Vacation Mode?

Hi bryan-riley​, 

We’ve observed many users struggling with the limitations of manual delegation in Aras Innovator® during vacations. At ScalePLM, we developed a tool specifically to automate this process and address these recurring pain points.

Our solution provides:
Rule-Based Delegation: Configure logic to split work across multiple colleagues—for example, delegating 'Type X' tasks to Person A and 'Type Y' tasks to Person B simultaneously.
Smart Reverse-Swap: Upon return, the tool automatically reassigns only the incomplete items back to the original user, ensuring no work is lost or duplicated.
Full Audit Trail: Automated email notifications are generated for every delegation and reverse-swap to maintain clarity on task ownership.
Offboarding Management: For departing employees, the system suggests delegations based on pre-configured rules, which managers can review and approve in one step.

If you or your organization are looking for a more robust way to manage OOO and employee transitions, I’d be happy to show you how this works. Let me know if you'd like to explore it further!

BR,
Vasant
Digital Thread Architect – ScalePLM
[email protected]

We developed an in house "Self Service Delegation" item and process some years ago. Basically you register the delegation (temporary or permanent) and appropriate times. The scheduler runs every 15 mins and looks for any tasks that have been activated for SSD people and re-assigns the tasks to the delegate. After the SSD expires it will swap any delegated tasks back to the original user. It's not perfect but works well for temporary delegations. Permanent ones can become a problem when A -> B -> C ->D because we don't ever clear the delegations out properly.

This is a very good discussion. To overcome this, we actually created and implemented a new item type to track the users request of who to delegate the task to and for how long and then assign the task to the PLM Admin to take action. Individual calendars for each user would also seem helpful for something like this. Thank you for bringing this discussion to the table!

We currently also use the "swap it manually when needed" solution. I don´t think the "auto-swap" is hard to achieve technically. We could integrate something like Outlook´s Out-of-Office feature so users can manage their absences manually. It is more difficult to determine to whom a task should be delegated. This has huge potential for conflict!😄

Don´t expect any further answer soon. Vacation mode activated...

This would actually be a fantastic feature and AFAIK this does not exist yet.

Usually, we use identity groups on any activity allowing us to swap/add users (as administrator) whenever needed by updating the group identity.