You can set up a work item deadline, e.g. a number of days the end user is allowed to look at the workitem without actioning it. This and other forms of notifcations are briefly explained here...
Notifications
Every work item has a tab for "Notification" which allows sending or issueing a notification message to the agent (or agents) given. This can be very useful if someone needs to track a process. Do make sure these settings don't flood the inbox of the receiver, if too many of these notifications are issued, they fully automatically turn into a pain in the a** to your end user...
Deadlines messages - setting due dates on work items
Deadlines can be predefined on every work item as a number of hours or days or such. The effect will be a calculation of due date and time at the time a given work item is created. When this due date and time is due, the work item will be flagged "Due date passed" by a batch job (See Tools > Business Workflow > Development > Administration > Workflow runtime > Workflow deadline monitoring).Along with that, a notification message will be sent out to a "Recipient of message when latest end missed" for the Latest End due date. Better make sure this recipient is known (supplied) - if not, the notification will be addressed to everybody on the system !
- The following due date settings can be found on the tabulator bar of a (any) task:
- Latest End - due date on which the task should have ended - a notification message is issued when the due date is reached before the task is completed. Typically keeping a work item in the en user inbox (e.g. reserved) or not confirming a work item for a long enough period of time would trigger the norification to be send
- Requested start - due date which is set to delay the task from being processed. No notificaiton will be sent but the actual triggering of the task is done when the due date is reached
- Latest start - if the Latest start due date has been reached and the task has not been started, a notification (deadline message) is issued - mind you the task does not need to be processed, just started
- Requested end - more of the same, assuming the Requested start didn't actually start anything...
When a deadline is missed, a "Deadline message" may be issued, when the respective work item is executed anywhay, the notification will be set to "Done" by the system.