Create General Tasks

Use the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar to create general tasks for yourself or assign them to other people. General tasks help you manage quick and simple workflows that don’t need any further review and that aren’t related to system activities.

Context

You can create a general task to let one or more assignees perform data entry in your planning process, or to complete any other task you'd like to manage in the calendar.

General tasks help you to monitor progress on a project. They can be for you alone or you can assign them to one or more colleagues. You can even assign tasks to colleagues who are not yet members (do not have SAP Analytics Cloud accounts). Use their email address and they will receive information on how to get an account.

Task owners or assignees can add work files to a task: These can be stories, analytic applications, or URLs. The assignees enter data directly in the story or analytic application and submit their task from there. If multiple assignees work on the task, only one of them needs to submit the task to complete it.

You can define the start date according to your needs:

Set the start date and time. Need to schedule something on a recurring basis? You can set up recurrence, and change individual occurrences as needed.
Let the task start once another calendar event reaches a certain status (Successful, for example), or several other calendar events reach one of the defined statuses.
If your task is grouped within a parent process, let it start at the same time as its parent process.

Learning Tutorial

Click through the interactive tutorial illustrating how to create a general task for data input in step-by-step instructions (3:00 min); the tutorial is captioned exclusively in English:

[To start the interactive tutorial, click here or on picture]

Procedure

In the Calendar, select (Create) General Task.
Provide an Event Name.

Select the start condition:

Start By	Description
Time	Set the Start Date.
Dependency	The start date of your task depends on other events and their status. Select  Add Events to define which events your task shall depend on. Under Statuses, select which status these events need to meet before your task can start. Note All of the selected events need to meet any of the chosen statuses before your task can start. For more information, see Define Dependencies Among Calendar Events.
Parent Process	Your task will start at the same time as its parent process. Note If you haven't added a parent process to your task yet, you'll be asked to select one.

Set the Due Date.

Optional: If the start condition is set to Time, you can set up recurrence: Select

Add Recurrence and then fill in the settings.

Option	Description
Recurrence Pattern	Set the task to repeat by Minute, Hour, Day, Week, or Month.
Every	Set the recurrence frequency. For tasks that occur in a minute interval, enter a number between 5 an 9999. The minimum interval is every 5 minutes, the default interval is every 30 minutes. Note A high recurrence frequency like every 5 minutes can put extra load on the system and may slow it down. For tasks that occur in a weekly interval, pick a specific weekday. For tasks that occur in a monthly interval, define the day of the month. For example, you can set the task to occur on the 5th day every 2 months. When you enter `31` as day of the month, the event will occur on the last day of the month (February 28th, March 31st, April 30th, for example).
Start Date of First Occurrence	Set the start date and time for the first occurrence.
Due Date of First Occurrence	Set the due date and time for the first occurrence.
End Recurrence by	Set when the recurrence pattern ends: End Date: fill in the end date details. Repetitions: set the number of repetitions; this includes the first occurrence. No End Date

Note

You can't add recurrence when a parent process is selected.

Optional: To structure your workflow, you can add the task to a process:
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process.
- If you selected a process in the calendar before creating this task, this process will be selected as a parent process by default. You can remove or edit it to add a different parent process if needed.
Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

If you've set up recurrence for your task, you can't add it to a parent process.

To see the relationship between tasks and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.
Select Create.

The task is added to the calendar and opened in the Details panel.

If you created a recurring task, the Details panel will open with the Series tab selected instead of the Task tab.
Optional: In the title area, you can select a different style for the task or create a new style.

The style is a user-specific setting. The selected style is only visible to you.
Optional: Add work files (stories or analytic applications) to the task, or provide a URL.
- As the owner, you upload a work file or add a URL.
  
  You can add a URL by selecting Add URL from the dropdown menu.
  
  The assignees can edit the work file, and they can also add more work files.
- As the owner, you don't provide a work file or a URL.
  
  The assignees upload their own files to Work Files. While they are working on the task, only they can see each other's work files. When one of the assignees has submitted their work, everyone involved can see the finished work files.
  
  Note
  
  Reviewers, either working in composite tasks or assigned to review tasks, can’t add any work files to the tasks.
Note

The assignees can work in the attached story or analytic application and submit their work, or decline the task directly from an integrated calendar task menu bar.

In analytic applications and optimized stories, you can use the technical object CalendarIntegration to configure the application individually with calendar task APIs. For example, you could switch off the calendar toolbar and put the actions (decline, submit) on separate buttons customized to your users' needs. For more information, see Use Calendar Integration Technical Objects and Calendar Task APIs.
Optional: Under Description, you can add some details or instructions you'd like to share.
Optional: To set reminders, select Add Reminders and fill in the required time settings.
Optional: If you want the task to start automatically, select the appropriate option depending on the chosen start condition:
- Activate the event at start date automatically: The task will be activated automatically at the selected start date.
- Activate the event automatically once any status of the dependencies is met: Once all selected events your task is dependent on have met any of the selected statuses, the task will be activated automatically.
- Activate the event automatically once its parent process starts: The task will be activated automatically at the start date of its parent process.
If you want to edit your task before sending it out to others, do not enable this option.

Note
You must have one assignee before you can activate the task.
Optional: Decide whether to set the task to status Canceled on the due date: If so, select Cancel the task on the due date automatically.
Optional: With the context, you define which data your event refers to.In the Context section, select a planning model and some filters.
The filters are applied to the work files of the event.
Note
The transfer of the filters has the following restrictions:

It is not supported for models with user-managed time dimensions.

It is restricted to the capabilities of the filter parameters provided by the SAP Analytics Cloud URL API. For more information, see Filter Parameters.
Add one or more assignees. You may add additional owners for your task, or share the task with other users.
- You can add individual users or teams that have been created in SAP Analytics Cloud:
  
  Adding teams instead of individual users may help save you time, and you don't need to define who's taking care of the task. You can choose to Resolve the team so the individual users are displayed, and adapt the list according to your needs.
  
  Note
  
  After you resolve a team, the reference to that team is removed. Instead, the system behaves like you added all the team members individually. Any changes to the team on the SAP Analytics Cloud Security page (like adding or removing team members) will not be reflected in the People section of your calendar task.
- You can also add someone who isn't already a member:
  1. To add a non-member, in the appropriate People section, select the dropdown list and then select Invite Non-Member by Email.
  2. Type the person's email address.
- To add yourself as assignee, select the dropdown list next to Add Assignees and then select Add Myself.
Tip

If you add an assignee and then decide to substitute yourself or someone else for this role, select the user name or the team name, and then choose Change from the dropdown menu. In the Change User dialog, select the new name for the role.

If you add 7 or more users or teams as owners, assignees, or viewers, only the first 5 user or team names are displayed and a link (... 3 More, for example) lets you access a dialog with the complete list of added users and teams. In this dialog, you can can search for user or team names, and you can add, change, or remove them.
Optional: If you haven't done so already, you can add the task to a process in the Hierarchy section.
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process.
- If you've already set a parent process, it is displayed as the parent process. You can select it to see its details. You can remove or edit it to add a different parent process if needed.
Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

If you've set up recurrence for your task, you can't add it to a parent process.

To see the relationship between tasks and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.
Optional: Provide further information by adding additional files.

Everyone involved in this event can view the files. These can be stories, analytic applications, or PDF documents with further instructions or references, for example.
Optional: Under Private Memo, you can add personal notes that are only visible to you.
When you're finished filling in the details and are ready to send the task out, do one of the following:
- If the status is Inactive, select Activate or Activate & Notify.
  This option is also available when you click on the arrow next to the status in the header section.
  
  When you activate the task, and you've added some teams that haven't been resolved yet, the teams are resolved automatically. You can remove individual users of the team, for example. Users assigned to multiple teams are only counted once.
- If the status is In Progress, select Update and Notify.
- If you've adapted an existing task, select View Changes to review all the changes that have been applied; decide whether to send them out or delete any of the changes, and then select Update.
Optional: Once you've activated the task, you may want to send an immediate reminder to the assignees: In the Time section, select Send Immediate Reminder and enter some text as message.

The assignees will be notified right away.

Results

Notifications are sent to the applicable people.

Next Steps

If you need to adapt your task as your workflow changes, you can convert it to a different event type:

To add a review step to your general task, you can convert it to a composite task.
To add more steps to your workflow, you can convert your general task to a process.

For more information, see Convert Calendar Events.