Task Retention / Auto-Archiving

The expectation is that users creating tasks will archive those tasks when then are either completed or rejected; this is the completion of the task work-flow. However it may be advantageous, at least for certain kinds of tasks, to ensure that tasks archive at some point even if the owner chooses to ignore them [archiving a task removes it from the executant's task list]. To facilitate auto-archival the configuration document named TaskRetention.yaml exists in project 7,000. For administrators this document should be available via WebDAV in the /dav/Administration folder.

The task retention document is a YAML dictionary relating task kind values to data retention rules. The key of the dictionary is a case-sensitive task kind string; the string generic corresponds to all tasks having a NULL kind. The value for each key is a dictionary supporting the following keys: - autoArchiveThreshold – The number of days, expressed as an integer, before the action will automatically archive the task from an rejected or completed state.

Service_Laptop_Update: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 3, }
TQIRTS.ISSUE:SERVICE_DIAGNOSTIC_ASSISTANCE: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 30, }
PQIRTS.ISSUE:CP_ERROR: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 14, }
PQIRTS.ISSUE:DEFECTIVE_PART: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 14, }
PQIRTS.ISSUE:BAD_CROSS: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 14, }
WEBSITE_ENH: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 60, }
PARTS.XREFR.ADD: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 14, }
generic: {'autoArchiveThreshold': 90, }

Text 1: Example TaskRetention.yaml document. In this document the generic kind establishes a 90 day rule for automatically archiving tasks with a NULL kind. Other key values relate to tasks of specific kinds.

The values defined in this configuration document are applied to the task database using the archiveOldTasksAction workflow action. If a workflow route declaring a archiveOldTasksAction is not performed the values defined in this document will have no effect. The expectation is that a route declaring this action will be created and scheduled to be performed at some regular interval. Sites generating more tasks are encouraged to perform the auto-archiving work-flow more frequently than sites generating few tasks.

Author: Adam Tauno Williams