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Using tasks

The information in this topic is for people who fulfill one or more of the following support roles:

  • Service desk analysts
  • Group coordinators
  • Specialists

When working in BMC Service Desk, you access the Task Management system from the Incident Management feature.

A task is a unit of work that needs to be completed as a step in resolving an incident request. If the solution to an incident request involves more than one action, procedure, or process, consider dividing the solution into separate tasks. Dividing the solution into separate tasks can help you to better manage and to monitor the incident request as it moves toward resolution.

You can assign the tasks to the same person, to several people, or to a support group. The person or support group to whom the task is assigned is the task implementer.

When the group coordinator sets the task status to Work in Progress, the task implementers are notified of the tasks assigned to them by email, pager, or some additional means. After a task is assigned to the task implementers, they can log their progress as they complete each task.

You can use a task template to add a task to an incident request, or you can create an ad hoc task. Task templates are predefined tasks that you can quickly add to an incident request.

When using task templates, you can also add tasks that are divided into sub-tasks. A task that has sub-tasks is called a task group. The sub-tasks of the task group are called "children" of the task group.

An ad hoc task is any task that is not included in the list of task templates. You create ad hoc tasks manually.

Although tasks and task groups are related to specific incident request records, information about the tasks and task groups is stored on a separate Task form. You can relate an unlimited number of tasks or task groups to an incident request.

After a task or task group is assigned to a task implementer, the task implementer receives notifications to perform each of the assigned tasks.

 

Note

After adding tasks to a request, if you do not save the request, or due to other issues, if the request is not created, the tasks related to the request are not deleted. These tasks are saved as orphaned tasks in the system.

However, the escalation SYS:CLN:TA@00:05-StartCleanup which is run every 24 hours deletes any tasks that are in Inactive state longer than a defined retention period, and do not have any parent record associated with it.


Related topics

For information about using tasks, refer to the following topics:

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Comments

  1. Bhupesh Gupta

    Hi BMC Team - Can some one please explain whta is meant by following

     

    Note

    Tasks can have an Assigned status only if the associated incident request also has the status of Assigned.

    because as we work in tool , task only gets to assigned status, when incident is moved to In Progress status, until then the task remian in Stages status.

    However, till now what we have faced is all Tasks were in ‘Staged’ status when the parent incident had a status of ‘Assigned’. And we had to manually change the status of the incident to ‘In progress’, to change the status of the Task to ‘Pending’ or ‘Assigned’.

    Could you please explain to us if we are in the same page as mentioned in this document or if I am referring to limited content/info in this document. 

     

     

    Regards.

    Bhupesh

     

    Dec 18, 2013 09:17
    1. Hemant Baliwala

      Hi Bhupesh, 

      Thanks for sharing your feedback on phone today. 

      You are right the note is not valid and I have removed it. 

      Tasks can have an Assigned status only if the associated incident request also has the status of Work In Progress.

      Thanks, 

      Hemant

      Dec 19, 2013 07:17