Completion Policies, Workflows, and Resolving Actions
Your administrator sets a completion policy on each step in a workflow. This policy determines when the step is considered complete and how the workflow proceeds.
Completion Policies
The primary completion policies include:
- Single: Any single user can accept and complete a task, moving the record to the next step.
- All-Majority: All assignees must respond, and a majority must agree on the action to move forward. If there is no clear majority, the system uses a resolving action to determine the next step.
- All-Consensus: All assignees must respond and agree unanimously on the next step. If there is no consensus, the system uses a resolving action to determine the next step.
Notes:
- If the Completion Policy is set to All-Consensus and Auto Creation is enabled, automatic creation of the applicable items begins only after all assignees have agreed on the action.
- For All-Majority, if Advance workflow when next step is determined is enabled, the workflow moves forward as soon as the majority agrees, even if not all have acted.
- For All-Consensus, if Advance workflow when next step is determined is enabled, the workflow moves forward as soon as one assignee completes the resolving action, two assignees take different actions, or all assignees take the same action (which might differ from the resolving action).
- For both All-Majority and All-Consensus, if an assignee is working on a draft and consensus or majority is reached, the draft is deleted, but edits or new line items are retained in the next step.
Status definitions:
The statuses are internal to the system and are used only to display the status of the workflow step relative to the completion policy.
Status | Description |
|---|---|
Not Started | The assignee has not accepted the task. |
In Progress | The assignee has accepted the task. |
Locked | For single completion policy, other assignees lose access after one accepts. |
View Only | User was cc'd on the task but not expected to act. |
Completed | Task finished with no resolving action needed. At any step, a task can have only one Completed status. |
Closed | Task finished, but a resolving action was triggered. The step is revisited as needed. The step the action moves to for resolution shows a status of Not Started. The number of times the task shows a Closed status indicates the number of times the step has been revisited. |
Workflows
The completion policy governs the workflow progression, dictating when steps complete and transition to subsequent steps.
- When a majority or consensus is achieved (depending on policy), the workflow moves to the next step as defined.
- If there is only one action available, the system defaults to it, updates relevant users/groups in the To and CC fields, and may prompt the user if changes are detected in the assignee list after filters or conditional routing are applied.
- Selecting Send does not advance the record if conditional routing is unresolved. After resolving the list of users, you must select Send again.
- As described earlier, the Advance workflow when next step is determined option controls whether the workflow moves forward even if some assignees do not act on a step or if they decline a task. If they decline, they are removed from the count to determine majority. This prevents delays in waiting for all users to act before moving to the next step.
Example: Four assignees are on a step. Two take the same action, and one declines. With the majority reached, the record moves to the next step if the Advance workflow when next step is determined option is enabled.
- The Workflow Progress tab updates to reflect the status and action for all users who acted on a step. For users who did not act, the status is set to Closed and the action remains blank.
Resolving Actions
A resolving action determines the path a workflow follows when agreement is not reached per the completion policy (for example, lack of majority or consensus). The workflow can:
- Move to a following step
- Return to a previous step
- Branch to a conditional step, re-addressing the task
The resolving action step must be completed before the workflow can continue. Assignees can include both original and new task assignees.
Last Published Friday, October 17, 2025