Assign work to a team

You can assign work to a team without specifying the team member who will perform the work. However, you first must create the team. You create the list of team names, associate those names with the Team Name custom field, and then assign team members to the teams.

After you have created the team, you can assign work to it and resources can assign themselves to the tasks that have been assigned at a team level.

What do you want to do?

Create a team

Assign work to the team

Create a team

Step one: Create the list of team names

1. On the Quick Launch, click Server Settings.

2. On the Server Settings page, click Enterprise Custom Field Definition.

3. On the Custom Fields and Lookup Tables page, click New Lookup Table.

   Note: If there are many entries in the Enterprise Custom Fields list, you might have to scroll down to find the New Lookup Table link.

4. On the New Lookup Table page, type a name for the lookup table in the Name box. For example, you could type Corporate Teams.

5. In the Code Mask section, specify the numeric or alphabetic structure of each value in the lookup table.

   For example, if you want the team name values in the lookup table to contain three letters followed by three numbers (such as wrt333) in a hierarchical structure, do the following:

   1. In the first row of the Sequence column in the code mask table, click Characters.

   2. In the Length column, type 3 to indicate the number of characters.

   3. In the Separator column, type a period to use as a separator between the values.

   4. In the second row of the Sequence column, click Numbers.

   5. In the Length column, type 3.

   6. In the Separator column, type a separator for the second part of the lookup table value.

      Tip: The structure of your lookup field codes is displayed in the Code Preview box.

6. In the Lookup Table section, type the team names in the table and then click the buttons on the toolbar to create a hierarchical relationship between the values:

   1. To indent a value, select the row that contains the value, and then click Indent .

   2. To create a new row, click Insert Row .

      Note: These values will be the names of the teams. They must conform to the code mask definition that you specified in the Code Mask section. Users will be able to select from these values when they enter data into the custom fields.

      To continue the previous example, if you want the team name values for the lookup table to contain three letters followed by three numbers in a hierarchical structure, do the following:

   3. In the first row of the Value column in the lookup table, type the first three-letter character value.

   4. In the second, third, and fourth rows, type the three-digit numbers that are related hierarchically to the first row, and then indent each under the first row.

   5. In the fifth row, type the value for the second three-letter character value.

   6. In the next three rows, type the corresponding three-digit numbers, and so on.

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Step two: Create a custom field that contains team names

Once you have created the list of teams, you must associate the names with the Team Name custom field.

Warning: Once a lookup table has been linked with the Team Name custom field, it cannot be be unlinked.

1. On the Quick Launch, click Server Settings.

2. On the Server Settings page, click Enterprise Custom Field Definition.

3. On the Custom Fields and Lookup Tables page, edit the Team Name field by clicking the field name.

4. In the Custom Attributes section, select Lookup Table, and then click the name of the lookup table that you created in Step One (Corporate Teams, in our example).

5. In the Required section, select Yes or No to indicate if each user is required to have a team name or not.

6. Click Save.

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Step three: Assign team members to a team

You must create two types of team resources: a team lead and team members. In order for resources to be assigned to team tasks, tasks must be initially assigned to the team lead. After tasks have been assigned to team lead, team members assign themselves to team tasks.

1. On the Quick Launch, click Resources.

2. In the table, select the resource who you want to make part of a team, and then click Edit Details.

   To select adjacent resources, hold down SHIFT and then click the first resource and last resource. To select nonadjacent resources, hold down CTRL and then click the resources that you want.

3. In the Team Details section, create one of the two types of team members:

   • To create a team lead, click the Team Assignment Pool box and then select the team in the Team Name box. You can also browse for the name of the team by clicking Browse .

   • To create a regular team member, clear the Team Assignment Pool box and then select the team in the Team Name box.

4. Click Save. If you selected multiple resources, click Save/Next to change the information for the next resource.

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Assign work to the team

Once you have set up the teams, assign all tasks initially to the team lead.

Team members who are not leads can now go their My Work page, select Self-assign Team Tasks on the Actions menu, and then select those tasks that they want assigned to them.

Note: The team lead can see on the My Work page all team tasks that have been assigned to him or her. Other team members can only see those tasks that they assigned to themselves.

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