Assignments in Kanbanoo

Introduction

Kanbanoo treats M-Files assignments somewhat special because they directly represent tasks, but typically do not carry a workflow (if assignments do carry a workflow, Kanbanoo treats them like all other objects).
Since assignments clearly represent work, they are displayed in a dedicated Kanban board named "Assignments".

The basic Assignments board has two columns:
"Requested" is for assignments that are not completed
"Done" is for completed assignments

Kanban board with columns Requested and Done

Basic Kanban board for assignments

But there is more:

Assignments With In Progress State

Unfortunately, M-Files does not have a built-in concept to indicate for assignments that they are currently being worked on - there is only completed or not completed. However, an important Kanban practise is to limit the work-in-progress, i.e. users shall not work on too many tasks at the same time.

For assignments Kanbanoo therefore implements an (optional) middle column called "In Progress" [1]. It can be enabled on a vault-level by your M-Files administrator (instructions).

Kanban board with columns Requested, In Progress and Done

Kanban board for assignments with "In Progress" option enabled

Approval Assignments

If there is an approval type assignment present, Kanbanoo will show an additional column "Rejected" [2].
Users can approve an assignment by dragging it to the Done column or reject it by dragging it to the Rejected column.
Note that depending on the configuration of the approval class, dragging an approval that has more than one assignee may not finally approve the approval. The other assignees may also have to approve for the approval to move to the Done (or Rejected) column.

Kanban board with approval type assignments

Multi-User Assignments

Assignments can have more than one assignee. Moreover, approval assignments can be configured to either require all (unanimous) or only one (single) assignee to make an approval or rejection to be considered complete.
The following table summarizes how M-Files and Kanbanoo treat such assignments.

When assignments with more than one assignee are moved to the In Progress column they are considered In Progress for all users, irrespective of who moved the assignment there. To avoid ambiguity we recommend to avoid multi-user task assignments.

Type of assignment	M-Files	Kanbanoo
task assignment completed by some but not all assignees	not completed	Requested or In Progress (user's choice)
task assignment completed by all assignees	completed	Done
unanimous approval assignment completed by some but not all assignees	not completed	Requested or In Progress (user's choice)
unanimous approval assignment completed by all assignees	completed	Done or Rejected
single approval assignment completed by some assignees	completed	Done or Rejected

How M-Files and Kanbanoo treat assignments with more than one assignee

Footnotes

[1] Internally Kanbanoo saves the "In Progress" state in a boolean property on the assignment object itself, see Installation instructions.

[2] Requires at least Kanbanoo v2.9.4