Introduction

ShareDo creates a network of tasks, matters, and other work items like payments and offers. However, when cases are cancelled or closed (finished), users often have to manually close all related tasks and key dates. This can lead to tasks being left open, which can cause worklists to grow cluttered over time.

The Auto Close Descendants feature was designed to make your work smoother and more efficient by automatically closing related tasks when key actions are completed. For example, when you reject a lead, transition a lead into an opportunity, or close a matter, all associated tasks, payments, offers, and proceedings are closed automatically. This means you don’t have to spend time manually closing tasks, and everything stays in sync.

It helps prevent tasks from accidentally being left open, improving organisation and saving time. To keep things transparent, any tasks closed automatically by the system are marked as System Close in the completed worklist, so you’ll always know what’s been handled for you.

The Auto Close Descendants feature must be configured to trigger at a specific phase in the phase plan of a work type. The configuration is shown below.

Configure the Feature

Navigate to Modeller > Global Features and search for Auto Close Descendant to configure the work types for which this feature can be configured and whose work items you want to auto-close.

The Global Auto Close Descendants feature lets you enable the feature for selected work items. 

For example, the work type Enquiry—RTA is selected in the image above. This means that you have enabled the feature for that work type and can configure it in the Work Type Modeller. 

You then need to configure the feature for phases within the work type itself and ensure that its child work types have a phase configured as System Closed. 

This prevents orphaned work items in the system.

To configure this feature, you must do the following.

Step 1: Enable the feature for selected work types in Global Features

1. Navigate to Modeller > Global Features and search for Auto Close Descendant.
2. Enable the feature and click on the cog to configure it.
3. Open the Auto Close Descendant Work Items subfeature.
4. Enable the feature for the work types for which you want the feature to be available. You may want to avoid auto-closing certain work item types, so ensure those are not checked.
5. Save and close the open blades.

Step 2: Ensure that Descendant Work Types have a phase that is configured as "System Close"

Depending on your system configuration, this usually means configuring the parent work type's phase model, as children generally inherit it from the parent.

 For more information on editing a phase plan, see the article Create or edit a phase plan.

Step 3: Enable this feature for the work type whose work items you want to auto-close

This step sets when the auto-close will be triggered, that is, when it reaches the configured phase.

1. Open the Work Type Modeller by browsing to Modeller > Work types.
2. Then open the work type whose descendant items you want to auto-close. 
3. Navigate to the work type's Manage Features in the left-hand menu.
4. Search for the Auto Close Descendant Work Items feature and click the cog to configure it.
5. Open the Configure the phases for auto close subfeature.
6. On the Configure the phases for auto close blade, enable the phase you configured as System Close in the previous step.
7. Save and close the open blades.

Review

In this article, you learnt how to configure the Auto Close Descendant feature. Work items of work types where the feature is configured to trigger at a particular phase, will close when the parent is completed.