Understanding Issues

This topic provides and overview of program and project issues and discusses:

  • Prerequisites

  • Issue management workflow

During project delivery, a critical factor in determining success is the reporting, escalation, management, and resolution of issues. To ensure a high probability for customer satisfaction and a successful project, issues must be documented, communicated, and prioritized.

You must define issue priorities, statuses, and types before you can create a program or project issue.

See Setting Up General Control Data.

Project managers, resources, and other users become involved entering, assigning, updating, and resolving issues. You can enable workflow to keep all parties notified throughout the life cycle of an issue. You specify issue management workflow options on the Installation Options - Program Management page during implementation. The three types of issue management workflow are:

  • Create Issue Notification workflow

  • Assign Issue Notification workflow

  • Update Issue Notification workflow

Create Issue Notification Workflow

If a user submits an issue, the system creates a worklist item and sends an email notification to the issue owner indicating that an issue has been raised. Typically, the issue owner is responsible for assigning the issue to a resource.

Note: If there is no issue owner, the system cannot trigger workflow and a warning message appears.

Assign Issue Notification Workflow

When you assign an issue to a resource, a message box gives you an option to trigger Assign Issue Notification workflow. If you select Yes, the system creates a worklist item and sends an email notification to the assigned resource. You can trigger Assign Issue Notification workflow every time you change the assigned resource. The system creates worklist entries and sends email notifications to both the previous and newly assigned resources.

Update Issue Notification Workflow

During installation, you can select the fields on an issue that, if changed, trigger a notification workflow to all interested parties. For example, you can activate Update Issue Notification workflow for issue status, but not for issue priority. The interested parties are notified if the status of an issue changes for any reason; however, they are not notified if the issue priority changes.

You can select any of these fields to trigger Update Issue Notification workflow to interested parties:

  • Issue Summary

  • Issue Description

  • Issue Priority

  • Issue Status

  • Resolution Description

  • Actual Resolution Date

  • Issue Notes

  • Issue Attachments

See Installation Options - Program Management Page.