Symptoms

workflow activity escalation and permissions
 

Diagnoses

If an approval on a work item goes incomplete for 3 days I can send an escalation to the original destination with no problem. However if this work item is incomplete at 5 days I need to escalate to another person. I have set this up and found that my "5 day" person does not have permission to action the work item. The "5 day" person needs to have permission to act on the work item so the workflow may continue. Our users will not have access to the workspace to set up delegates when they are OOF.


 

Resolution

The task was assigned to a user. Usually when a task is assigned the link will contain a SN/SerialNo that composes of "ProcessInstanceId_ActivityInstanceDestinationID" which makes a task item link unique to the user that was configured in the destination planning such that another user will not be able to open task page with the same link. That same task link was sent to another user via event email escalation, as such it was not view-able.

As such, one possible method to achieving this second escalation and reassign the task to a different user is to perhaps use an "Activity Escalation" instead of the "Event Escalation" this will allow you to use the "Redirect" option and reassign this task to a new user. The task item URL will update and allow for the redirected user to open the task item. (see attached image)

http://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/k2blackpearl/userguide/current/webframe.html_escw11.html

The "ProcessInstanceId" will stay the same, but the "ActivityInstanceDestinationID" will change because it is now assigned to a new user.

Regarding when is it best to use Event escalations vs Activity escalations this is usually dependent what your needs are and what sort of process data is available at which levels of escalations.

The Event level escalation escalates only the event within the Activity. Where multiple events exist within a single activity one or more events can be expired. For Event Level: When the event is expired by the escalation the activity continues to exist until it is completed or is expired by an escalation. Only the "Default" and "Email" escalation action template is available at the event level. This is demonstrated at the "Action templates" section of:

https://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/k2blackpearl/userguide/4.6.6/webframe.html_b2.2_reference_-_escalation_rule.html

For more information regarding what the different action templates available are and what they do, please see:

https://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/k2blackpearl/userguide/4.6.6/webframe.html_EscW02.html

The "Redirect Activity", "Goto Activity" and "Expire Activity" are only available at the Activity Level, which is where the Destination Planning resides as such will allow you to perform the redirect action as needed.