Deadline, in addition to submitting work on time, encourages teams to prioritize work and manage it effectively by adding a sense of urgency.

You can set a deadline for your tasks and processes, as well as alerts based on the progress of this deadline.

You can configure the deadline according to a quantity of time (minutes, hours or days) using the “constant value” type option, or a date (date and time or only date) using the “field” type option.

The duration is conditioned to a calendar, which may be standard for all processes or for one in particular. In addition to working hours, the calendar allows you to configure holidays as well.

To make it easier to manage these deadlines during the execution of processes, you can also define triggers based on the progress of the deadline. You can configure these triggers for a task or the entire process. Here are some examples:

• At 30% of the process deadline, send an email.
• At 50% of the deadline for a task, change the responsible.
• At 70% of the process deadline, change the level of the deadline (normal, delayed or critical).

Work Calendar

One of the first steps in the configuration of deadlines is setting a standard work calendar. As stated above, HEFLO will take into account this calendar when counting deadline time. To edit the default calendar: 

1. Go to the Manage Environment page.
2. Click the “Edit default calendar” button.
   
3. On the default calendar page, complete the availability on weekdays and list the holidays.
   

To set the work periods in each day just drag the mouse on the grid and mark the desired interval. After you release the mouse button, it saves the period automatically. You can edit it as well by clicking on it, and then you can set the work periods using the clock.

To replicate periods of a day to other days of the week, click the copy icon that exists in the week-day header.

Also on the calendar, it is possible to define holidays, which can be recurrent over the course of several years.

In addition to the default calendar, you can create a special calendar for a process or a group of processes. In this case:

1. In the process editor, click outside of the process and open the “Properties” tab.
2. Scroll down to the “Deadline” part, and expand it.
3. On the “Calendar” section choose amongst the existing calendars by clicking on the downward arrow,
   
   you can edit them by clicking on the pencil icon. If you do not have any calendar yet, or these calendars do not fit your needs, click on the “+” button to create a new calendar.
   
4. You will be redirected to a “New calendar” page, give it a name that gives you the option to know if you can reuse it for other processes, and set the working hours that goes with this process.
5. To set the work periods in each week just drag the mouse on the grid and mark the desired interval. After you release the mouse button, it saves the period automatically.

Deadline Setup

As stated earlier, you can configure a deadline for a process or a task in a process.

Set a process deadline

A process deadline is a limited time interval in which the process as a whole must be executed, before the due time expires. To set a process deadline: 

1. Enable the process automation.
2. Click outside the pool.
3. Click the properties tab on the right and scroll down to the “deadline” part.
4. In the “Process deadline” section click on the downward arrow to choose amongst the existing deadlines.
   
   You can edit them by clicking on the pencil icon, or click on the “+” button to create a new deadline.
   
5. In the deadlines dialog, enter a name for the deadline and an initial date and click “Create”.
   
6. Upon clicking on the “Create” button, the deadline dialog will expand, enter the type of the deadline and confirm.
   

For deadlines of the type “Field,” it is necessary to select a field in the process that defines the deadline. When you run an instance of the process, and select a date in this field, it will be setted as the process deadline, then HEFLO will count remaining time till the due time.

In the “Constant Value” option, you must define a constant period for the deadline of the process. In this case, you will choose a constant period of minutes, hours or days, HEFLO will use this period to define the deadline of the work item created.

A deadline can be reused in several processes. For this, just select the same deadline in the deadline field.

Process deadlines can be versioned, and the selection will be made automatically based on the start date of the agreement.

Set a deadline task

A task deadline is a limited time interval in which a specific task must be done before its due time expires. It is used to ensure that there won’t be any delay in critical tasks, and therefore in the whole process. To set a task deadline:

1. Select the desired task.
2. Click the properties tab on the right.
3. Scroll down to the “Deadline” part and expand it.
   
   
4. Select the “Method of calculation of deadline” that matches your process needs.
   
   
   

Depending on the option selected in the method of calculation of deadline, additional fields will be displayed. See below for all ways to calculate task deadlines:

• Instance field: In this case, you can include in the process a field that will determine the quantity of time. This field can be numeric (number of minutes, hours or days) or a date time limit.
  
• Percentage of the process deadline: this option defines the tasks’ deadline as a percentage of the total period of the process deadline. For example this task’s due time is when the process deadline reaches 80%.
  
  
• Constant value: in this case you set a constant value of type: minutes, hours or days. HEFLO will use the chosen value to set the deadline for this task.
  
  

Alerts and Triggers

Triggers are actions that occur during the progress of a deadline. You can create a trigger for the deadline of a process or task.

When setting up the trigger, it is necessary to state a percentage of progress of the deadline,  It is also necessary to determine one or more actions.

Actions can be of the following types:

• Email: in this case, the trigger sends an email. Also, you can configure the content of the message and the recipients.
• Data update: This option allows you to modify instance data, as fields by setting values with specific data, change the responsibility or cancel the work item.
• Slack: in this option, the trigger sends a Slack message.  You must do an integration to use this feature. More information: How to create a Slash Command to start processes.
• Notification: In this case, the trigger will send a notification. You can also fill the information with the recipient data.

Click the “Gear” icon to customize the selected action type(s).

To configure triggers in the process, follow these steps:

1. Click outside the pool.
2. Click the properties tab on the right side.
3. Scroll down to the “Deadline” part.
4. In the “Process deadline” section, click on the pencil icon to edit the deadline.
   
5. In the deadline configuration dialog, click the “Configure triggers” button.
6. In the “Edit Process Triggers” dialog, click the “Add trigger” button.
7. In the “Trigger Rules” dialog, enter the percentage and choose an action.
   1.  We will use the email option as an exemple, so in the “Trigger Rules” dialog, enter the Email action and click on the gear icon as shown below:
   2. In the Send Email configuration dialog:
      
      1. Choose the email template that will be sent. If no template matches your needs, then you will need to create one. For more information: Creating email templates and attachments.
      2. Choose the recipient type between “participant” and “work item field”.
         • If you choose “participant”, then you must choose the desired participant definition in the “Recipients” field.
         • If you choose “work item field”, then you must choose the desired field in the “Recipients Field” field. The field selected must be part of the process in which the rule will take effect.
      3. Optionally, you can add a carbon copy address.

Steps 7.1 and 7.2 may vary depending on the type of action configured.

Triggering by task follows the same sequence of steps. Just select the task and locate the trigger button on the properties tab and follow the steps seen previously.

Deadline View

The remaining time of the work item is always displayed in the Work Item general tab. The time shown is considering the calendar applied.

In this same control, it is possible to perform the suspension of the deadline if the user concerned has a role that authorizes him to use this functionality. By default, users of administrator type or owner of the process concerned are authorized to use this functionality. You can also create a specific role that authorizes the use of this functionality.

• To learn more about the roles: Roles on HEFLO.
  
• To learn more about giving access to this feature: Configure permission to suspend a deadline in a role.
  

To suspend the deadline, the user, duly authorized, must inform a reason, It will be saved in the “Suspension history tab” of the “Historical” feature of the work items.

You can resume the suspended deadlines by clicking on the “ continue” button in the work item. To learn more about this option: Suspend a work item and current tasks deadline.

The task deadline is displayed in the group header (when the task is in progress) or inside the grouping (when the task is completed).

The deadline information can also be viewed in the work item listing. To do this, just select one of the following columns in the field selector of the task list, as shown below.

You can also add this information to different widgets in your dashboards by selecting them in the edition of the relevant data source.