What is a compliance task?
Compliance tasks are actions, checks or inspections that your organisation needs to carry out on a one-off or regular basis. There are different types of maintenance work, each designed for specific scenarios, for example: contract compliance, reporting against funding obligations and meeting critical or legislative requirements such as financial returns and insurance renewals.
Why schedule compliance tasks?
Compliance tasks will help you to ensure critical obligations are met and not missed or forgotten.
The compliance task workflow
Once a compliance task is scheduled, it will appear in the Compliance schedule tab. When it's time to begin the task, a task will be assigned to the responsible person and the scheduled task can then be viewed in the In progress tab within the Compliance register. Learn more about workflows
How to schedule a compliance task
Complete each section of the Compliance details form highlighted below. Click the links to learn how to complete each section.
- Compliance details
Describes the task, creates links to related documentation, and sets the instructions. - Schedule
Where you schedule the frequency and recurrence pattern for the task. - Assign
Where you assign the users to complete and close the task. - Access control
Set who can view the item. - Attach records
Where you can attach files relevant to the task. - System event history
A chronological list maintained by the system of most entries, changes, and linkages made in the system in relation to this task.
Form tabs
The Details page comprises two tabs - the Description tab contains the details of the task and the associated schedule and the Series tab displays past and future scheduled occurrences of the task.
Compliance details
In this component you'll describe the task and set the instructions for how it should be carried out.
- Compliance task
Type the name of the compliance task - Compliance type
Select the type e.g. management requirement, regulatory requirement - Compliance Source document (optional)
Select or search this list of items on the Contract and Document registers, to add a link to the source of the requirement such as a contractual reporting obligation. A hyperlink to these documents will appear at the Action stage. - Reference documents (optional)
Choose one or multiple documents from the Documents register to be displayed as clickable links during the Action stage. - Instruction type
If this optional feature is activated in your platform, select the relevant task type from the list and pre-programmed instructions will be provided. Learn more - Instructions
Define the instructions for conducting the compliance task. The following example illustrates how sequential and concise instructions could help the Action officer.
Compliance Schedule
Click on Schedule task to open the scheduler. In this section, you'll set the frequency of the task and the dates for when the task needs to be done and then approved.
- Approval due date
Select the date by which the entire process of completing and approving the tasks has to be done. The Approval and Action days you set next will count back from this date. In the example above, the deadline for the task to be done is 28 August which is 3 days before the entire process must be completed. - Action days
Number of days the Action officer has to complete the task. - Approval days
Number of days the Approval officer has to the approval the task. Note: Based on the Approval due date, the scheduler will calculate and display when the reminder email will be sent (Start date), the deadline for the Action officer (Action deadline). - Frequency - If the task is required to be completed more than once, select the required frequency eg. Monthly or if the task is required to be completed only once, select Once off.
In the Recurrence and End sections, you'll set the recurrence pattern.
- Use the Repeat every setting to set how often the task should repeat. For example, if you selected a monthly frequency, you can use this setting to specify that the task should be conducted every 6 months.
- The schedule will default to 'No end' which means new tasks will continue to be automatically created according to the schedule. Alternatively, you can set when the tasks will cease to reoccur with the following options:
- No end- select this option if the task is to repeat continually
- End after - select this option if the task is to End after a specified number of times
- End after - select this option if the task is to End after a certain date
- Halt schedule
Select this option when you want to stop repeating task from being created after the current one is completed.
- Click OK to set the schedule
Assign
This component enables you to set who will complete (Action officer) and who will close (Approval officer) the task. It's important that these choices align with organisational delegations relating to the management of the compliance requirement.
- Action officer
Select the user responsible for conducting the task. Note: if you select multiple action officers, a separate and duplicate task will be created for each person selected. These tasks will also have to be closed separately. If you only want one task, but a number of staff to be involved in conducting the audit, simply select one Action officer and use the instructions to convey how they should involve other staff in the task. - Approval officer
Select the staff member who is accountable to close the task. - Related business area
Select the business area the task relates to. - Related meeting
Select the meeting that has oversight responsibility for the management of the task. This is consistent with the premise that transparency in responsibility leads to greater accountability.
Access control
Set which users will have access to view the incident report. You can grant access to all users or specific teams and individual users.
All users can access
Select this option if you would like all users to be able to view the item.
Specify who can access
Select this option to control which users can view this item.
Teams
Select the team/s who need to view the item.
Individual users
Select specific users (if they are not included in the selected team/s) who need to view the item.
Who can view?
Click this button to see a list of users who can see the item based on your selection. The list will also include those users assigned to the item in the workflow. Note: Users with system level permissions to see all items will also be included.
Attach records
This component enables you to attach records such as additional checklists or instructions.
Records attached here will also automatically display on the Records register (attached records tab) when the audit is completed and closed. By default, records are assigned the same viewing permissions as those set for the compliance item.
Click Attach to add records.
Record name
When naming the record ensure the description is meaningful.
File or Link
Click on Choose file and navigate to the record on your computer. If you have links enabled, toggle to change the control to add a URL to the record. The URL must be a in a web format (https://) or Microsoft Sharepoint format (https://<company>.sharepoint.com/...)
Go to topSubmit
The green Submit button will save the form and create the first task as a future action.
Select Create a related item if you want to create a separate linked item on another register when you save the form. A link between the two items will be displayed in each item's System event history.
Depending on your permissions, you can choose to save the task as a draft. In choosing this option, you will be able to complete all components of the form with the exception of assigning the Action officer and the Approval officer and return to complete the schedule at a later date. Draft tasks appear in the Draft tab on the Compliance register.
System event history
The System event history is a chronological record maintained by the system detailing entries and changes made to the form including links to any related items created by users.
Click the '+' control on the right to expand the line item to see more information.
