pre-v8 Email/Anonymous Task step will also show the task in a WAITING state. 

Audit Trail Examples

These examples will show some of the different scenarios you might see displayed on the Audit Trail.

Leave Request

Here is the Audit Trail for a Leave Request form. This shows that the workflow was started by Tom, and assigned to Jerry. Jerry rejected it back to Tom asking for more information. Tom saved his step, then updated it and sent the workflow forward to Jerry, who approved it and sent it to the Role "Finance." Sue, who has the Finance role, saved this step to her own task list, then later performed her step. Since Sue's was the final step, the workflow was submitted.

This next Leave Request was submitted by Tom, and assigned to Jerry. Since Jerry is on PTO, the workflow admin, Megan, reassigned the task to Trevor. However, then Tom was feeling better and asked the workflow admin to abort the task altogether. 

Mortgage Application

Here is the event history for a Mortgage Application workflow that was initiated by an anonymous user ("By:Anonymous "). Next the task was performed by the manager Jack Smith. Next supervisor Sam Spade rejected the task back to the step previously performed by the manager. This workflow now resides on the manager's Task List. This is Jack Smith's task list view, so Jack has the View My Task icon on the last step he completed, the second row in the audit trail.

Here is the event history for the same workflow as above. After the reject, the task was performed again by manager Jack Smith and is now on the task list of all users having the role Finance. Now the designer has configured Task History messages on each step, which provides more detail including form data.

Supervisor Sam Spade, who is assigned the Finance role, performs the final step in the workflow and submits it. We are now seeing Sam Spade's task list view, so notice that the View My Task icon appears on the last completed step he performed, which is the last row of the audit trail.

Here is the event history of a 2nd Mortgage Application workflow. The workflow was initiated by an anonymous user (John Johnston) and then approved by manager Jack Smith. The tenant admin, Carrie Castle, then aborted the task. Abort removes the task from everyone's task list. This task can still be found by any user that performed one or more steps or by the tenant admin via Task List Search.

Anonymous Steps and the Audit Trail

If you have workflows that use the Email/Anonymous Task Step (created prior to v8 and not transitioned to the new Email Assignment feature) click the link below to see how these tasks appear in the Audit Trail.

  • Workflows designed with the pre-v8 Email/Anonymous Task step will show the task in a WAITING state, as shown in the first two images below.

  • Workflows designed with the v8.0+ assign the step to an Email Address feature show the step performed by the customer (anonymous user) in a Pending state and displays the Email address it was sent to.

View My Task

Users logged into frevvo are able to view workflow steps that they performed by clicking the View My Task icon in the Audit Trail. When you are viewing your task, you may notice the read-only view watermark. This is to remind you that you can view the information but can not make changes to it. You will not see this icon for rejected tasks, tasks that have been reset/reassigned/aborted by a tenant or workflow admin, or tasks that have been saved to your Task List.

Additionally, users who can view the task (participant, workflow admin, or tenant admin) and have View Submission or Edit Submission permissions will see the  View icon for all tasks and may click it for the same read-only view of the workflow.

The Navigation Toolbar will always be visible on the read-only view to enable navigation to prior steps, even if it is disabled in use mode.

Let's say you submitted a Leave Approval Request to your manager and you want to view the information that you entered. You are not sure if your manager has approved it or if your request is pending your Manager's approval (pending state).

Here is how you find it:

  1. Log in to your frevvo tenant.

  2. Click on My Tasks (or if you are using a frevvo portal, click the Important Items tab, then Task List.)

  3. Click the

     Search icon

  4. On the "Find task for which I am" field, leave the default selection "Participant."

  5. Type a keyword from the name of the workflow you are looking for, i.e. "time". A list of possible matches appears. Select th