201: What are Tasks?

One of the most important elements within InSkill is Tasks. At its simplest, a Task is a collection of Steps specific to a product's capabilities. They are InSkill method to capture expertise, or knowledge, into a product's portal for users to refer to and follow. Tasks annotate expertise in a sequence of steps displayed to the user with each step containing a prompt and instructions to complete the step. Tasks can be applied for a multitude of reasons including to

diagnose a symptom or error code
perform a specific activity (like maintenance or inspection)
perform a common activity that can be accessed from multiple tasks or products (an activity may be how to escalate to support by region, which is shared across all products)

InSkill will help you diagnose and solve your problem

By default, Tasks are designed to handle solution-based problems. This means that, by default, each step is designed to provide a possible solution to a problem and will only proceed to the next step if the problem persists. If the suggested solution fixes the problem then InSkill will end the task and record what was done. InSkill determines if the suggested solution was successful by asking the user to select either "Not Solved" or "Finished". Selecting "Not Solved" results in moving on to the next step while selecting "Finished" implies the problem is solved and ends the task. The following is a typical step in a solution-based step

While InSkill defaults to solution-based tasks, InSkill also has the capability of incorporating a continuous procedure by modifying each individual step to be an "Info Only" step (covered in subsequent lessons). Enabling the step to be an "Info Only" results in the step prompting the user to select "Continue" instead of "Not Solved" or "Finished". This is best used when you want the user to complete a whole series of steps instead of as a guide to narrow down and fix the problem. The following is an example of an "Info Only" step