User Guide: Stage Management

Article published on the 15^th of December 2021.

1. Introduction

2. End User Guide (Modern UI)

   2.1. General use

   2.2. Stage filtering

3. End User Guide (Classic UI)

   3.1. General use

   3.2. Stage filtering

4. Notes

Stage management is a very powerful way to control the progress of work in WorkPoint. Regardless of whether a WorkPoint solution is used for project management, case management, or other types of work, stages can be used to control phases and progress of the work by splitting the work up in specific stages. Special requirements can be set up for when one stage can transition to another stage, thus making stages a very powerful way to ensure that all required work is completed before transitioning into various stages. This then ensures that no area of the work is forgotten.

Stage management also makes it possible to filter elements on WorkPoint solution so that only elements related to the current stage shows up in lists. This is done through the stage filtering functionality, described in the end user guide sections of this article.

Furthermore, Stage management can be used in collaboration with other WorkPoint functionalities, such as Action Management. Through this collaboration, it is possible to e.g. create special documents when a certain stage transition occurs, or send e-mails to specified receivers on stage transitions.

Note that only those stages which the entity may be able to reach will be displayed. If there are two different start stages, only the stages following these will be displayed. This means that if a company has the following two stage models:

If e.g. a Project is started in Stage A, only stages A, B, and C are shown in the Stage band. If the project is instead started in Stage 1, only stages 1, 2, 3, and 4 will be displayed.

This end user guide follows through on the previous examples of this article. The configured stages, transitions, and constraint from pt. 3.1 through 3.4. are used in this user guide as well.

In the previous examples, stages, transitions, and constraints were set up for projects. In each project site, the stages are shown in the stages panel:

The current stage is underlined with bold text. The current stage also has an icon to the left of the stage name.

Stages can be changed through the “Change stage”-wizard, which can be accessed e.g. by setting up a button for it in the My Tools-menu, or simply by clicking an available appropriate stage in the Stage panel on an entity site.

An example of the later is shown in this image:

1. Click an available stage that is eligible for transitioning. (Note that only stages that are ‘connected’ with the current stage via the stage model is clickable)
2. Click the “Change stage”-button.

Pt. 2. opens the change stage-wizard:

3. Select the stage to which the project should transition. Note that only eligible stages are available. In this example, we are trying to change the stage from “Idea” to “Analysis”. In pt. 3.4. we created a constraint which makes it impossible to transition to the “Analysis”-stage unless a document named “Quotation” in filed in the Documents library of the project.
4. An error message is displayed, informing us that there is no quotation document filed in the Documents library of the project.
5. We exit the wizard by clicking the “X”-button in the top-right corner.

6. Now we have uploaded a document called “Quotation” in the Documents library of the project.
7. Having uploaded the quotation document, we can access the change stage wizard again by clicking the “Analysis”-stage in the stage panel.
8. Click the “Change stage”-button. Now that the requirements for transitioning to the “Analysis”-stage are met, the transition is performed immediately when the “Change stage”-button is clicked.

Note that transitioning may take a while. The following window is displayed when transitioning:

In the Classic UI version of WorkPoint, the current and eligible subsequent stages are displayed in the following way:

Transitioning from the “Idea”-stage to the “Analysis”-stage can be done by clicking the “Analysis”-stage:

1. Click the “Analysis”-stage.

2. As previously mentioned in pt. 3.4. we created a constraint which made it impossible to change to the “Analysis”-stage unless there is a document named “Quotation” filed in the Documents list. This requirement is displayed if hovering the mouse over the “Check for Quotation”-constraint label. Clicking the “Change stage”-button will open the Change Stage wizard, which will show the same error message.

3. We have now uploaded a document named “Quotation” in the Documents library of the project.
4. We can now change the stage of the project to “Analysis” by clicking the stage and clicking the “Change stage”-button. Note that the stage transitioning does not require further prompts from the user – the stage is changed immediately when clicking the “Change stage”-button.

Note that transitioning may take a while. The following window is displayed when transitioning:

The stage is now transitioned, and eligible subsequent stages are shown again:

Note that Stage Management functionalities can be combined with various other WorkPoint functionalities. One such is the Action Management functionality. Examples of the interplay between Stage Management and Action Management are provided in the Action Management article, which is accessible here.