Assign Task to a Group of Workers

[MichaelGilbrook2]

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

[JonathanGroves]

Hi Craig.

Yes - I believe an exact copy (apart from date and time) would be of great value to many use cases.

Thanks and kind regards,

JG

[AdamInglis1]

I was hoping this ability already existed.  I have multiple crews running soil sampling tests along a linear development, conducting tens of thousands of tests using Survey123 forms.  I've prescribed the location that tests should occur at along the development but since the crews are leap frogging each other along the line it is nearly impossible to predetermine which of the 4-8 crew members should be assigned any particular tests.  

I posted this comment to the Ideas section as well, but I noticed that was started over a year ago:

https://community.esri.com/ideas/12463 

Cheers, 

Adam

[CraigGillgrass]

Adam,

Thanks for your feedback on Workforce.

We are working on some functionality that may help in your situation; it will allow workers to self-assign or pick-up unassigned work assignments.  The main use case we're satisfying is when a field worker has completed their work for the day and has some additional time to perform other work.  Those workers who have been given permission to view unassigned work assignments in the mobile app, will have the option to self-assign work.

While not exactly what you are asking for, from your description, I think this workflow could fit your scenario, as it's similar to other scenarios we've heard. You have a list of assignments to be done but it's the workers that decide which ones they perform.  We're targeting this functionality to be available later this year.

Craig

[AdamInglis1]

That does sound like it would work for my project, thanks for the follow-up Craig.  When the functionality is available it would be helpful if you added another category of Status so that we could differentiate Unassigned assignments from Free-for-All assignments.  Although you'll probably need a better term than Free-for-All for the status, that doesn't sound very professional.

Cheers, 

Adam

[CraigGillgrass]

Adam,

Glad to hear this functionality will be useful.

We don't have any plans to provide the ability for an assignment to be flagged for self-assign/pick-up (whether that be a new status or some other mechanism).  

Can you provide some info on the use case for this?

thanks, 

Craig

[AdamInglis1]

For example, on my current project, I have prescribed 8300 assignments locations, all of which are unassigned currently.  Of those 8300, approximately 1000 are ready for assignment, and the remaining 7300 will gradually become available for assignment over the next 3 months.  As they become available I would like to change their status to self-assign.  

If you simply add the ability for workers to self-assign unassigned tasks they might be lured to assignments that are not ready for collection.  I guess one solution would be for me to delete all the non-ready, unassigned tasks and only add them in when they become ready, but this solution would mess up the Operation Dashboard I have running that tracks total assignments and their status.

I could also envision a situation where some ready but unassigned tasks should not be self-assignable, while others ready unassigned tasks could be picked by any crews.

-Adam

[CraigGillgrass]

Adam,

"Of those 8300, approximately 1000 are ready for assignment," - What is it about the 1000 assignments that makes them ready for assignment?  How do workers know what assignments to pick-up?  Adding a property to new status to an assignment to indicate that it can be picked up is a big change to our workflow; I'm not against doing it, but would really like to dig into how/why this would be needed.

I agree that, removing the 7300 will skew the dashboard results.

"I could also envision a situation where some ready but unassigned tasks should not be self-assignable, while others ready unassigned tasks could be picked by any crews." - Do you have some examples for this?

thanks, Craig

[JustinConnerWR]

I have prepared a presentation to our municipal users group to go over the many limitations of Workforce for our organization and would be happy to share it if you're still doing discovery on Workforce.  For example, if work has to be done and someone is out sick, the replacement worker should have access to that individuals' tasks.  Single sign-on doesn't allow that.  If a task has several parts, Workforce doesn't keep track of the progress of that task and managers have too much responsibility (and no mobile app) to make Workforce worthwhile.  I have not yet found any use for which Workforce works OOTB; its only benefit is that I can add dropdowns on the fly with a hosted service.  We are building tons of Collector apps for staff to use instead and leaving all tasks unassigned, but I still can't easily track multi-part tasks.  Cartegraph, Munis, and other systems are probably more appropriate to most task management and hopefully could be integrated with Collector.

[CraigGillgrass]

Hi Alison,

Thanks for your post on Workforce, you've raised some very good points around workflows we do not currently support. Let me add some information to each one to give an idea of where we're headed:

For example, if work has to be done and someone is out sick, the replacement worker should have access to that individuals' tasks.  Single sign-on doesn't allow that. 

A Dispatcher is able to re-assign any work assignment from one worker to another to facilitate re-assigning work while Workers are out of the office or unavailable.  Assignments that are In Progress cannot be re-assigned; but that is something we're looking at.

If a task has several parts, Workforce doesn't keep track of the progress of that task and managers have too much responsibility (and no mobile app) to make Workforce worthwhile. 

Correct, providing a way to track tasks within an assignment was not part of the original spec for Workforce.  We know this is something users have asked for; but it's also something several business partners do quite well.  If this is a requirement for a particular workflow, Workforce may not be the app to use.

I have not yet found any use for which Workforce works OOTB; its only benefit is that I can add dropdowns on the fly with a hosted service. 

We know that Workforce isn't the solution for all scenarios, but we do have a large community who is finding value in it. I'd like to discuss your experience with Workforce in more detail and I've sent your a direct message with regards to that.

thanks,

Craig

[JustinConnerWR]

One downside of our approach (using Collector instead) is that it lacks the notification capability of using the dedicated Workforce app.  Please up-vote the idea here: Allow Assignments to be assigned to multiple workers