Use Work Center | Itential

Some workflows and agent sessions pause to let a person review, approve, or provide input before they continue. This is the human-in-the-loop step in an orchestration, and Work Center is where you complete it. Each waiting manual task appears in your work queue with the context you need to act.

Work Center lists tasks from both workflows and agent sessions in one queue, so you don’t switch between Operations Manager and Agent Sessions to act on them.

Considerations

Keep the following in mind:

Work items that an agent invokes during a session appear only in Work Center, not Operations Manager.
Manual tasks that predate Platform 6.5.0 appear only in Operations Manager, not Work Center.
Quick Form tasks on a workflow also appear in Operations Manager, but they show as a blank task there. They should be completed in Work Center.

Before you begin

You need permission to access Work Center. If Work Center doesn’t appear in your navigation, contact your Itential Platform administrator.

Complete a manual task

In the Platform, go to Work Center.

Find the job you want to action. Use the In Queue column to prioritize. It shows how long the current task has been waiting. Use Assigned to me to see tasks you’ve claimed, or Unassigned to find unclaimed work.

Click the action summary to open the task.

Review the work item header and task timeline to understand the context for your decision. For more information, see Work Item header and Work history timeline.

Complete the active task. What you see depends on the task type, which is set when the manual task is built into the workflow or agent. Work Center renders the task and form types supported by Platform, including JSON forms and quick forms.

If the task data is too large to render safely in the browser, a warning appears with two options. View Data loads the data in the browser, and Download Data saves it as a local file.

Click Complete Task to submit your response. If the workflow produces a new manual task for the same job, the view updates automatically. You don’t need to go back to the queue.

Click Return to Work Center to go back to your queue.

Work queue

Filter tabs

Two sets of tabs filter the queue. Use them together to narrow your focus.

Assignment:

Tab	Shows
All	Every job you have permission to view.
Assigned to me	Jobs where you’ve claimed the current task.
Unassigned	Jobs where no operator has claimed the current task.

Each tab displays a count of matching jobs.

Columns

Column	Description
Source	The specific initiator, which varies by trigger type: the person who ran it for Manual, the service account for API, the event that fired for Event, the schedule cadence for Schedule, the calling agent for Agent, or the calling workflow for Job.
Trigger Type	How the job was started: Manual, API, Event, Schedule, Agent, or Job.
Origin	The root job or agent session the task belongs to. When jobs are nested, this is the top-level root, not the job that directly contains the task.
Elapsed Time	How long the job has been running.
Assigned To	The operator who has claimed this task. Shows Assign User when unclaimed.
In Queue	How long the current manual task has been waiting for action. Use this as your primary signal for prioritization.
Actions	The task summary label for the waiting task. Click it to open and complete the task.

All columns support filtering. The Source, Origin, Elapsed Time, In Queue, and Actions columns also support sorting.

Job header

When you open a task, the header shows:

Field	Description
Trigger	The same icon and source metadata as the work queue row. Links to the agent session that started this job, if the job was started by an agent.
Total Runtime	How long the job has been running.
Started On	Timestamp of when the job was triggered.

Task timeline

Below the job header, a horizontal timeline shows every manual task in the job, both completed and active. Use it to understand the sequence of decisions that led to the current task.

Each tile in the timeline shows:

Task name, the task summary set by the builder
The called workflow the task belongs to, if it comes from a called workflow
Task description
For completed tasks: when it was completed and which group completed it
For the current active task: how long it’s been waiting

Visual states:

Indicator	Meaning
Green checkmark	Task completed.
Blue alert	Current active task, visually selected.
Lock icon	You don’t have permission to view this task. Completion metadata is visible on the tile but you can’t open the task.
Spinner	Indicates additional tasks may follow the current one.

Click Hide Details to collapse the timeline to task names only, giving more space to the active task. Click Show Details to expand it again.

Click any completed task you have permission to view to open it in read-only audit mode.

Task assignment

Assignment in Work Center is advisory. Claiming a task signals to your team that you’re handling it, but doesn’t lock the task. Any operator with permission can still act on it.

To claim a task for yourself, use the assignment action in the work queue row. Your name appears in the Assigned To column.

To assign a task to another operator, use the Assigned To dropdown in the work queue row. The dropdown shows only operators who have permission to view the task.

To unassign a task, open the Assigned To dropdown in the work queue row and select Unassign.