Hi there, our users are very trigger happy on the close window button (red cross

shelzle over 11 years ago

Hi there, our users are very trigger happy on the close window button (red cross). I try to solve this by adding a timeout to nearly all my user input tasks that abort the intended process or revert to a valid status. This adds a lot of work to development and does not solve all cases. And a lot of our users do not understand what happens, as they tend to think that the system they are using is some form of a CRUD application on top of a SQL DB instead of a BPM system.

How do you handle these problem?

@Appian PS: What does Appian think of how this SHOULD be solved?...

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0 Sathya Srinivasan
Appian Employee
over 11 years ago

Obviously, this seems to be a training issue. So the users need to be trained on how to use the solution. Having said that, your approach of having an exception flow to kill the task is a valid one but I also understand that too many of these are not ideal and can be challenging to build and develop.

You can also use start-forms where possible. Closing start forms will not start the process and thus alleviate the need for exception handling. Another option is to modify your design to use quick tasks for actions. These may be of some help as well (similar to start-forms)
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0 Sathya Srinivasan
Appian Employee
over 11 years ago

Finally, you can create a report on the users's landing page that clearly highlight the tasks that they have opened but not completed (or closed it by clicking the browser close button). Having them in front of them may provide a degree of clarity to the end user on what's happening and allow them to streamline their action.
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0 bruceh over 11 years ago

We have experienced very similiar issues with the end user closing the window, so just like Sathya suggests- we created and displayed a second task report on the users main landing page and exposed the unfinished task. Basically, an improperly closed out task will never disappear and is very visiable for the management team to monitor- and of course the end user is very aware of this. This resolved our issues.
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0 shelzle over 11 years ago

OK, thanks. Maybe my problem is more on the business side as we have no clear management commitment to BPM or a BPM plattform what would get the users be used to how Appian works.

We use SharePoint and integrate Appian using the webpart. This works, but a user who does use Appian from time to time only, might not be used to it and tends to ignore lists of tasks he is not able to associate to what he did or tried to do.
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