When creating task types for Task Engine on My webMethods Server, task developers can enable the task types for voting, and configure a specific voting strategy. Task voting provides an additional collaborative task workflow which allows multiple users to work on a task and modify the task status through a collective decision.

When a task type is enabled for voting, task type developers configure the minimum share of assignees that must complete (or cancel) the task in order to allow transition to the required status. Different voting strategies provide the option to set that threshold as an absolute value (i.e. five individual users) or a percentage out of the total number of assignees.

For example, when you enable a task type for voting and configure the voting strategy with the default percentage value, which is 51%, Task Engine will require that more than half of the assignees vote for the same option. At runtime, a task instance of the type is assigned to a group with a total of 20 individual users and the task user interface is configured to display two buttons - one for cancelling, and another one - for completing the task. With the default threshold of 51%, Task Engine requires at least 11 users to vote for the same option before updating the status of the task instance.

Task developers can create a votable task type from scratch, or add voting capabilities to all existing task types, created with the current version, or a later version. Task types, created with earlier versions of Software AG Designer do not provide voting capabilities. Certain considerations apply when adding voting to existing task types. For more information, see Runtime Considerations for Votable Tasks.