Working with delegates

Delegates are assigned through a task. For example, if a user wants another user to take actions on a task that is assigned to his or her user ID while on a vacation, the user or administrator would select a task and assign it to another user.

The user can also assign his or her tasks to different delegates. For example, suppose the Purchasing Manager is going on vacation. She can give one of her direct reports the task for signing off on purchase orders (Task=PO Approval) in her absence and another direct report can be assigned the task to approve time off for other staff members (Task=PTO Approval). In this scenario, the delegates can be configured to only be valid during the two weeks of the manager's vacation. However, it is possible to permanently assign delegates. There is no restriction as to which users any given task can be delegated.

Delegates start getting work items assigned to them beginning on their effective date. If an effective date is not specified, proxy users receive work items as soon as the proxy user is created. Pending work items prior to the delegate effective date or creation date are not routed to the delegates. For example, if you are going on vacation tomorrow, you can set up a delegate so they can do your tasks starting tomorrow. Therefore, any work that goes into your Inbasket tomorrow is routed to your assigned delegate. However, the work items you have today, including those that you were unable to complete, will not be assigned to the delegate.

Pending work items remain in the Inbasket of a delegate, even after the delegate is removed from a task. Consequently, this user can still take action on the pending work items.