[SalesForce] the proper way for handling tasks for a Queue

What is the proper way to handle tasks when a Case belongs to a Queue?

In my scenario I would have Dept#1User creating a case which kicks off a workflow and updates the owner of the case to the queue Dept#2. I would also have a task created for someone in Dept#2 to do to process the case…

However in my tests I have found:

  • Tasks can only belong to users, not queues

If the assignee of a task is set to the record owner and the owner of a lead or case is a queue, the task is assigned to the person who triggered the rule.

  • Tasks can belong to Roles but Salesforce advise not to assign Tasks to Roles with multiple users:

If the assignee of a workflow task is a role and more than one user belongs to that role, the record owner becomes the task assignee, regardless of their role. We recommend that you not assign tasks to roles with multiple users. Assigning tasks to roles with one user allows you to easily change the user in that role without modifying the workflow rule.

So my question is this, when users in a department create a Case I need to change the Case Owner to a Queue (for the 2nd department) and then assign tasks to a group of users in this 2nd department (essentially 1 of a team can pick the case up)?

I feel I am missing a basic Case concept…

Best Answer

First of all, the feature Tasks to a Queue doesn't exist. But there is a highly voted on Idea that you should upvote

In the comments thread, there is a workaround that you could consider:

We added a role that reports up to the role(s) that respond to tasks, and put a dummy Customer Service user into that role. New tasks are assigned to this dummy user, and it acts as a queue. As a higher-up, a customer service rep can reassign the tasks from the dummy user to themselves, or if you are a manager, to others.

Alternately, you can create sharing rules that explicitly grant access to the objects the distributed tasks will be associated with. People are notified of incoming activity/new tasks because the dummy user's email is set to something like customer_service@mycompany.com. Folks on the email list respond appropriately. You could also automate it with a workflow rule that emails a specific group upon task creation. This requires a spare license and of course, YMMV. Hope this is helpful!

-- James Snavely