Assign Task to a Group of Workers

MichaelGilbrook2 · ‎07-14-2017

I haven't started using Workforce yet, but I can't find the answer to my question in the available documentation. The typical use case for Workforce appears to involve sending an assignment to a particular worker. We'd like to make assignments (tasks) available to a group of workers, and allow the first available worker to accept the task. Is this an option within the Workforce app? Or would this require customization via the API? Thanks!

Michael

CraigGillgrass · ‎07-17-2017

Hi Michael,

Thanks for you question on Workforce. You're correct, the typical use case for Workforce involves sending an assignment to a particular worker. Workforce does not currently support associating assignments with more than 1 worker, but it is something that is in our Backlog, I've added your request to the issue.

There are some ways to approach this in Workforce today for certain use cases; they may apply to yours, are you able to go into any more detail on your use case?

thanks,

Craig

MichaelGilbrook2 · ‎07-17-2017

Hi, Craig, thanks for the prompt response. This particular use case has been described to me as resembling an IT Help Desk ticket system. We'd like to create a pool of workers at a water utility who can respond to field work requests, and allow up to 2 (but no more than 2) to "accept" a work order. I think the idea is that the field workers know their own availability better than someone who might be trying to dispatch them from a central office, so we'd rather have workers select the work orders they want to take on rather than having the work orders assigned. We don't have a current digital workflow for these workers, so we likely could adapt to any workflow that would allow this kind of work order issuance-acceptance behavior. Let me know if you need specific details to determine if your possible workaround is applicablle and I can pass those on to our project team to get more details.

Michael

CraigGillgrass · ‎07-18-2017

Michael,

Thanks for the additional information; this helps, I've added it to our issue.

I think the workflow would be satisfied by what we're discussing for a future release; however, we'd still only permit 1 worker to be associated with a work assignment. Are the workers performing the same type of work? Are they performing related, but dependent work (i.e., Worker A must complete their work prior to Worker B)?

Craig

JonathanGroves · ‎08-29-2017

A thought just occurred to me... If the teams were able to both log in to the same account (as a single Worker), then the Assignments would be available for either of them to complete, right? A tweak to your backend would be needed, Craig - because the location tracking showing Worker locations in the Dispatcher portal seems to only show the last-logged-in mobile device if you log more than one in. Perhaps it could show the location of all the Workers added in to that account. I guess there could be financial reasons why this might not be desirable, though

Hope this helps.

J

JustinBieler · ‎09-30-2021

Hi Craig,

We are currently experimenting with ArcGIS Workforce App in our hydrovac division. However, we just came across issue that an Assignment can only be given to one worker at a time? We have crews that work on a certain job/assignment. This is an extreme limitation which is surprising that this enhancement has not been implemented yet in regards to the needs of the entire construction/infrastructure industry and ArcGIS's advanced technology. Can you give me insight into this enhancement still being in the backlog? Will this ever be given serious priority in Esri? It seems to have been in backlog for 5 years? Need to know if this will ever get addressed before we dive in fully with ArcGIS. Plan was to slowly implement all aspects of data flow within our company under ArcGIS's umbrella, but with this big limitation in the app we are first experimenting with we may have to reassess. If you can put me in touch with whoever is part of decisions of which enhancements get implemented that would be great. Also, if you have any work-arounds that you or ArcGIS Tech can walk me through in regards to this that would be appreciated as well. ArcGIS's growth would expand more if this limitation was addressed, so I'm eager to understand why it's not a priority. Hope this finds you well.

Kindest Regards,

-Justin

KristinaFurukawa · ‎07-24-2017

Hi Craig,

Is there an ETA for this future release? I'm in a very similar situation to Michael, I work for a water/wastewater utility that is interested in using workforce/survey123 as a possible CMMS. Being able to assign work to a group and let field workers select assignments would be ideal and is one of the main missing capabilities that's holding us back right now. Some work assignments could potentially require more than 1 person so it would be helpful if there was a field that allowed the dispatcher to specify the preferred number of people for each assignment.

Thanks,

Kristina

CraigGillgrass · ‎07-25-2017

Hello Kristina,

We have a tentative ETA for this ability which is later this year.

However, as I mentioned in my reply to Michael, we'd still only permit 1 worker to be associated with a work assignment.

Craig

JonathanGroves · ‎08-18-2017

Craig - how about providing a function to easily duplicate an assignment so that a *copy* of the original could be assigned to the second person if it becomes clear that one worker will not be able to complete an assignment alone? I believe this would be a very powerful feature...

Hope this helps.

Jonathan

CraigGillgrass · ‎08-23-2017

Hi Jonathan,

Would this be an exact copy of the assignment? Meaning, all fields that a dispatcher can enter values for would have the exact same values, including Attachments?

The date/time fields would all be different, but anything that the Dispatcher would enter could be copied.

Craig