Create Composite Tasks

Use the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar to create tasks for yourself or assign them to other people. Optionally, add reviewers to approve or reject the work of the assignees.

Context

You can create a composite task to collect data in your planning process, or use it for any other workflow you'd like to manage in the calendar. Composite 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. If multiple assignees work on the task, only one of them needs to submit the task to complete it.

If you'd like to have the assignees' work checked over, you can add one or more reviewers to the task. You can assign different reviewers in successive review rounds: when one reviewer in a round signs off on a task, the next round of reviewers is notified.

If multiple reviewers work on the task, the review is completed when one of the reviewers approves the result of the task.
If multiple reviewers work in a review round, the review round is completed when one of the reviewers of this review round approves the result of the task.

You can decide how to distribute the time between assignees and reviewers.

Task owners or assignees can add work files to a task: These can be stories, Add-in workbooks, or URLs. The assignees enter data directly in the story and submit their task from there. As soon as one of the assignees has submitted their work, the reviewers can start working on the files.

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.

Procedure

In the Calendar, select  (Create)  Composite Task.
Provide an Event Name.

Select the start condition:

Start By	Description
Time	Set the planned 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.

Start By

Description

Time

Set the planned 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.

Set the planned End Date.

Optional: If the start condition is set to Time, you can set up recurrence: Select  Add Recurrence and then fill in the settings.

Setting	Description
Recurrence Pattern	Set the task to repeat by Minute, Hour, Day, Week, or Month. Note When you change the recurrence pattern, the default frequency settings are displayed. For example, when you change the recurrence pattern from Hour with a frequency of Every 1 Hour to Minute, the system displays the default frequency of 30 Minutes. It doesn't convert the frequency to the updated recurrence pattern, which would be 60 Minutes.
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. Caution 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 an hourly interval, the default setting is 1 hour. For tasks that occur in a daily interval, the default setting is 1 day. For tasks that occur in a weekly interval, pick a specific weekday. The default setting is the current weekday. For tasks that occur in a monthly interval, define the day of the month. The default setting is every month on the day that corresponds to the same ordinal number that the current day of the current month has. 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 task will occur on the last day of the month (February 28th, March 31st, April 30th, for example).
Start Date of First Occurrence	Set the planned start date and time for the first occurrence.
End Date of First Occurrence	Set the planned end date and time for the first occurrence.
End Recurrence by	Set when the recurrence pattern ends: End Date: fill in the end date details. Number of Occurrences: set the number of repetitions; this includes the first occurrence. No End Date

Optional: To structure your workflow, you can add your 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 is set 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 calendar events and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.
Optional: You can disable the API access to your task from external applications.

By default, this setting is turned on. For more information, see Access Calendar Events Using the Calendar API.
Optional: You can integrate this task in Microsoft 365 tools, like Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams.

By default, this setting is turned off. For more information, see Integrate Your Calendar Events in Microsoft Tools.
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: Add work files (stories or Add-in workbooks) 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

Assignees and reviewers can work in the attached story and submit, approve, or reject the work, or decline the task directly from an integrated calendar task menu bar.

You can use the technical object CalendarIntegration to configure your story individually with calendar task APIs. For example, you could switch off the calendar toolbar and put the actions (decline, submit, approve, reject) on separate buttons customized to your users' needs. For more information, see Use a Calendar Integration Technical Object and Related APIs.
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, and if you want to set up a review, add one or more reviewers. 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 or reviewer, in the appropriate People section, select the dropdown list and then select Add Myself.
- You can set up review rounds to define a reviewing sequence:
  1. Add a reviewer.
  2. Select Add Reviewers Add a new round, and then choose either After this round or Before this round.
Tip

If you add an assignee or reviewer and then decide to substitute yourself or someone else for one of those roles, 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, reviewers, 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.

Note

You can't add the same person as assignee and reviewer.
Choose how you want to distribute the time spent on your task by the assignees and the reviewers.To do so, drag the handle along the Distribution slider in the Time section to set the time distribution in percentage.

By default, the distribution of the time is set at 75% for the assignees and 25% for the reviewers. A token below the slider shows the resulting start and end dates you plan for each user role.

According to these time settings, people will receive reminders and notifications if their work is overdue.

Note

The actual start date of the review depends on the status of the assignment: The reviewers can start after one of the assignees submits their work.

When you change the duration of your composite task later, the time settings for the assignment and the review change according to their current ratio.
When you're finished filling in the details and are ready to send the task out, select Update and then Activate.

Tip

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 you've added a team as additional owners, the system automatically resolves this team upon update, even if you do not activate the task.

Depending on the notification settings, the respective people are notified. See Emails and Notifications.

Defining Further Settings

You can define further optional settings in the Details panel.

Adding a Description

Under Description, you can add some details or instructions you'd like to share.

Adding Reminders

To set reminders, select  Add Reminders in the Time section and fill in the required time settings.

Once you've activated the task, you may want to send an immediate reminder to the assignees: Select  Send Immediate Reminder and enter some text as message. Depending on the notification settings, the assignee or other involved people are notified right away. See Emails and Notifications.

You can send an immediate reminder to the reviewers after the assignees submitted their task. Then the reminder will be sent to the reviewers only.

Automatic Activation or Cancellation

In the Time section, you can define that the task is automatically activated when it starts, or automatically canceled on the planned end date .

If you want the task to start automatically, select the appropriate option depending on the chosen start condition:
- Automatically activate the task on the planned start date: The task will be activated automatically on the selected start date.
- Activate the task 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 task automatically once its parent process starts: The task will be activated automatically on the actual 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.
Decide whether to set the task to status Canceled on the planned end date: If so, select Automatically cancel the task on the planned end date.

Adding the Task to a Parent Process

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.

To see the relationship between calendar events and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.

Additional Information

Provide further information by adding additional files. Everyone involved in this event can view the files. These can be stories, Add-in workbooks, or PDF documents with further instructions or references, for example.

Private Memo

Under Private Memo, you can add personal notes that are only visible to you.

Changing the Style of the Task

In the title area, you can select a different style for the task or create a new style. Select the arrow next to the task title and choose Create Style..., or select one of the styles you've already created.

The style is a user-specific setting. The selected style is only visible to you.

Updating Your Changes

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.

Converting the Task

To change settings and adapt your workflow, you or one of the assignees can convert the composite task to a process. This lets you split up the task into separate events, and group them in a process.

For more information, see Convert Calendar Events.