Best workflow practice when you are waiting for someone to do something

Yuri Ivanov

Hello good people!

We are looking for some examples of workflow when your team is waiting for someone outside to do something.

Here is a very simple scenario:

- our team receives a request from a customer (OPEN)

- we work on that request (IN PROGRESS)

- now we must have feedback or additional files, or whatever from a customer. (what should we do here?). And depending of what the customer says/does, we wither RESOLVE, or CLOSE, or set it to DONE.

I'm asking because none of the popular workflows seem to have a status for that scenario. The issue is not done, not resolved, it cannot be closed... How do you all do this? Thank you!

Andrew Laden

I have statuses in my workflows like "With Customer" (or "waiting on customer")and "With 3rd party" to indicate that an issue is waiting on someone.

I believe that service desk has these by default as well. And automation around it. Ie, if an issue is waiting on customer, and the customer replies, it automatically moves back to in progress. or similar.