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Milestones

A milestone signifies the completion of a major activity or a set of related activities.

Use milestones to mark major events, such as important dates or deadlines in a business process. For example, use a milestone to mark a product delivery date.

Recording of a milestone target date starts once the job starts. The milestone's target date automatically changes if you reschedule the associated activity. For example, in an Employee Hiring business process, if the Employee Start Date and 3-Month Review Date are two milestones and if the employee's start date changes, the 3-month review date also changes.

After defining milestones at the process level:

  • Add milestones for a map or activity to track job progress. Set interim milestones to track if you are behind schedule for the interim target date and take corrective action while you still have time to recover. For example, add a milestone for the entire Deliver Training Course process or set interim milestones for the Basic and Advanced courses.

  • Use milestones to schedule a process or activities and calculate the due dates. For example, schedule the Security Check task to appear on the HR Manager's work list four weeks after the Employee Hire Date milestone date.

  • Schedule activities forward or backward from a milestone. For example, schedule the Set New Employee Machine task to appear on the Network Services work list two days before (- 2 days) the Employee Start Date milestone date.

  • Set the milestone to achieve when an activity becomes pending or is completed. For example, set the Candidate Selection Complete milestone to achieve as soon as the HR Manager takes and completes the Select Final Candidate Based on Interview Results task.

  • Reschedule or change a milestone target due date. The system automatically updates the activities (that are not pending) with due dates linked to that milestone. For example, if you shift the Interviews Completed milestone date, the due dates of linked activities, such as Shortlist Candidates and Book Interview Room, shift automatically.

  • Set milestones relative to each other when one milestone depends on another milestone. For example, make the Training Materials Completed milestone date relative to the Deliver Training Course milestone date. If you reschedule the Training Course, all linked milestone dates are rescheduled automatically.

  • Link milestones to process states. For example, the Hiring process includes a series of states from Pre-interview > Interview > Selection > Hired.

    State refers to the status of a job at a particular point in time. A percentage complete is usually assigned to each state so that you can monitor the progress of a job. For example, a parcel can go through a series of states from New (0 %) > Dispatched (70%)> Confirmed (100%).

You can set a milestone to be static, dynamic, or relative to other milestones:

  • A static milestone has a target duration in days, hours, minutes, and seconds, or relative to when a job is created. For example, set the "Interviews Complete" milestone to reach 24 days after the "Hiring" job starts.

  • A dynamic milestone has the target duration as a date variable that contains the duration value.

    You can use the Kofax TotalAgility Workspace to change the milestone dates at runtime. If you change a milestone variable value, the milestone is NOT updated automatically; you must use the UpdateJobMilestone API to update the milestone.

  • When you set the target duration relative to another milestone, at runtime, and if you update a milestone, all milestones relative to it are also updated. For example, if the "Deliver Training Course" milestone is relative to the "Training Materials Completed" milestone, and if you change the "Training Materials Completed" date, the "Deliver Training Course" milestone is rescheduled automatically.

You can set the milestone to reach after (for example, three days later than) or before (for example, three days earlier than) the due date of the selected milestone. If the value is 0, the milestone will be achieved when the relative milestone is achieved.

Once a milestone is associated with a process or activity, you can view associations for a milestone.

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