Managing Tasks in Oracle Applications Framework

This chapter covers the following topics:

Using the Personalized Task Search and Result Page

Use the Personalized Task Search and Result page to perform a simple or an advanced search for standalone tasks, such as personal to dos, and to view the search results in the Results region with tabular summary format. In addition, you can customize the search result display options, save searches, and modify personalized search views.

You can perform the following tasks in this page:

Currently, this page is integrated with Oracle Sales for sales agents to create standalone tasks, such as personal to dos. Please note that the creation of new personal tasks should be done in this summary page, as it is an updatable table.

See Using the Task Summary Contextual Region for content sensitive tasks.

Viewing Search Results

In the Results region, you can view tasks that are retrieved from your default search displayed in the tabular summary format. This table includes the task Subject, Due Date, Type, and Status fields. If you have appropriate access privileges, you can update task attributes using the drop-down lists, update task details, and delete a task. Otherwise, these attribute fields will be displayed in read-only format, and the Update More Details and Delete icons are disabled.

Click the Personalize button to access the Personalize Views page where you can modify existing views and change the default view.

Creating Personalized Task Views

In addition to simple search and advanced search, Task Manager developed for Common Application Calendar also allows you to use the Create Task View window to create personalized task views that contain your frequently used search criteria, column display options, and sort criteria.

To personalize your task views, enter the following search criteria:

Modifying Personalized Views

After saving your personalized task views, you can use the Personalize Views page to view all task views, change the default view, and redefine your saved searches if necessary.

Before updating your task view, you can select the view name link to execute the query and retrieve the search results in the Results region displayed along with the Simple Search region.

Using the Task Summary Contextual Region

Use the Task Summary contextual region to display tasks created for source objects and related objects, such as service requests, sales, leads, or opportunities, in the tabular summary format containing task subject, due date, type, and status. If you have appropriate access privileges, you can update these fields using the drop-down lists. Otherwise, these fields will be displayed in read-only format.

With appropriate privileges, you can also view a selected task, update the task details, and delete the task if the View More Details, Update More Details, and Delete icons are enabled.

While adding a new task using the "Add Another Row" button, you can only delete the new task once it is added to the table. You cannot view or update any existing tasks because the View More Details and Update More Details icons are disabled.

Creating Tasks

Use the Create Task window to create a task.

Depending on business needs of each integrated application, different task regions are implemented in the Create Task window. As a result, you might not see every task feature in your screens unless the integrated application has implemented them.

For example, when creating a sales related task, you can see the customer contacts region. This contacts region will not be visible if the task is created for a sales agent as a personal to do. For Service Applications, when creating a service related task in Service Online, you might find the Dates region in the task screen specifically used to manage time sensitive work assignments for service engineers. This region allows entry of multiple dates (planned, scheduled, and actual) for tracking purposes. This dates region might not be used in Sales Applications.

Related Topics

Using the Task Header or General Region

Using the Details Region

Using the Owner and Assignee Region

Using the Contacts Region

Using the Schedule or Dates Region

Viewing the Related Items Region

Using the Repeating Region

Using the Add Note Region in OA

For information about the Attachments region, please see Using Attachments, Oracle Applications User's Guide.

Using the Task Header or General Region

Use the task header or general region to enter basic task information including subject, type, and status. Besides these basic task fields, tasks created for different source objects require additional fields to address different task needs.

Detailed information for each field in this region is addressed as follows:

Using the Details Region

Use the Details region to specify additional task information.

For a sales related task, you can see the following fields in this region:

You can also see source and customer information displayed as read-only text if it is a contextual task. For example, the source information, Lead: iAS Lead, and customer, Business World, can be displayed for a contextual task created for a sales lead name iAS for a customer Business World.

For a contextual task created for a service request, in addition to the task description, you can see the Task Closure Required check box that restricts the closure sequence of a task and the related service request. Select this check box to specify that this contextual task must be closed first before closing the service request.

Using the Owner and Assignee Region

Use the Owner and Assignee region to identify the owner and assignees for a task.

A Task Assignee

To add assignees to the task, click the Add Another Row button to enter assignee information.

For the Type field, all the resource types with the usage of RESOURCES are displayed in the drop-down list if the assignee mappings do not exist. Otherwise, only the mapped assignee and owner types will be displayed in the list. All other unmapped types will not be in the list.

Other Fields in the Region

After identifying task owner and assignees, the following fields are populated:

You can delete assignees in this region, but you must have one owner for your task.

Using the Contacts Region

Use the Contacts region to manage customer contacts for a task. This region is only available for a sales related contextual task that has customer information identified. It is not used for a standalone task, such as a personal to do, created through Oracle Sales for a sales agent without a specific customer.

The Search fields on the contact list of values page when you click the "Add Contact(s)" button are rendered based on the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) Data Quality Management match rule. For more information, see Data Quality Management documentation provided by TCA to define match rules.

Click the Add Contacts button to access the TCA search page to select a contact. Once a contact is selected, the primary job title, e-mail, phone, and address are displayed automatically. If there are multiple contacts for a task customer, you can select one of them to be the primary contact by clicking the Set as Primary button.

Using the Schedule or Dates Region

Task Manager uses the Schedule region including the Dates region for service related tasks to record time sensitive information including planned effort, planned effort unit of measure, as well as planned and scheduled start and end dates.

Task Dates

Task start and end dates are essential fields for service related tasks. To effectively manage service related task assignments, you must enter either one of the following fields:

Viewing the Related Items Region

Use the Related Items region to display references information including reference type, name, description, and date added in the read-only format for a task or an appointment.

Currently, this region is only integrated with the Appointments screens, and it is not used in Tasks.

Using the Repeating Region

Use the Repeating region to create and update recurrences for an appointment. You can create these recurrences with different frequencies including daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

Note: The Repeating region is currently integrated only with the Create Appointment and Update Appointment pages. It is not used in Tasks.

To define repeating appointments, you must identify the following elements:

To create repeating appointments in the Create Appointment window, first specify the repeating frequency in the Frequency Type field using the drop-down list. You can select daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly for your repeating appointments.

Daily Repeating

In the daily repeating region, you must define how frequently the appointment will be repeated in the Repeat Every number of Days field. For example, repeat every two days.

The daily repeating start date is the same date as the date for an appointment, and its end date is determined by either of the following fields:

You must enter either the end date in the Repeat Until field or the number of occurrences in the End After Occurrence(s) field to set the end date for the repeating appointments. For example, repeat every two days for an appointment starting on July 22, 2003 with 4 occurrences. As a result, the repeating appointments are scheduled on July 22, 2003, July 24, 2003, July 26, 2003, and July 28, 2003.

Weekly Repeating

For the weekly repeating, in addition to specifying how frequently the appointment will be repeated in the Repeat Every number of Weeks field, you also need to identify on what weekdays the appointment is to be repeated using check boxes. By default, the weekday check box of the appointment start day is automatically checked. For example, if your appointment starts Wednesday on March 3rd, 2006, then the Wednesday check box will be automatically checked by default when weekly repeating is selected. You can also select more weekdays if needed, such as repeat every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday each week.

Like daily repeating, the start date of the weekly repeating is the same date as the date for an appointment. The end date of the weekly repeating is determined by either the end date specified in the Repeat Until field or by the number of occurrences in the End After Occurrences field.

Monthly Repeating

Enter the repeating pattern by specifying how frequently the appointment is to be repeated in the Repeat Every number of Months field, as well as specifying to repeat on what particular days or dates in a month for the repeating.

The start date of monthly repeating is the same date as the date entered for an appointment. You must specify an end date by either entering a date in the Repeat Until field or the number of occurrences in the End After Occurrences field.

Yearly Repeating

Like all other repeating appointments, you must define how frequenlyt the appointment will be repeated in the Repeat Every number of Years field. For example, repeat every two years.

In addition, specify the repeating pattern by selecting either one of the following radio buttons:

The start date is the same date as used for an appointment. You must specify an end date by either entering a date in the Repeat Until field or the number of occurrences in the End After Occurrences field.

Updating Repeating Appointments

When you update a repeating appointment, you have three options: