Jobs Overview

A job is any project, small to large which has a definite start date or a delivery date or both. All jobs can have a workflow which specifies what steps or processes are required to complete the job. All jobs can have assets related to it, which can be stored within the job or shared to the main TACTIC Asset Library. Learn how to create a job in TACTIC by following this tutorial: https://southpawtech.com/doc/Project/tutorial/tutorial01/

Workflows

All jobs can have a workflow related to it. The workflow defines a set of related processes that a job needs to go through. When a workflow is associated with a job, tasks will automatically be created for each of the manual processes in the workflow. Thus a workflow can be used to quickly template a set of dependent steps to complete a job.

Since each process in a workflow can be configured to have a duration, the autogeneration of tasks will also automatically create an approximate schedule based on this information. This provides a very quick way to start up a job, especially which the job type is accurately defined in the workflow. For departments that have a large number of similar jobs coming through, a well defined workflow and approval process leads to efficiency.

Assets

There are two types of assets. There are two types of assets; WIP Assets (Work in Progress Assets) & Shared Assets.

WIP Assets assets are those files that belong to the job as the the job is being completed. These files are checked into the processes corresponding to where the actual work is done in the workflow.

When you start a job, the asset library within the job is empty. You can either upload new files to the job or bring in existing assets from the main TACTIC Asset Library ie. template documents or reference work.

While working on a job, more assets are created. Those new assets can remain in the job or the user may decide to push a finished asset to the main TACTIC Asset Library. Users have complete control over what comes in and what goes out of a job.

Shared Assets are finished assets produced by the job. These are files that have been deemed reusable and should be exposed and available to other jobs. Other jobs can then search for these shared assets and use them in a new project.

Shared assets are not stored within the project, but rather an Asset Library contained with TACTIC | Project. This means these shared assets will still be available even though the job has been offlined.

!!! NOTE: This separation of data is extremely useful for managing the overall health of the file system. The main TACTIC Asset Library is never polluted with unfinished or unapproved assets.

Subjobs

Subjobs are items contained within a Job that need to be completed to fulfill the Job. The encompassing Job, together with component Subjobs ultimately make up a full project. Similar to the job itself, each deliverable has a start and end date and are associated with a set of steps or Tasks that need to be assigned to different users in order to complete the Deliverable.

Completion could potentially mean creating a finished Asset. A different set of Tasks can be set for different Subjobs. Any set of tasks is referred to as a Workflow.

Understanding Subjobs

Jobs are capable of creating subjobs of different types. These subjobs are full jobs that live under the parent job. Each subjob can have it's own workflow.

Subjobs are well suited for managing large jobs. It allows a large job to be broken up into smaller manageable components.

A simple example can be used to explain this: A user manual needs to be completed for a customer. This user manual consists of many chapters describing setup and how to use the product. The Parent job that you would create is called “User Manual for Product X”.

The Subjobs for “User Manual for Product X” could be each of the chapters of the manual, for example, Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 2: Getting Started, and so forth. Each one of these chapters would have a set of Tasks that users would have to do to finish writing the chapter. Maybe there was a Task to write a draft, another to add pictures and a final one to revise the content. Once these tasks are complete, the chapter for the manual would be ready to be compiled with the other chapters. Each of the other chapters would be completed in similar ways, until all Subjobs are completed, and ultimately fulfilling the Job so that the manual is ready to send to the Customer.