Processes and Workflows

What are Processes?

A Process in Targetprocess is a set of business rules applied to the Workflow of your portfolios (projects) and inner items. All portfolio (project)-related entities (User Stories, Bugs, Features, Requests, Releases/Program Increments, Epics) inherit Process settings from portfolios (projects).

Process settings include the following items:

• Practice settings and a list of available Practices. If some of them are toggled off, the corresponding entity types can't be added to your Project or Team. Your Effort units, Effort calculation model, and Time tracking settings can also be found in Practice settings.
• Workflow settings for all available entities:
  • Available states, their names and order
  • Allowed state transitions
  • Roles available in the Assignments area for assignable entities
• Term settings
• Custom Field settings for almost all entity types
• Notifications settings

Modifying the Process or Workflow in the middle of the Project is a potentially unsafe operation! Read more about how to safely change a Process.

Editing Process settings

Every Administrator in Targetprocess can edit Process settings by going to Settings → Process setup.

1. Click on the Settings icon in the top menu panel
2. Select “Process setup.” The Process list will appear in the left menu.

It is possible to define additional Process Administrators, who have the right to modify a certain Process they are responsible for. Please see the “Process Admins” section for details.

Checking Process usage

When you go to edit a Process, the first thing you should notice is some small text below the Process name that indicates how many Projects are using this Process. Clicking on this text reveals a tooltip that shows the specific Projects using this Process.

Process Actions

There are several actions you can perform on a Process: rename, clone, and delete.

Renaming a process

To rename a Process, just click on the three dots next to the Process name. This will open the actions menu. Choose “Rename” from the menu. The Process name turns into an input field. Make your changes and apply them by hitting the return key on your keyboard.

Cloning a process

Processes can be cloned, so you don't need to start from scratch if you only want to make small changes but still keep the original version of the process. Select the “Clone” option from the actions menu right next to the Process name. A copy of this process will be created immediately.

Deleting a process

Only Process which are not used by any Project can be deleted. As mentioned above, Process usage is indicated right below the Process name.

To delete a Process, open the actions menu right next to the Process name. Select “Delete” from the menu and confirm your action with “Yes, I’m sure” when prompted.

Practices

Practices aggregate functionalities that you can either use or not use in your process. Let’s say you don’t need high level requirements, because you only use User Stories. Just disable the “Epics and Features” practice and the related functionality will be removed from Targetprocess' GUI.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields allow you to expand the Targetprocess business model in many, many ways. To learn more about how to use Custom Fields and how to create them, read the following articles:

• How do I add new Custom Fields?
• Custom Fields

Terms

Sometimes the default terms of our entities (like “User Story”) don't fit your company's vernacular. Lets say you’re setting up a Process for your marketing department and you would like to change the term of our Releases to “Initiative”. You can easily do this in the Terms section of Process setup.

Just type your own term into the two input fields for the specific entity that you would like to rename. The first input field is for the singular version of you term; the second one is for the plural version.

You can restore the default terms at any time by simply removing your custom terms from the input fields or by using the “Reset to default” button at the top.

Process Admins

Process admins have the right to modify the setup of a Process. Process admins can only be appointed by an Administrator user.

Just go to Settings → Process setup → Process Admins. Type the user name, login, or email of the specific user and hit the “Add user” button.

Notifications

Email notifications are flexible and can be customized. Read more on how to set up Email notifications on various events.

Workflows

Workflow settings for all available entities (including Available States, their Names and Order, Allowed State Transitions and Roles available in the Assignments area for Assignable entities) are included in Process settings.

Read more on how to customize States and Workflows.