How to customize States and Workflows

Editing Process settings

A Process in Targetprocess is a set of business rules applied to the workflow of your Project or Team.

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

1. Click on the Settings gear 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 the Process that they are responsible for. Please see the “Process Admins” section for details.

In Process setup, you can customize your settings for states and workflows, including Available States, their Names and Order, Allowed State Transitions, and Roles available in the Assignments area for assignable entities.

Checking Process usage

When you go to edit a Process, the first you'll notice is that the system it tells you about its usage. Below the Process's name, you find a small text indicating how many Projects are using this Process. Clicking on this text will reveal a tooltip with the specific projects being used.

Adding a new state

To add a new state, just point your mouse between two existing states. A green bubble with a plus icon will show up. Click it to add a new state at this position.

First, you should give your new state a name. Let’s say we want to add an additional “Planned” state. You should then select a role that is responsible for the new workflow state. In our case, this is the project manager.

If needed, you can change the transitions from and to other workflow states. On the left of the states settings panel, you can find the transitions from other states. On the right, you can find the transitions to other states. If you uncheck one or more of these checkboxes, a transition will not longer be possible between the state you’re currently editing and the one(s) that you just unchecked.

In the short clip above, you can see that we also mark the checkbox “State is Planned”. Whenever you add a planned state to your process, make sure to mark this checkbox. This setting influences the cycle time of your entities, as the cycle time starts when the entity leaves the planned state.

Editing a state

To edit an existing state, you just need to click on gear icon

Deleting a state

In the states settings panel, you can find the Delete State button. Click it to delete the selected state.

Not all states can be deleted. A state cannot be deleted when:

• It’s the only state in this workflow with a responsible role. A workflow must have at least one responsible role.
• It is the first state in the workflow
• It is the last state in the workflow

If you would like to delete a state with a responsible role, and it is the last responsible role in the whole workflow, you have to transfer this role to another remaining state in advance. Edit a remaining state that has no role selected, and assign a role to it. Then you will be able to delete the state you were going to initially remove.

You cannot delete the first and last states of a workflow, but you can rename these states.

Marking a state as final

To mark a state as final, you just need to check 'Final' checkbox for the needed state. By default, all workflows have only one final state. This final state is automatically marked as the default final state. When a user adds another final state, he can mark that new final state as default.

Multiple final states are available in Targetprocess v3.11.0+

You can’t remove default final states from workflows, but you can remove a non-default final state.

All final states should be the last state in the workflow (meaning, you can’t have final -> not final -> final order). To mark some intermediate workflow state as final, move it to the position preceding the last state using drag-n-drop.

Team workflows can’t have multiple final states. Team workflows and multiple final states for project workflows are mutually exclusive — you can’t have both.

Making a comment for state change required

You can make it required for users to leave a comment on an entity before moving it to a particular state. To do this, check the 'Required comment' checkbox on the needed state.

Moving a state

It is possible to move an existing state. Click and hold the column header of the state you would like to move. Move it to the new position by dragging your mouse and dropping the state column at the new position.