Why Do I See a Group's Tasks in my Task List, Even Though I Do Not Belong to the Group?

Symptoms

When using the Dynamic Task Pool activity for eForms or external forms, users who are not part of a group sometimes see the group's tasks in their task lists. The users cannot access these tasks. When they click the task name, this message shows:

Task does not belong to you.

Prerequisites

Cause

To optimize system performance, groups' and roles' tasks show in users' task lists based on partial matches to the value of a group or role name in the Participants list. field in the Dynamic Task Pool activity. The Participants list in the Dynamic Task Pool activity is compared as a partial match, rather than an exact match, to all group and role names for the purpose of displaying tasks in users' task lists.

The partial matching is in this format:

*GroupOrRole*

For example, if the Participants list has the group or role name Reviewer1, the task list will show tasks for groups or roles named Reviewer1, Reviewer12, MyReviewer1 or MyReveiwer12. This is because the given group name, Reviewer1, is included in all of the returned names.

For example, if the Participants list has the group or role name Reviewer11, the task list will not show tasks for groups or roles named Reviewer1, or Reviewer12, but it will show tasks for MyReviewer11.

Resolution

There are 2 ways to avoid this issue:

  • Use group or role names that are not shorter versions of another group or role name. For example, avoid group or role naming conventions like Reviewer, Reviewer1, MyReviewer1, and so on.
  • Use a Standard Task activity, as an alternative to a Dynamic Task Pool activity.