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OVERVIEW

Actionabl.ai is a platform that automates your business processes and alerts users whenever human intervention is needed. 

To get started, your team will work with Actionabl to define the business processes, artifacts (documents and records), and workflows. The Actionabl team (or your IT team) then implements those processes and artifacts into the platform on your behalf and then tests that implementation with your team. 

When you begin using the platform in production, it’s pre-populated with your data and process – all you need to do is respond to alerts and (if you’re an admin) make minor adjustments.

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KEY CONCEPTS AND TERMS

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Alerts

Actionabl alerts users whenever a process needs human intervention. This happens in two cases:

• A step in the process that cannot (or should not) be automated. For example, one of your vendors may require payment using a non-standard method such as a physical check, or a printing process might need an expert to review and sign off on a proof. This also includes quality checks and review steps.
• An error in an automated step. For example, automation reconciles a vendor’s invoice against your purchase order and applies specific business rules; when the invoices fails reconciliation, your invoice manager needs to review and investigate before payment can proceed. This case also covers when something goes wrong, such as Actionabl not getting a response from an integrated system or encountering a missing document in a task step.

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Users

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User Types

The Actionabl system has two user classifications: Business and Technical. 

• Business Users handle tasks such as quality assurance, offline process steps, and issues related to the “content” of your business process. They are generally not in charge of managing a function or technical component of the system.

  Examples:  Accounts receivable associates, production coordinators, customer support representatives, sales team, and quality assurance specialists.

• Technical Users monitor the operation of the processes and the system itself and respond to errors that indicate something may not work correctly. For example, they resolve error codes or investigate the lack of a success response from an API call. Technical users may also take a proactive role in configuring parts of the workflow or user notifications. 

  Examples:  Process managers, system engineers, manufacturing plant managers, and system administrators.

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User Groups

When your administrator sets up your login, they assign it to one or more “groups” in the system. Your group assignment sets the boundaries for what you see by default and what you can access within the system.

Your group helps you avoid noise associated with tasks that don’t relate to your role. For example, if you are in the Accounting group, you won’t see tasks or alerts relating to manufacturing processes. 

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Departments

Your team may also use Departments to group users and manage their permissions. Departments, like groups, are granted the rights to certain assets in the system. They can also be used for notifications through a shared email address like “support@yourcompany.com” or “hr@yourcompany.com”.

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Dashboards

The Actionabl platform has two primary user dashboards: Task Master and Controller. An Admin dashboard is also available only to admin-level users; its use is covered in the System Administration guide.

Certain users have access to specialty dashboards for Design (process design, component design, control center, and admin controls) and Automation Builder, Accelerator, and Dev Tools, which are documented in their individual user guides.

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Task Master

The Task Master dashboard clearly focuses users on the tasks flowing through the workflow. It alerts users to any action needed to resolve an error or complete an offline business process.

Task Master is organized into modules for each type of task (user, error, etc.) and has robust search and filtering capabilities. It also has the “My Tasks” module, where a user can access all tasks that are assigned to them. 

User Types:  Business and Technical Users

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Controller

The Controller dashboard manages workflow elements such as scheduling and task configuration. It also contains reporting, analytics, and a module for accessing and resolving Error Reports. Like Task Master, it offers robust searching and filtering.

User Types:  Technical Users

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Process View

The Process View is a special way of looking at a workflow and its components like stages and tasks.

A process is a complete end-to-end workflow that accomplishes a set of goals. Here’s an example:

Within a process, there are typically multiple stages.  A stage is a group of tasks that loops through a meaningful part of the process. Using the Bank Invoice Process example:

Each stage contains one or more tasks, the core elements of all workflows. A task may be executed by a system, application, or human, but it always has some action (and status) associated with it. For example:

The Process View module provides a visual way of understanding the flow within a process, showing these stages and tasks as a flowchart.

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Tasks

Within Actionabl, tasks can have the following types:

• Decisions: Assess whether a condition has been met so the next step in a workflow can be performed, like checking whether an invoice amount is greater than a certain threshold to determine whether the invoice needs Accounting review. 

• User: A step that must always be completed by a human, like reviewing a proof or shipping a sample.

• Quality Control (QC): A task whose output must be double-checked by a human, like issuing a payment to a vendor.

• App: Action taken by a third-party application, such as sending an email or creating a PDF file.

• OCR: Optical character recognition to extract data from a scanned document. For example, reading a scanned paper invoice and putting that data into the database.

• RPA: Robotic process automation that allows the software to mimic a human that is using web or desktop applications, like having the system update Quickbooks Online with invoice details.

• Machine Learning: Tasks executed by specialized apps like face or voice recognition or text classification.

• Bot: Automated, repetitive tasks like scheduling data backups or running a process at the same time every day.

• Rule: Checking the content of a process or document against business rules to determine the next action or update another field’s contents. For example, checking an invoice to see if it exceeds a certain monetary threshold for that vendor that might require additional human oversight.

• Sub-Task: A task started within another task, like looking up a recipient’s full name to include while generating an automated email.

• ERROR: A system-generated task alerting a user to a failure to process a step correctly within the workflow.

  Examples of tasks:

  • Extract invoice data. Receives a PDF of an invoice and extracts the data from it. (Automated)
  • Validate invoice data. Compares the extracted invoice data to the business rules to determine if it’s correct, complete, and ready to process. (Automated)
  • Quality control check. Shows an accounting user a proposed vendor payment and its backing documents to determine if it is OK for payment by funds transfer. (QC)
  • Resolve routing block. Alert production that no manufacturer is available for the items in an order so they can manually route or cancel the order. (User)
  • No response from API. Alerts production that an order was sent to the vendor’s API, but the system did not receive a success response. (Error)

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Working On Tasks

For most users, the primary activity in the system is working on and resolving a task. 

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Alerts

When a process encounters a step that requires human intervention, it creates a task alert. That alert is then shown to all users whose Group allows them to see it.

The number of alerts is shown in the colored banner to the right of the module’s name. Click the module name to see the list of alerts.

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Task Details

Click any task in the list to open the Task Details view, which will show you all of the task’s data in the system.

At the top right of the Task Details view, you’ll see the list of actions (such as Complete, Validate, and Claim) available for that task. This list is governed by:

• Your user group and role
• The task’s status
• Business logic rules

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Claiming and Unclaiming a Task

To work on a task, you must first own it. You can Claim a task for yourself, or a manager can Assign a task to you.

Once you own a task, it will appear in your My Tasks module at the top of the dashboard.

When you view a task that you own, you can take specific actions with it.

• Edit the task.

• Complete the task to save and close out the task’s action (including any changes you may have made). This indicates that all steps required for the task are complete (without further verification), so the task moves to the next step in the workflow.

• Validate the task to check its input data (including your changes) against the business process rules of this step to see if everything is correct and will process without error on resubmission. It does not save and complete the task or move on to the next step. 

  HINT: Validating before completing is a recommended and handy way to check your work before completing tasks.

• You can Unclaim a task to release it for others to work on.

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LOGGING IN AND OUT

1. Open your browser and go to the link provided by your team to log in.

2. Enter the credentials provided by your system administrator in the dialog and click Submit.
   

   If you are prompted, change your password. Each Actionabl client organization sets its own password rules, so consult with your system administrator for details on your requirements.

   HINT: If you’ve forgotten your password, click Forgot Password and enter your registered email address for a password reset link. If the email address you enter is NOT registered, no email will be sent, and no error message will be generated (for security purposes).

3. When you log in for the first time, you’ll be taken to the Task Master dashboard by default. It will look something like this:
   

4. Click the down arrow next to your username at the bottom to see your personal account menu.
   

5. Click My Profile to open your user profile.

   NOTE: You will NOT see any alert notifications until you click into a module for the first time unless you have a default Dashboard set in your profile.

To log out, click the arrow next to your username and select Log Out from the menu.

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MANAGING YOUR PROFILE

Your Actionabl user profile contains more than your username and password. It’s essential to your interaction with the system, workflows, and your team.

Click the arrow next to your username, then select My Profile. Three tabs are available: Profile, Password, and Settings. 

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The Profile Tab

• User Name is the login name you use for the system. It must be unique, so use caution if attempting to change it.
• Email is the email address at which you receive notifications from the system. You can update this as you wish.
• Phone is an optional field where you can include a phone number that the system can use to send automated SMS or WhatsApp notifications for errors. If the process administrator has enabled that functionality, these notifications are sent. 
• Status optionally sets your availability to receive automated task assignments if the process administrator enables auto-assign for this process. The system checks your group and this status to determine eligibility for the assignment.
• Skills - reserved for future functionality. Please do not enter anything in this field.
• Default Auth Group lists the dashboards that you are authorized to use. There is no need to set a default here; this function is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
• Last Login On shows the date and time you logged into the system. You cannot change this.
• Upload Picture is where you can upload a profile picture. Recommended dimensions are 110px by 110px. File formats supported are:  JPG and PNG.

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Changing Your Password

1. Click the Password tab at the top of the profile dialog.
   
2. Enter your current password in the top box.
3. Enter your new password in the following box, then re-enter it in the Confirm Password box. You will see an alert if the entries do not match.
4. If you need to see the passwords entered, click the “eye” iconto the right of the input.
5. To exit without making a change, click Close. Otherwise, click Save to proceed. You’ll see the message “Your password has been changed successfully” displayed at the bottom of your screen for a few seconds once the change is made.

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Your Settings

The Settings tab shows technical settings relating to your user account. These are for information only. Do not make changes here unless instructed to do so by technical support or an administrator.

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Your Notifications

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This tab records all notifications you’ve received from the system.

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SEARCHING AND FILTERING

There are several different ways to search and filter tasks within Actionabl. Each has a different scope and will yield different results, so it’s important to understand how to select between them.

• Searching is used when you know what you’re looking for.  It’s especially useful if you have specific information, like a record ID or a person’s name. 
• Filtering is better when you’re trying to narrow down a view to see a set of results that match your criteria, like seeing all invoices received within a range of dates or all tasks due next week.

On all task lists, you’ll see an Overdue Only switch in the top center area. Turning this toggle on quickly filters the displayed results to show only items whose due date is in the past.

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Quick Search vs Full Search

There are two sets of search and filtering functions, and they each act a bit differently.

On any list of task alerts, you’ll see a Search and a Filter icon at the top right of the list. These are the “Quick” options.

On the dashboard’s menu, you’ll see Active Search and Archive Search. These are the “Full” search and filtering tools.

The scope of information searched by these tools differs.

Quick Search and Filter	Full Search and Filter
Searches only the columns (fields) currently \ displayed on the list	Can search ALL columns in the record.

If a list being searched spans multiple pages of results, both the Quick and Full searches automatically look through all of the pages of the list.

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Quick Search

When you are on any list of records, the search at the top right looks through all the records found on that list (even if it spans multiple pages) to find a match for the term in any of the fields displayed in the results. It finds the records instantly as you type.

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Quick Filters

On any screen of records, there are two sets of filters available to you: Process and Results.

• In the center top of the navigation is a Process Filter. This narrows the result set to items that are in the process selected.

• The Result Filter is a powerful tool that enables you to select across other fields and criteria to narrow down your results.

• Once you select a process in this filter, you’ll see a set of fields relating to that process, which you can use to build robust criteria for your results.

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Full Searches and Filters

In the menu bar, you’ll see Active Search and Archive Search. These functions are identical in use; their results differ only in returning currently active records vs. older records that have been archived. 

Unlike Quick Search and Quick Filter, these search and filtering functions have access to all of the data stored for a particular record, even if that data is not displayed on the result list.

The tabs across the top specify the span of data to be searched: an entire process, a task, or a custom search.

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NEXT STEPS

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User Guides

Detailed User Guides provide comprehensive information about your actions in the system, including real-world examples using everyday scenarios.

Task Management Guide

Controller Guide

User Management Guide

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Administration Guides

The Administration Guides for technical users dive deeper into setup, process design, and system administration tasks

Automation, Task, & Rule Management Guide

Process Administration Guide_(Coming Soon)_