Case management: structuring requests and tasks across a team

What is a case?

A case is a traceable unit for one request: a tenant enquiry, a client instruction, a damage report, a support request. Instead of scattered emails and shouted requests, every request gets a fixed place with a status, an owner and a history.

IDA deliberately uses the neutral term case rather than ticket, because the principle is the same in every industry - from IT support to administration.

Why scattered mailboxes and lists hit their limits

Typical problems without structured case management:

• Requests get lost in a mailbox or are worked twice.
• Nobody can say straight away who owns it and where it stands.
• Deadlines are missed because they are not kept centrally.
• When somebody is ill or on leave, the handover is missing.
• Reports are assembled laboriously by hand from spreadsheets.

The building blocks in practice

Requests arrive by email, web form or portal and are matched automatically. Categories and priorities put them in the right order, statuses make the state of play visible, and notifications keep everyone involved up to date. At the end there is a report showing where the effort goes.

When one task waits for another

Many tasks can only start once something else is done: the device is set up once it has been delivered, the invoice written once acceptance is in. If that dependency only lives in somebody's head, people start too early or wait without knowing what for.

It helps to record the dependency on the task itself, across lists and cases. Every view then shows "waiting for ...", waiting tasks can be hidden, and as soon as everything a task was waiting for is done, the people responsible are notified.

Recurring processes as workflows

Some processes always run the same way across several people and days: setting up a new employee, their departure, a monthly close. If they are handed out by hand every time, whether a step is missed depends on individual memory.

A workflow describes such a process once as a template: steps with owners, deadlines and dependencies. Every start turns it into real tasks that land with the right people one after another or in parallel. The next step is only due once its predecessor is done, and whoever is next is notified.

• The owner is a person or a whole team; with a team, one member completes the task for everyone.
• Deadlines count from the start, from the predecessor or to a fixed day of the month, optionally in working days only.
• A step can bring a checklist that is created as soon as the step is due.
• Workflows start by hand, from a case, as a monthly series or automatically, for example when an employee is created or a form is submitted.
• Whoever finishes a step can pass information on to the next one, for example where the device is.

Who benefits from case management

Anywhere recurring requests are handled by several people - which is practically every team. A configurable platform like IDA adapts statuses, categories and form fields to your processes instead of imposing a rigid industry logic.