Custom Task Inbox Overview

When a My webMethods user logs on, all of the tasks assigned to that user (either directly or from membership in a group or role) appear in the user's My Inbox panel. Aside from the standard page editing capability provided with the Options button, the My Inbox panel cannot be modified or customized.

However, with proper privileges, the user also has access to pages that display all of the tasks of a particular type assigned to that user. For example, if the user is assigned tasks of type "Order Approval," the user can also navigate to a page with a task type inbox that displays only Order Approval tasks. You can provide customized versions of these task-specific inboxes (also referred to as a custom task inbox).

When you create a task in Software AG Designer, you can choose to include several default user interface portlet views, as described in About Default Task Portlets. You can customize these default views (or create entirely different views) to provide run-time users with specialized search and display capabilities based on the business data contained in the task.

For example, you may want to enable a run-time user to search through Order Approval tasks by order amount, customer name, or account number. If you include this business data as part of your task inputs, you can configure the search bar portlet view and the search results portlet view to provide access to these business data elements in the run-time inbox for that task type.

By default, a search executed in a custom task inbox applies only to the task type associated with the inbox. However, you can extend the search capabilities to include other task types:

For task types using a standard search provider, you can select the task client option Search all task types when searching for task type inbox results, as described in Modifying Client Options for a Task and Task Client Option Definitions. This applies the search to all task types.

For task types using an indexed search provider, you can specify the task types to be included in the search, as described in Searching Indexed Data in a Custom Task Inbox. This method can also be applied to task types with a standard search provider if you want to limit the number of task types in the search.