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Help with a workflow

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Level 10
Hi Community, We have for our IT projects a standard design document that goes to a review board. The process currently is: PM attaches design doc to task & sets status to 'Complete - Pending Approval' Review Board members receive notification of approval; they pre-read doc before the board PM presents design doc at the Review Board. Actions usually result and PMO posts these as an update on the task, tagging the members PM gets design doc updated and attaches to task, and posts update saying they've done so/which actions they've addressed Sometimes a back-and-forth where the actions are not quite dealt with & further re-work of the design doc is required Review Board members approve the task The problem is that because there is a single "Review Board approval" approval step, the Review Board members can't easily tell from Home/My Work if a task is: Awaiting completion of actions and they can't yet approve, or Genuinely awaiting their approval as all actions are completed We can't change the status of the task because that would cancel the task approval process. My thought was to insert a new approval step in the process called "Pending Comments" and sit that with the PMO, who will only approve the stage once they've consulted with the Review Board that everyone is happy, and then it would go to an additional new step called "Doc Approval". I floated that with the board and they said they still want to have visibility of all tasks even if some are in the 'Pending Comments' stage - which means I'll probably have to create a report, even though I want them to be able to stay in My Work/Home :(( Thoughts? edit: we're using Workfront stand-alone, no proofing etc. add-ons Thanks!! Jamie Hill JLL
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Level 10
Hi Jamiie, Tough corner you've been painted into. But I might have an Open The Door Behind You solution. And (turns out) I'm going to go for a run on sentence personal best to answer, so if you're reading aloud, grab a deep breath... To draw attention to the fact that a Task's 'Complete - Pending Approval' Status has some lingering items documented as Task Updates that require action, but without changing its Status, which would disturb the Workflow), given that the board still wants to have visual indication of those Tasks that are (conceptually) in the 'Pending Comments' stage as opposed to those Tasks that have not yet been reviewed (and noting - to confirm - that Tasks that in due course have "made it" through the Approval by having no such further open Updates that require attention would at that time be simply moved to the Complete status), in order to meet your desire of keeping the users on Home/My Work, given that Home/My Work is still evolving and has limited visual customization choices, and suspecting that raising Isses in this situation would be paradoxically heavy-handed but yet easy to overlook, I would suggest you adopt a tried and true convention that I continue to use on my workplans when trying to ensure end users are aware that an item still has work remaining on it: in such cases simply agree to prefix the Task name with "TODO" to draw attention to the Updates that require attention, then remove it once they have been attended to, effectively transfering responsibility of the Task between those who require action (by adding TODO) and those who perform that action (and confirm so by removing TODO). ...and breathe again! Sorry about the answer length, sorry that the anser is so crude (but effective), and sorry I haven't shared "https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3FD98t_nwNM">this related famous Canadian commercial sooner. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

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Level 10
Hi Doug, I like your quick and dirty (and simple) solution! Though I did try it one of our tasks that is pending comments and I got the following error: Jamie Jamie Hill JLL

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Level 3
Since you have an approval workflow, why not create a new status, "Pending Comments", equated with "New". In your approval workflow, upon rejection, have it set to the "Pending Comments" status. Then, if the board has comments, they can reject the task, which will send it back and reset the assignment records so they will get notified. Dale Whitchurch Arthrex Inc

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Level 10
Thank you Dale. I had a look at your idea in the preview environment and it seems that to use a status in an approval process (e.g. "Pending Comments"), I have to lock it for all groups -- and I don't think I could agree with all regions on our instance to accept that new status being shown on their tasks :disappointed_face: Jamie Hill JLL