Assignment Dependencies - that is the ability to make the starting of one assignment dependent on another assignment having a specific status, would be a very useful feature.
Consider the following scenario:
- Assignments A, B and C and assigned to workers 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
- Each assignment is given a Due Date.
- Assignment B is dependent on Assignment A having a status of Complete.
- Assignment C is dependent on Assignment B having a status of Complete or Declined.
Once a project is established with these interdependent assignments, the end user workflow would be something like the following:
- Worker 1 starts Assignment A, changing it's status to In-Progress.
- Workers 2 and 3 who are assigned Assignments B and C respectively (which are in turn dependent on Completion/Decline of Assignments A and B respectively) would see their assignments in the Workforce App, but the ability for them to start the assignments would be disabled and indicate that their dependencies have not yet been met.
- Worker 1 Completes Assignment A
- Worker 2 who is assigned Assignment B, which is dependent on Completion of Assignment A, would receive a notification that all dependencies for Assignment B have been met.
- Worker 3 who is assigned Assignment C, which is dependent on Completion or Decline of Assignment B sees no change. Assignment C still cannot be started and indicates that not all assignment dependencies have been met.
- Worker 2 Declines Assignment B
- Worker 2 who is assigned Assignment B (which has had all of its dependencies met) Declines Assignment B. Perhaps this is because they review the notes for Assignment A (which maybe they could do since it is a dependency of Assignment B) and they see something in Assignment A's notes that indicates Assignment B should not be performed. In any case, Worker 2 declines Assignment B.
- Worker 3 receives a notification that all dependencies for Assignment C have been met.
- Worker 3 Completes Assignment C
- Worker 3 reviews the notes of Assignment B and determines that Assignment C should be completed.
- Worker 3 completes Assignment C and marks it as such within the Workforce app.
This kind of interdependent assignment would allow organizations to use Workforce much more dynamically for longer running assignments such as construction projects, store openings, relocations or any other project that has lots of moving parts.
It doesn't need to be overly complicated either. I don't think there would be a need to allow assignments to be dependent on multiple assignments because using the workflow above, that could be achieved by creating "dependency-chains" (ie. Assignment D is dependent on Assignment C which is dependent on Assignment B which is dependent on Assignment A).
I realize this is actually a really, really big scope but I think the use case would add a ton of value to Workforce.
