IT admins tend to be project and task focused, often judged the project success as well as the number of tasks they can complete in a given time period. The problem is that it is often the one off firefighting tasks consume the majority admins time, leaving little to no time, and keeping them from moving their projects forward. Admins need a better / faster way to process and prioritize what needs to be done, shortening the time consumed by firefighting, allowing more time to work on the projects that meet the needs of the business.
Task's go hand in hand with projects I have been told over and over by users that they don't want to figure out what they need to do, they want to be told what needs to be done next to keep the system happy.
The system needs to provides actionable tasks, prioritized based on when the task needs to be done first. In general users want to know what needs to be done now, what can be done later, what can be delegated to some one else, and what can be automated.
Leveraging the V Realize Operations platform, to monitor your environment for any issues that come up. When It see something that needs attention, It will create a task, explaining what needs to be done, and why. It will prioritize the task based on when It think it needs to be taken care of, Now. Next. Soon. or Some Day.
What is a Task
When we talk about tasks traditionally they are something that is going on or has happened in the system that has been kicked off by a user or by the system. The concept of a task here is a prioritized action that needs to be taken by a user. There can also be system tasks that cover our traditional model of a task, allowing for a history or audit log that can cover all task ether for humans or the system
Task prioritization model
with all of the fancy models for prioritization we have had over the years for alerts we always have to explain them to users in terms of what needs to be done now/next/some day. As part of fitting into users life it seems obvious to remove the fancy prioritization and just use the model we explain to users.
NOW
"I need to drop everything and get this taken care of now."
Tasks with a now priority are ones that need emendate attention. As the name implies the user should stop any other activities and take care of the tasks now. An example of of this is "Power off non critical workloads and migrate N# of workloads to another cluster because your out of capacity"
NEXT
"I need to take care of this some time today or tomorrow, in the next few days at the latest."
Tasked marked as next are ones that should be looked at quickly but they are not ones that the suer should drop everything to take care of, often these tasks revolve around an issue that is not a really problem right now but it will become a problem quickly if an action is not taken. An example of this would be "Order N# of hosts to prevent running out of capacity in 30 days"
Next can also be used for Tasks that have a due date related to them such as preparing a report for a quarterly audit
SOON
"This is my advanced warning that I will need to take care of this in the near future, If I have nothing else to do I can take care of it now "
This probably is most commonly used for tasks that have a due date associated with them such as preparing for an audit at the end of the month, or adding capacity for an expected spike in resource usage such as a spike in resource usage due to e-commerce site around the holiday season.
SOMEDAY
" This is not really a high priority for me, I probably will never take any action on this but it is still nice to be reminded about it"
Someday is for those tasks that don't really have a priority but the user does not want to forget about them, the tasks that the user does not want to say "I don't care stop showing me this"
IN BOX
The inbox is slightly different than the inbox in a traditional task management system. In traditional system the in box is the place for tasks that do not have a priority assigned to them, most tasks go into the in box then the user assigns a priority to the task and it is moved to the priority and out of the in box. In this system every task has a priority assigned to it at the time it is created and every task always has a priority even when it is in an inbox.
The purpose of the inbox is to give quick access to the set of tasks assigned to the user. The priority of the tasks is used to sort the list, with the tasks that need attention first showing at the top of the list.
Taking action
COMPLETING A TASK
The primary method for clearing a task will be to take action on the task.
When the user selects this option the system presents the user with a set of options for completing the task. When the user selects one of the options the system learns the users behavior and uses the information the weight the ordering of the options.
when the system identifies an action as redundant and is reasonably confident that a given action is the appropriate response for an issue it will prompt the userto automate the task in the future.
Taking Other Actions
REMIND ME LATER
Reminders draw on the concept of Contexts that is often found in task management software. Context specify a time or location that the task is related to such as at the store /work/ home.
When this option is selected they are presented with several common times they can be reminded. The first ones are related to a time frame. The second set of options are related to the users location or device.
When the user selects one of these option the system will clear it from the users in box and the prioritization list until either the time or location it met then the system will bring the task back.
PRIORITIZE
When the user changes the priority of a task the system learns and applies what it has learned to future tasks. When the user says they don't care about a task the system takes note and learns from it. Over time the system needs to be able to understand if the user did not care about this at a single point in time or if they don't care about this task for a given category of objects or they never care about this type of task.
ASSIGN
Tasks can be assigned user or reassigned to a different user. When a task is assigned to a user it shows in their My Tasks inbox.
Task Creation
Tasks can either be created by a user or the system. When a user creates a task it should be assigned to some one, given a due date, and a priority. The system created tasks likely will only have a priority until some one has assigned the task and given it a due date.
Daily Status Report
With a set of tasks that can be marked off the system can collect a list of items completed and create a status report, calling out achievements and can make sure that the relevant people are made aware of the status.