Create a task or task group

Use tasks and task groups in the Workflows application to represent your organization’s workflows, steps to complete processes, and the users completing them. 

Getting started

Tasks and task groups are determined on the Task schema. Before creating a task group, ensure you have at least one Task schema.

Tasks and task groups explained

Tasks represent the jobs to do in a process or workflow.

A task group is a group of tasks created at the same time.

Tasks

How you complete a task depends on its execution type. If its associated Task schema supports the:

• Entry execution type: you need to execute the task and associate it with a new or existing notebook entry.
• Direct execution type: you can manually update its status in the task group. Tasks using this execution type are not executed into entries.
• Flowchart execution type: you must complete a sequence of tasks defined in the flowchart’s Task schema. To learn more about flowcharts, refer to Configuring flowchart Task schemas.

Create a task

Create task(s) to represent jobs or workflows in the Workflows dashboard. 

To create a task:

1. Click the Workflows icon in the left-side menu.
2. Click the + icon at the top of the panel, then select the Task schema for your workflow:
3. In the pop-up modal that displays, select the project folder for the task group and (optional) watchers, and complete the Task table.
   • Each row of the table is one task.
   • For flowchart task groups, create more than one task by adding new rows to the Task table.
4. Click Create.

To control which users receive notifications about task group status changes, add or remove watchers in the Metadata tab.

Create tasks from structured tables

You can create task groups from these structured tables:

• Inventory table
• Outputs table
• Plate Creation table
• Registration table
• Tasks table

To create a task group from a structured table:

1. Click the Create workflow tasks icon at the top of the table.
2. Select the Task schema from the drop-down menu.
3. Complete the Tasks table.
   • For each task, enter the task parameters and assignees, if applicable.
   • If the task group has at least one field that accepts the type of entity or inventory item contained in the structured table, Benchling automatically adds the item to the first applicable field.
4. Click Create.