Hi Steve, Thank you for posting your thoughts. I'm a little confused as to why you need the task approval on Task 2. Is the Account Manager's approval just to verify that it was internal approved? Or are they looking at the proof itself and approving? For us, we keep all proof approvals as just proof approvals. The tasks in the project schedule are more for populating hot sheets and blocking hours for a resource. Here is a bit of our process (it is a little different because your Account Manager is the external person):
Task 1 would be called "Internal Review" and would be for a day or two and has all the internal resources who will be working on it (except for the Proofreader, we just put the role on that because we have a pool of proofreaders and who knows who will pick up the proof to review. In the proof, we put all of them but hit the checkbox for Only One Decision Needed)
When it is time for the Internal Review, the project manager uploads the proof (in a folder called Internal Reviews on the project document tab), attaches the Automated Workflow Template, and adjusts the people as needed.
Proof is routed. If changes are needed, changes are made and it is routed again.
Once the proof is completed approved by all parties, the closes out the Internal Review task for everyone. (It should be noted that our PMs use the Decisions notification from PHQ so they can see as each stage finishes, but you can use Final Decision to just be notified when the whole route is done)
Since they have a clean version of the asset now, the PM will upload the proof in the Client Review folder in the project's document tab and send to the client for review.
If changes are needed...
We normally expect a few rounds of changes from the client. So we already have in the schedule Task 3 as "Revisions and Internal Review 2", Task 4 as "Client Review 2", and so forth.
If we have used up all the "Revisions and Internal Review #" tasks, the PM will usually insert into the project schedule a new Internal Review task, get the revisions, and route internally before sending to the client again. We do this 1) so everyone gets an email notification that there is a new Internal Review to give them a heads up since this new route will be a high priority, and 2) it gives so an easy audit trail of how many times the client changed something on us that was not expected.
I mean, I guess it would be nice to have some automation, but since the tasks feed the hot sheets and client status reports, my PMs like to have some control over when a task is closed or not. Especially since there are a lot of variables in place. And since the PM is the one routing the proofs and making the approval workflows, they haven't complained about tasks not closing properly. Don't know if this was helpful, but thought I'd share. Anthony Imgrund FCB
