How to Use the Pooling Functionality in SharePoint Integration?

Objective

In my SharePoint application, I would like to dispatch the task to a group and as soon as a person catch it, I would like others from the group having the task deleted.

Summary

This can be achieved by using the pooling concept supported in AgilePoint Server and SharePoint Integration.

Resolution

AgilePoint Server supports the concept of task pooling. A task can be dispatched to a group of people (controlled by the Participant property setting of the activity in Process Builder, for example, by specifying a group). You can further controlled how many participants are actually needed to perform the task by setting the Max. Participants property of the activity in the Process Builder.

If the value of the Max. Participants property is larger than the actual number of members in the group, all members in the group will be assigned with the tasks and they must all preform the tasks.

If the value of the Max. Participants property is smaller than the actual number of the members in the group, no tasks will be actually assigned to the participants. All tasks will be created with the status of 'New' and will be considered as in the pool in SharePoint Integration. The number of people in the pool will be shown under the Pool column (next to the Location column) as shown in the following screen. 

Pool Column screen

If a user click on the number such as '3' in the above screen shot, a Take Assignment page will be shown with the participants currently in the pool. The user can then accept the assignment and the task associated will have the status changed from 'New' to 'Assigned'. Once a task has the status of 'Assigned', the user can actually perform the task.


Take Assignment screen

The AgilePoint Server will keep track of the number of people that have taken the assignment and compare to the Max. Participants value, if the value is reached, the rest of the tasks will be removed automatically.

Therefore, if you only want one person to perform and the rest of the tasks to be deleted, set the Max. Participants property to '1'.