Workflow Task Visibility and Assignment Permissions

Workflows are used across many parts of Supplios -- including the Quality and Onboarding modules, and Sourcing approvals -- and they are built on our common workflow platform.  This article covers the user permissions for all of these.

The workflow platform is intended to be highly customizable, and therefore the user permissions for each workflow are customizable.  As such, if you have specific questions about why a user can or cannot perform a specific action in a specific workflow, and this article does not answer your questions, then please contact our support team.

The controls over who can do and see things in a workflow depend on how a user is a Participant in a workflow, and the individual settings for each task in the workflow.

Participants - the people (users) in a workflow

There are 2 main types of people (users) involved in any workflow, and the permissions for what they can/cannot do is generally linked with their role in the workflow.

1. Workflow Owner - This is the person who is ultimately responsible for the business process being managed in the workflow.  They have (almost) full control over the workflow -- including the ability to assign and re-assign people to tasks, change deadlines, reset things, and sometimes force-complete certain tasks.  By default, users in your company who have the overall Supplios "Admin" role can do all the same things that a Workflow Owner can do.  Workflow Owners must have a "Full User" Supplios.
2. Task Assignees - These are the people who actually perform each individual 'task' in a workflow -- filling in some information, approving, etc.  Each task must have at least one Task Assignee (except auto-tasks).  Task Assignees can be either Internal Users or External Users (suppliers/vendors), depending on the settings for each individual task.  The Workflow Owner is also often a Task Assignee for certain tasks in the workflow.  By default, any users in your company's account can be a Task Assignee, no matter their role or Supplios license (Full or Collaborator users).  All Task Assignees must have a registered Supplios account with your company.

While the workflow is ongoing, Supplios also tracks the combined groups of Internal Participants and External Participants involved in the entire workflow, as people are assigned to the various tasks.  This is used to then grant or deny access to view other tasks in the workflow, as controlled by the individual task visibility settings.

Task Visibility and Assignment Settings

Each task in a workflow has controls for who can be assigned to that task, and who can view the task.

Task Assignment Controls

Tasks can be set to only allow Internal and/or External Users as the assignees.  This is configured when first setting up the workflow, likely with the help of the Supplios team.

Task Assignees are the only people capable of "completing" a task, although other people in the workflow may be able to view the content of that task (in read-only mode).  The only exception is if the task settings allow for a Workflow Owner to "force complete" a task, which is controlled on a task-by-task basis.

For most workflows, there is usually a "setup" task as the first task in a workflow where the Workflow Owner will pick which users should do which things.  This then sets the Task Assignees.  

There may be a reason to change the Task Assignees while the workflow is in process.  This can be done by the Workflow Owner clicking to view that task in the overall workflow view, the clicking on "Change Assignee(s)" and selecting a new or additional assignee.  By default, the list of other possible Task Assignees includes all other internal and/or external participants in the workflow -- but that can be changed in the workflow configuration.

Task Visibility Controls

The visibility of a task is also controlled on a task-by-task basis, based on the "Internal Only" setting.

Tasks that are "Internal Only" cannot be viewed by any External User -- whether the External User is a participant in the workflow or not.  This is useful for certain approval steps, or where things selling prices, cost targets, or other sensitive information may be visible.  

When an External User views an overall workflow, any "Internal Only" tasks simply do not appear.  If a step in a workflow has a step with multiple parallel tasks, one with Internal Only, and one not, then they will only see one task in that step.  If all tasks in a step are Internal Only, that step will not be visible to the External User at all.

The visibility of each task to other Internal Users (ie: participants in that workflow or not) is based on other internal visibility controls.  Contact our Support team to discuss further.

Additional Settings for Approval Tasks

Approval tasks have an additional set of controls due to the sensitive nature of information typically in these tasks, and to guarantee that the approval really was provided by the intended user.  

By default, approval tasks cannot be "force completed" by the Workflow Owner, although it can be enabled on a task-by-task basis.  Even so, when any task is "force completed", Supplios tracks the difference between a normal task completion and records the user who force-completed the task to maintain traceability.

Also, any content shown in an approval task can either be visible to all other users who can otherwise see that task, or it can be hidden, and only shown to the Task Assignee for the approval task. 

More questions?

Workflow visibility and assignment is highly configurable to meet the needs of your business processes.  Our team is happy to answer any questions you have and help configure workflows -- just let us know!