Communication items, specifically Questions and Tasks, are items in a coordination workflow that often have multiple rounds of back and forth communication.
The responsible party provides the answer for the status of the item to change, and when the answer is satisfactory, the sender can approve the answer. Once approved, the item is marked as completed, remains visible for reference, but can no longer be edited. All actions and changes are tracked in the To do's module.
Statuses
Open - A new question or action is created with an Open status.
Urgent - When the end date has passed, the status changes to Urgent.
Answered - The communication is given the Answered status when an answer has been given.
Completed - When the sender accepts the answer.
Canceled - When the sender decides to cancel the raised communication item, the status is updated to Canceled.
In order to change a communication item's status, an action needs to be performed. This can be done in two ways, depending if the communication was added as a comment on a document or not:
(1) All communications: You can open the To do's overview by clicking the document name. Then you can see the required actions in the document To do's overview.
(2) Communications added as a comment on a document: You will know if the communication item is a comment on a document, if the pencil icon is present next to the To do's number and there is an eye icon to open the document. Look into this article to learn more about communication actions on a document: Preview, annotate, and collaborate on documents
To do's overview
Along with being able to see all the information associated with the communication item, a number of actions can be performed from To do's (1) page:
Actions
Create communication - When a new question or a task is added, the status is open (2).
Edit - The sender can always edit the subject or the message, change the end date or add an attachment using the edit button (3). A message can be canceled by the creator after posting, as long as it has not been already answered. Changes are always tracked and visible in the Questions list.
Reply - The recipient of the message can reply to the question by adding an answer (4). Additionally, an attachment can also be added for further clarification. Not only the recipient, but also employees of the same company may reply. The status will be change to Answered.
Informed - Users can add themselves as informed (5). The communication item will now be added to the overview in the personal dashboard.
Comments - Any user with access to the project can add a comment (6) on a message, even if the question is not addressed to them. This way, additional information can come from someone not involved in the original communication.
Once an answer has been added, two actions are made available which can be performed:
Edit (7) - The recipient of the question is able to edit their answer at anytime before it has been accepted by the sender.
Accept Answer (8) - The sender of the communication can accept the answer once they have reviewed this. Once accepted, the communication status will change to completed. After a question or task has been completed, it can't be edited anymore.
💡 Tip: Learn more about Adding communication.