Work Types
- Agilecase Support
Work Types
Overview of Work Types
With AgileCase, you can centralize all your organization's data and processes into distinct and efficient Work Types. Each Work Type encompasses the necessary information, workflow, templates, and features required to effectively conduct that specific type of work.
To get you started, AgileCase includes three core Work Types: Contacts, Cases, and Projects. However, you have the flexibility to create custom Work Types based on these initial offerings. The true strength of AgileCase lies in its ability to fully customize the system to match your unique needs and keep changing and adapting it over time as your needs change.
As you create custom Work Types to represent the work you do, you will also created relationships between Work Types. For example a ‘Case’ Work Type might be related to a ‘Contact’ who is the Client of that Case. You could create a ‘Supplier Contact’ Work Type which has specific fields to track orders you have placed with that supplier and then relate that to a ‘Purchase Order’ Work Type which tracks who make purchases.
In the future, AgileCase will also offer pre-configured Work Type Templates through our Template Store (COMING sOON), providing even greater convenience and ease of use for your organization's processes.
Core Work Types
All work types can support any type of data, but to get you started quickly AgileCase comes with three ‘core’ types which are pre-configured with support for specific scenarios. When you create your own Work Types they will be based on one of these three types and inherit some of the unique features of that Work Type.
All the core work types have the same support for the following features:
Track Workflow Status and Steps
Creating Documents and Emails from Templates
Creating and Sharing Forms and managing the submitted data
Storing and capturing Documents, Emails and Notes with robust version control as documents change.
Assignment and management of Tasks related to the work type
Relationships to other Contacts, Cases and Projects
Audit history of changes made to data within the work type
Connect with external systems using Webhooks and APIs
Reporting
Contacts
The core Contact Work Type is used to represent your Contacts. These may be customers, clients, suppliers, partners, etc. Every User you add to your system is also represented by a Contact.
Contacts come with some unique built-in fields which are great at storing information like:
Names and other personal details such as Date of Birth.
Contact details such as Postal addresses, Email addresses, Phone Numbers, etc.
You can start using Contacts ‘out-of-the-box’ to store all the Contacts you organization deals with and you can also create custom versions of Contact for any specific types of Contact (Suppliers, Customers, Staff etc.)
Cases
The Case Work Type is used to represent any type of transactional work or process. These may be new customer orders, complaints, new customer registrations, staff records - ultimately any type of work you wish to do.
You may of course choose not to use Cases and just keep all of your transactional details stored directly against your contacts, but they can offer flexibility if Contacts are likely to have multiple different instances of work over time.
Case are a very generic type which come with just simple set of built in fields like:
Open Date, Closed Date
Projects BETA
The Project Work Type is used for tracking work which is more like a Project. For example it can be used for simple Document Management tasks like collaborating on drafting templates or manging staff working on a project without storing any other types of information.
The Project Work Type is currently A ‘beta’ feature and is therefore very simple but will develop in future to include:
Timeline and Goals views to track the timeline of the project.
Kanban boards to visually manage tasks related to the project.
More features you may expect in a simple project management tool.
Creating a New Work Type
You can create a New Work Type within the “Work Types” section of the Site Admin screen:
Basics
Basics allow you to configure:
Master Type - which of the core types do you wish to base your new Work Type on
Coming soon Master Type setting will be removed in a future update to simplify Work Type setup. They will be replaced instead with “Work Type Templates” which are pre-configured work types for various common scenarios.
Name - The name by by which your work type is known.
Description - Description used only in settings to explain what the work type is used for.
Icon - Choose a color and icon so you can spot different Work Types in lists and reports at a glance.
Workflow - Choose the Workflow Statuses and Steps which dictate the flow of your case. Workflow Statues and Steps allow your users to see at a glance where your Work sits in it’s usual workflow and can be used as shortcuts to more complex criteria when designing Automations.
Permissions
Choose which groups of Users can create, view and edit this Work Type.
Work Areas
If you organisation have different departments or areas decide which can contain this type of Work.
Pages & Layout
Pages
Pages are a key concept in AgileCase and you use them to configure how your Work Types look and which content and functionality (known as 'Blocks') are available in them. Every Work Type starts with some default pages like Custom Fields, Tasks, Related Contacts, Docs & Comms.
Each page also has it’s own set of permissions so Pages allow you to have fine grained control over what different types of users see. For example: you could have two different Pages for two different groups and each could display different Custom Fields based on which work data those groups need access to.
Blocks
Each page contains one or more “Blocks” which are blocks of functionality which are displayed on the page. For example the Docs & Comms Block allows you to display items from Emails, Documents Notes etc. on a page. It includes settings which allow you to “filter” which items are shown when you display that block on a page so if you like you can display Documents on one Block while displaying Emails on a separate Block. You can then place those Blocks on different pages.
Blocks also have their own permissions which can restrict who can view/edit their content and functionality, so some pages may be shown to all users but what Blocks are editable may be different depending on their requirements.
Depending on the block it will have other settings which affect how it’s content and functionality behaves.
Currently we support the following Blocks with many more in the pipeline:
Mini Details - a small display of key details about the Work Item.
Core Details - edit core details associated with the Work Item such as Description, Workflow Status, Assigned Users, Open Date and more.
Tasks - View, Add and Edit Tasks associated with the Work Item.
Custom Fields - Display one more more Custom Field groups (Forms). If only a single Custom Field group is displayed it will show on it’s own, while if you select many they are shown in a Tabbed view.
Audit - Displays the Audit history of the Work Item.
Assignments - View, Add and Edit Users to different roles within the Work Item.
Related Contacts / Single Contact - View and mange specific Contact Types which can be related to your Work Item or each other.
Related Items - View and manage relationships between Work.
Addresses / Phones / Emails / Websites / Instant Messaging - Store these type of well known data in a easy view, validate and edit format.
Docs & Comms - Create and Store Files, Documents, Emails and Notes in a chronological view. Provides primary access to features such as Document and Email templates.
Dynamic Content - Use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create you own Block using our REST API to access Work Item data and interact with other features.
Deleted Items - Nothing is ever ‘gone' in AgileCase by design until retention rules kick in! Deleted Items provides quick access to anything deleted on a Work Item. Using block permissions you can decide who is able to restore anything deleted or who can force it’s complete deletion.
If you do not want specific features on this Work Type you can just remove those pages - don’t worry it’s easy to add them back in again later if needed.
You can also create you own custom pages and place any combinations of Blocks on those pages to make your UI as suited to your tasks are you need.
New Form Designer
The new Form Designer give you complete control over the “Form” users complete to create a Work item of this Type.
The New Form designer is identical to the Custom Form designer so you get all the benefits of fully versioned forms and all the field types and functionality we support for forms can be used upfront before your Work Item is even created.
For example, you could customize the New Form with an “Integration Button.” Integration Buttons are powerful form components which can hook into external services like Google Maps or payment providers like Legl and Stripe (n.b. Maps and Stripe Integration Buttons are coming soon). Allowing these to be deployed onto the New Form enables interesting opportunities such as pre-filling address information using the Maps API or accepting payment from a customer in advanced of creating their Work Item via Stripe.
Automations
Automations allow you to configure rules in an “When This Happens And Conditions Are Met Then Take This Action” fashion to automate your processes. Configuration is based around:
Trigger Event - the event which triggers your Automation to run. This could be any of:
Form updated, Published Form submitted (i.e. by external user), Workflow state/step changed, Involved Users changed, Note Added,Document Created, etc.
Conditions - Build up condition criteria which must be met after the Trigger Event for the Action to be executed.
Action - Insert Custom Form Data (i.e. into a multi-table custom field group), Update Form Data, Update Workflow state/step, Update Involved Users, Create Document, Send Email, Display Template Message to User, etc.
For example you can configure rules such as:
When Form updated and specific values match, take action: Send This Email
When a Published Form submitted by an external user, with non-draft status, take action: Update Workflow Status to “In Progress” and Step to “Questionnaire Received”.
Custom Forms & Custom Fields
Custom Forms allow your to create a Form for either Internal purposes (capturing data within a Work Item) or External (sending via a link to users to complete a survey or questionnaire).
You can edit them using our drag-and-drop designer.
Custom Fields allow you to reuse an existing Custom Form as part of the core data of your Work Type. For example you can take a pre-existing form you share online for collecting customer information and expose that within your Work Type as a tab your users can view/edit and also use the data in templates and reports. (See: Form Templates | Step 2: Edit your Work Type Page Layout to display the Custom Field Group)
Relationships
Relationships allow you to build relationships between different Work Types on your system. For example related a Contact to a Case or two related Cases to one another.
Using relationships allow you to reuse data from one Work Type in another to save rekeying an also to report on work items in the context of those relationships.
Involvements
Involvements allows you to record how your own internal staff are involved in a Work Type. For example for Contacts you may define a “Account Manager” who looks after that contact, while on a Case you may define an involvement as being a “Case Handler”.
By correctly defining how different users are involved in your processes you can ensure new work appears in the correct Tasks Lists, or include the correct User Contact details in any Templates you create.
Forms, Templates and Reports
These are also all closely related to a Work Type but they can be shared across Work Types or exist independently of a Work Type so setting these up and relating them to Work Types is covered in other sections of the documentation:
AI Templates Coming Soon!