I have too many jobs in my jobs held list

There may be times where you feel you have too many jobs in your jobs held list and that is has become less useful as a result of this.

We have noted some actions you can take below to resolve this issue:

Change the min/max stage order to make visible:

If you have lots of jobs on an early stage(s) for example if you get allocated 500 tax returns on the day the jobs are created then you can change this setting to exclude one or multiple consecutive early stages from the jobs held list. You may find you can monitor the early stages perfectly well using the progress monitor, this would be especially true if you either complete the step for the entire practice (and therefore do not need to filter down the jobs) or if you are linked to the job in which case you can filter the progress monitor widget to the linked view.

To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on the config menu (you will need to be a superuser).
2. Click on edit workflow systems.
3. Drill into the appropriate workflow system by clicking on the pencil icon alongside the name.
4. Click on the green Edit system settings button, towards the top right corner.
5. Change the values in the min and max stage orders to make visible boxes. The top box is the min and the bottom box is the max.
   1. The values relate to the order value of the stages and are inclusive, i.e. if you set the minimum value to 5 then a stage with an order value of 5 will be included. Set it to 6 to exclude this stage.
   2. To see you stage order value go to the workflow elements tab and scroll down to the list of stages.
6. Click Save.

This can be used to hide jobs at both early and latter stage of the workflow.

Change the workflow route settings so you do not automatically become holder:

To ensure your jobs held list remains highly focused review your workflows and look for situations in the workflow where you are currently being set as the holder but where you actually do not need to be. The following suggestions might help identify these scenarios:

• If you are responsible for all of stage X within the practice (e.g. where you chase all of the signed accounts from the client) then you do not need to be the holder. You can simply look at the progress monitor widget and at that particular stage(s) and click on the number to see the jobs.
• If you are responsible for all of stage Y, only for your client list (not entire practice) and you are occupying a job position (e.g. manager, preparer etc). Here you can again simply use the progress monitor widget to see jobs at this stage. As you are linked to the jobs you can filter the widget to the linked view to filter out other team members jobs.
• If someone else is responsible for the stage then they should probably be the job holder and the workflow needs to be correctly configured.
• If jobs are awaiting allocation and it is your job to allocate them then you might consider setting the job holder to the pool and using the pool screen to allocate the jobs.

If you decide you need to change your workflow actions so that someone else is the job holder at certain points then follow this guidance to do so, remember that existing jobs (that have already passed the point of allocation) will not be effected by this change, instead you change them in bulk using the bulk operations tool.