Action statuses, who holds an action, and e-mails

An action passes mainly between two people: the creator, who describes what must be done, and the responsible, who does it. At any time one person holds the action and can work on it; everyone else sees it read-only. This page explains the statuses, the hand-over sequence, actions you keep for yourself, the e-mails that are sent and the dashboard box.

Statuses

Status	When
New	The action has been created but not sent.
In progress	The action has been sent and is not yet closed.
Closed	The reviewer closed the action with Complete, or the person who kept the action for themselves closed it with Complete action. The Closed date is set.

The Accepted column in the list shows whether the responsible has accepted the action.

The hand-over sequence

The creator creates the action, fills in the required fields (Title:, Due date, Responsible) and clicks Send. The action is now In progress, and the responsible holds it.
The responsible either:
- clicks Accept, does the work, describes it under Action taken/comments, and clicks Send to send it back as done;
- clicks Reject and writes a Rejection message, which sends the action back to the person who sent or forwarded it; or
- clicks Forward, chooses a new person under Select recipient: and writes a Forwarding message:. The new person becomes responsible.
The reviewer checks the work. The reviewer is the last other person who took a step on the action: normally the creator, or the person who forwarded it to the responsible. The reviewer either:
- clicks Complete, optionally writes an Optional comment, and clicks Complete again, which closes the action; or
- clicks Reject with a message, which sends it back to the responsible.

When Save as draft is available in your current action state, it keeps your changes and comments without passing the action on; see The action dialog for the buttons available in each state. Only one person can be responsible at a time.

Actions you keep for yourself

If you choose yourself as Responsible, the action is accepted at once, and no e-mail is sent. You get Complete action to close it, Forward to hand it to someone else, Save as draft, and you can tick off the checklist. A due-date change on such an action is approved automatically.

The e-mails

Event	Who gets an e-mail	What it says, for example
An action is sent to you	The responsible	“An action is waiting for your input”
The responsible sends the work back as done	The reviewer (normally the creator)	“…Please approve or reject the action”
The reviewer closes the action with Complete	The responsible who did the work	That the action is completed
An action is rejected	The other party	That the action was rejected, with the message
An action is forwarded	The new responsible, and the creator if someone else forwarded it	That the action was forwarded, with the message
A due-date change is requested, approved or rejected	The creator for a request; the requester for the answer	See Change the due date of an action

No e-mail is sent when you create an action without sending it, or when you send it to yourself.

An action connected to a document must be Closed before the document can be published; see Approve or reject a document you received.

The dashboard box

If your company’s dashboard has the Actions awaiting your input box, it holds open actions where you are the next to act, environmental aspect actions waiting for you, and open Read & understood requests sent to you; see The dashboard. An Action Manager action is in it whenever you hold it and it is not Closed: an action you created and have not sent yet (status New, also one saved with Save as draft), an action sent or forwarded to you, an action you keep for yourself, work sent back to you for review, an action that came back to you after a rejection, and, for the creator, an action whose due-date change waits for approval. The box has the columns Action, Due date, Module and Sent From. Click a row to open the action dialog.

Next step

Handle an action you received