Introduction to the workflow

Task lifecycle

Snow Owl has been architected to author terminologies in a distributed and collaborative fashion. Users can work in the same location or can be geographically distributed, as long as they have network access to a central Snow Owl terminology repository. In order to coordinate the efforts of multiple authors concurrently editing the same ontology, separate tasks can be assigned to them.

Tasks have a lifecycle that spans from their initial creation through an authoring and reviewing stage to their final approval. Changes made as part of a task are not visible to other authors until they have been approved. All authors working on the same task see the changes made by any other authors working on that task. The task lifecycle is configurable and can be adapted to meet specific workflow requirements.

Task lifecycle

Before you can start working in a collaborative mode, you need to be connected to a shared repository. A detailed description for the necessary steps can be found in the section about Setting up a remote task repository.

Here is a short summary of the different stages in a typical task lifecycle. The links will help you to find the corresponding sections in the user guide.

• New task is created. Team members have to be specified,
• New task is submitted to the shared repository, team members are automatically assigned to the task.
• Task is activated. This means the team member started working on the task.
• Work is performed. While you are working on the task, it's useful to follow up on changes performed by your team members.
• Task is resolved as fixed and handed over on to the reviewer.
• Task is reviewed. Changes have to be accepted or rejected.
• Reviewer either marks the task as verified, or reopens the task. If the task is reopened, the assigned author has to accept the task.
• Task is promoted and can be seen by everyone. The promotion automatically closes the task.

The different steps of the task lifecyle are associated with certain task stages and actions that can be performed. The user interface of the task editor will change respectively. The table below gives an overview.

If the task is reopened, the status changes to LEAVE AS REOPENED. At this point the task be set to Accept (changes status to ASSIGNED), which starts the workflow again with ASSIGNED

Artifact types

The task wizard provides a step-by-step interface that facilitates entering tasks. The following artifact types are supported:

• SNOMED CT authoring - choose this for all terminology authoring jobs, eg. updating SNOMED CT, or creating a local code set
• SNOMED CT reference set authoring - for the creation of Simple type SNOMED CT reference sets
• SNOMED CT mapping reference set authoring - for the creation of SNOMED CT map type reference sets
• Mapping set authoring - for the creation of mapping sets
• Value domain authoring - for the creation of value domains
• Local code systems authoring - for the creation of local code systems
• LOINC authoring - for making changes to LOINC content
• ATC authoring - for making changes to ATC content

Work Scenarios

Depending on the work scenarios, the task wizard creates different task configurations.

Single author with single reviewer

A single author is performing a task, the single reviewer can accept the entire work or parts of it (e.g. reference set members). The task wizard creates one task with following configuration:

• Author assigned,
• Reviewer assigned

Dual authors with single reviewer - Dual authoring

Two authors are working on the same component simultaneously by dividing the workload. The task wizard is creating one task that can be activated by both authors. The following task configuration is created:

• Author 1 assigned
• Author 2 assigned
• Reviewer assigned

Dual authors with single reviewer - Dual blind authoring

Two authors are working on the same task independently. They complete the entire task, and can not see what the other author is doing. After completion the reviewer can see the artifacts side-by-side for both authors. Potential conflicts are highlighted. The reviewer is allowed to pick and chose from both authors to form the final artifact to be promoted. The task wizard creates one main task with two subtasks:

• Subtask 1: Author 1 assigned
• Subtask 2: Author 2 assigned
• Reviewer assigned to main task

Dual authors with dual reviewers - Dual authoring

Two authors are working on the same task simultaneously splitting up the work. After completion two reviewers can indicate acceptance and provide comments to individual items of the particular artifact associated with the task. As a final step the adjudicator performs a review. The task wizard creates one task with the following configuration:

• Author 1 assigned
• Author 2 assigned
• Reviewer 1 assigned
• Reviewer 2 assigned
• Adjudicator assigned

Dual authors with dual reviewers - Dual blind authoring

Two authors are working on the same task independently. They complete the entire task, and can not see what the other author is doing. After completion both reviewers can see the artifacts side-by-side for both authors. Potential conflicts are highlighted. Both reviewers can indicate acceptance and provide comments to individual items. For the final review the changed artifacts and reviews from both reviewers are presented to the adjudicator. The adjudicator can either promote the changes to the main repository or reject them and reopen the task. The task wizard creates one main task with two subtasks:

• Subtask 1: Author 1 assigned
• Subtask 2: Author 2 assigned
• Reviewer 1 assigned
• Reviewer 2 assigned
• Adjudicator assigned