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The Request List and Its Status Tabs

Every user input view has a request list: the records its form has created, with a strip of tabs across the top that counts and filters them by where they stand. It is the working list for whoever runs the process day to day.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Forms:

  • User Input Views — View Requests on the view opens its request list

Admin Panel → Processes:

  • Expiring Soon — where the Timing Out Soon tab leads

The tabs

Each tab shows its count in brackets and filters the list when clicked.

  • Active Requests: requests still in progress, judged by the most recent thing that happened to each: waiting for a stage's decision, or sent back to the requester for information. This is the default tab.
  • All Requests: every live record in the datastore, whatever its state.
  • One tab per stage, named after the stage: requests waiting for that stage's decision.
  • Waiting For Information: requests sent back to the requester.
  • Declined Requests: declined by an approver.
  • Cancelled Requests: cancelled by the requester.
  • Timed Out Requests: declined by a stage time-out. It has its own colour so it is not mistaken for Declined.
  • Timing Out Soon: requests that will time out within the warning window. It opens the Expiring Soon screen rather than filtering the list, and is drawn only for people who have been granted Expiring Soon.
  • Completed Requests: approved at the last stage, by a person or by a Complete Request time-out.

The list also has a Current Stage column: the stage name for a request in progress, or Waiting for Information, Declined, Cancelled, Timed Out, Moved Stage or Completed.

Why the counts may not add up

  • Active and the stage tabs ask different questions. Active looks at the latest event; the stage tabs look at the furthest stage reached. A request sent back for information after reaching a later stage can appear in both.
  • All Requests counts records, including any created outside the form.
  • Timing Out Soon looks ahead and never includes something already overdue; that has either timed out already or is waiting for the time-out task to run.

Using the list

  1. Open the list with View Requests.
  2. Start on Active Requests, or a stage tab if you look after one stage.
  3. Open a request with its View Progress row action to see its history, its e-mails and the actions you can take. See Working a Request from Its Progress Page.
  4. Check Timing Out Soon regularly if your stages have time-outs, and chase or pause what is about to lapse.
  5. Use Timed Out Requests to review what lapsed, separately from what was refused.

There is no batch approve or decline. Each request is decided on its own page, so every decision sends the right e-mails and runs any flag rules.

Where the window comes from

Timing Out Soon uses the Days ahead to warn about time-outs setting, in the Stage Time-outs group under Architect Panel → Configuration → Site Settings. It defaults to 14 days. See Site Settings.

What goes wrong

  • No Timing Out Soon tab. You have not been granted the Expiring Soon tile. Ask for it to be granted to your security group.
  • Finished requests stuck in Active. The last stage is a page nobody approves. Give it a Complete Request time-out.
  • A stage tab count that looks one stage out. Each stage tab counts requests waiting for that stage, which have already been approved at the stage before.

Worked example

A work-experience co-ordinator opens the applications list each morning. Active Requests shows 41; the Placement Supervisor tab shows 12 waiting on supervisors; Waiting For Information shows 3 students who have not replied; Timing Out Soon shows 4. They click Timing Out Soon, chase the four supervisors from Expiring Soon, then check Timed Out Requests for anything that lapsed overnight before reporting the week's refusals from Declined Requests alone.

Recommendations

  • Grant Expiring Soon to whoever works the list, so the tab appears.
  • Report time-outs separately from declines.
  • Complete page-only last stages with a time-out so Active stays meaningful.
  • Work from stage tabs when different people own different stages.