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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

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JMCM

Hello,

I understand that Workforce is now being deprecated in favor of future supporting functionality in the Field Maps app, but chiming in to say that my organization would also appreciate the ability to assign multiple concurrent users to one task. Thank you!

onurdemir5490

hello sir

We use Arcgis Workforce efficiently in our organization. Our problem is;

We want to assign 1 event to more people, not 1 person. This is important to us.

Is there a plan or method for this?

thanks

GSimons

Hi Craig - has there been any update to this functionality? It would really be a boon to our work across multiple sectors and clients. Thanks.

Andrew_Winchell

Did anything similar to this ever get implemented? It seems like a pretty commonly requested functionality but I haven't seen anything definitive on it still.

JustinBieler

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

TimoSjösten

We are also willing to start utilizing Workforce, but the lack of not being able to self-assign an unassigned work/task is holding us back. Any updates regarding this feature?

Another feature that would be handy for us is to be able to save, review and export the history data of the time periods when workers have been working and on break. As an employer, we need to be able to follow up the hours worked, so that workers do not exceed the allowed max limits.

Timo

cgillgrass

Hi James,

We have discussed this recently, but there are several other items in the backlog (such as Offline support) that we're working on which we need to complete prior to this capability being worked on.

This feedback does help us prioritize our upcoming work. I'd be happy to discuss your requirements on this capability in detail so we can ensure that they're included in the issue.

You can contact me through geonet with a direct message or on the workforce4arcgis@esri.com alias.

Craig

JamesHead-Mears1

Hi Craig,

If there was a possibility of moving the ability of assigning a task to a group from the backlog to an upcoming release. We are wanting to utilise this functionality and the overall function of Workforce for a meter reading solution.

cgillgrass

Hi Nathan,

There's been a few pieces of functionality discussed\requested in this thread, but I'm assuming you mean the request to Assign an assignment\task to a group of workers. This isn't slated for any of our upcoming releases, however the request is in our backlog.

We do publish a sneak peek of the requests we're currently working on in our doc site at:

General FAQs—Workforce for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

NathanBruce1

Any update on this functionality?

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.

JonathanGroves

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.

VirajP

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

cgillgrass

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

VirajP

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

cgillgrass

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

JonathanGroves

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

cgillgrass

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

KristinaFurukawa

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

cgillgrass

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 ?

Craig

MichaelGilbrook2

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

cgillgrass

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

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