Who this is for. AP Helpdesk Analysts, and managers supervising the queue. The queue also carries AP Invoices tasks, which ProcureToPay Managers and ProcureToPay Agents work. See the Roles and Access.
The task list holds every exception, review, and escalation the Agent Co-workers route to a person, in one list spanning both AP functions. Items arrive because the agent could not finish them confidently.
This article covers finding your way to the list, reading it, narrowing it, and working through it. Reading an individual task is covered in Read a Task.
Figure 1. The task list: scope tabs, filters, list and detail pane.
Open the list
The same list is reachable two ways. On the Homepage it sits beneath the counters. To open it on its own:
In the navigation rail, point to SmartVendor and select SmartVendor from the menu that opens.
Select the Tasks tab.
The tab appears for users with read access to SmartVendor AP Helpdesk. The list described here is the one shown where the agent is set up for it; other agents show an earlier version of the task list.
The list opens on All Tasks, with the task count printed above the first row. Analyst roles instead land on My Tasks with a Status = Open chip already applied.
Choose a scope
Your scope sets the outer limit of what the list can show, whatever filters you then apply.
Table 1. The three scopes
Scope |
What it shows |
|---|---|
All Tasks |
Every task for the selected agent. For analyst roles this is narrower, covering tasks assigned to you plus tasks still unassigned, and the filters cannot widen it. |
Team Tasks |
Tasks assigned to members of your team, resolved from your live team membership. Your own rows read “Me”. Not shown to analyst roles, which have no team scope. |
My Tasks |
Tasks assigned to you. The assignee column is hidden, because every row is you. |
All Tasks does not mean the same thing to everyone. A manager sees the whole queue; an analyst sees their own tasks plus unassigned ones, and no filter widens that. Two people comparing “the All Tasks count” may be comparing different populations. My Tasks is also a subset of Team Tasks rather than its complement, so the two counts overlap and should not be added together.
The list runs down the left; selecting a row opens the task on the right. The pane can be widened by collapsing the list, which helps when you are reading a long email thread rather than scanning the queue.
Read a task row
Every row carries the same set of fields. Reading them saves opening tasks that turn out not to need you.
Figure 2. A task row, showing action, status, priority, age and context line.
Table 2. Fields on a task row
Field |
What it tells you |
|---|---|
Action |
What kind of handling the task needs: Answer, Approve, Acknowledge or Review. Absent where no reply is proposed. |
Status |
New, Open or Done. New has not been opened by anyone; Open means it has been read or assigned but not resolved. |
Priority |
High, Medium or Low. |
Age |
How long ago the task was raised, for example 12h ago. Past seven days the cell shows the date instead. |
Task ID |
The reference, for example AP-01012. |
Title |
What the agent is asking you to handle, taken from the message it raised. Where the agent raised no message, the email subject appears here instead. A New reply indicator appears when a thread has an unread response, and SOR reconciled once a corrected field has re-matched. |
Context line |
Vendor · subject · From sender. For a manual assignment it reads “Assigned by” instead of naming a vendor. |
The left of the scan line differs by source. AP Helpdesk tasks carry an action badge: Approve, Answer, or Acknowledge. AP Invoices tasks carry a status verb: Reconcile, Fix validation, Review, Review PO, Process, or Reclassify. A source chip on the identity line names which function raised the task.
Triage from the list alone
Two fields carry most of the signal. Read them in this order and you can usually decide without opening the task:
Action. Acknowledge is typically quick; Review means reading a draft. A task with no proposed action needs a decision from you rather than a review of the agent’s work, so it will take longer.
Age against priority. A High-priority task showing a date rather than hours has been waiting more than a week and should be looked at first, whatever else is in the queue.
The row does not say why the agent stopped, or whether a rule fired. Both live in the task detail pane. If you find yourself opening most tasks to answer the same question, a saved filter on that condition is usually faster.
What each action asks of you
What you do tells you the work each action demands, and Blocks completion tells you whether the task stays open until you do it.
Table 3. Task actions
Action |
What you do |
Blocks completion |
|---|---|---|
Approve |
Authorize an agent-prepared action before it executes. |
Yes |
Review |
Evaluate, edit, reject, or approve something the agent prepared. |
Yes |
Answer |
Supply information the agent could not find in your systems. |
No |
Acknowledge |
Confirm you have seen something needing no response. |
No |
How SLA state is shown
SLA state is reported above the list rather than on the task row. The tiles across the top of the page count Open, At-Risk, Overdue and Resolved Today; a fifth counts Unassigned and is not shown to the analyst roles. A task is banded At-Risk or Overdue on how long it has been open against those two thresholds. Priority does not affect the banding, and a deadline stated in the sender’s email does not override it.
Selecting a tile narrows the list to exactly the rows it counted. The filter it applies appears as a named chip, for example SLA: Overdue or Resolved: Today, and clears with the others. You can also set SLA yourself from the filter row, which offers At-Risk and Overdue.
The thresholds are set on the Task SLA section of Define capabilities. At-Risk defaults to 36 hours and Overdue to 48, each accepts 1 to 999, and At-Risk must be lower than Overdue: a value that would cross them is refused and the previous one kept. The clock pauses at weekends unless you turn that off. Until you save your own thresholds, the queue metrics use the defaults.
Figure 3. The queue tiles, which report SLA state.
Filter the list
Nine filters and a search box sit above the list, beside the scope tabs: five on the toolbar, four under More +. On My Tasks the Assigned To filter is removed, leaving eight. Any combination can be saved and reused from My filters.
Figure 4. The scope tabs and filter row above the task list.
Table 4. What each filter offers
Filter |
Where it is |
What it offers |
|---|---|---|
Search tasks… |
Filter bar |
Free text across the task: title, task ID, vendor or sender. |
Status |
Filter bar |
New, Open, Done. Done is hidden by default, so cleared work stays out of the way. |
Priority |
Filter bar |
High, Medium, Low. |
Action |
Filter bar |
Acknowledge, Answer, Approve, Review. |
Email Category |
Filter bar |
The categories present on tasks in this queue. The list is not the same as the agent’s configured category list: it also carries broader values such as Acknowledgement, Inquiry, Request and Update, and it omits configured categories no task has used. |
Sender Type |
Filter bar |
External Sender, Internal Sender, System Sender, Unknown Sender. |
Vendor |
Under More + |
One vendor. |
Assigned To |
Under More + |
One person. Not offered on My Tasks, where the list is already yours. |
SLA |
Under More + |
The At-Risk or Overdue band. |
Resolved |
Under More + |
Work already cleared. |
My filters |
Filter bar, right side |
Saved filter sets. Save filter stays unavailable until you have actually set a filter. |
Save a view
Set the scope and filters you want.
Select Save filter and name it.
Reopen it later from My filters.
Table 5. Views worth saving
View |
Filters |
Use it to |
|---|---|---|
My open work |
My Tasks + Status Open |
Start the day without re-filtering. |
Unanswered vendor mail |
Sender Type External Sender + Status New |
Catch vendor requests nobody has looked at. |
Needs a decision |
Action empty |
Find tasks where the agent proposed nothing and a person must choose. |
Aged high priority |
Priority High + Status Open |
Work the SLA risk first. |
Filters combine with the scope tab rather than replacing it. A view saved under My Tasks and reopened under All Tasks applies the same filters to a different population, so the counts differ legitimately. Name saved views for the scope they assume, such as My open high-priority rather than High priority, and the ambiguity disappears.
Sender Type is broader than it looks
Each Sender Type option covers several underlying classifications. External Sender matches enrolled, unenrolled and external-cohort senders alike, so filtering on it will not isolate unenrolled vendors on its own. Combine it with the enrollment state on the Vendors tab when that is what you are after.
On My Tasks the list opens with a Status = Open chip, so a task you cannot find may be closed. It is an ordinary chip: edit or remove it like any other.
List controls
Figure 5. The list controls: collapse, task count and refresh.
Table 6. Controls in the list header
Control |
What it does |
|---|---|
Collapse task list |
Hides the list so the task detail pane uses the full width. Select it again to bring the list back. |
Refresh tasks |
Re-reads the queue. |
Page size |
Sets how many rows load at once. The default is 20. |
Previous page / Next page |
Moves through the list. The header reports the total, for example 1,074 tasks. |
Save filter / My filters |
Saves the current filter set and reopens a saved one. |
The list does not refresh itself. A task you just marked done stays on screen until you select Refresh tasks. Refresh the list before concluding that an action did not take effect.
For the panels that open beside a task, and how they share one slot, see Task Side Panels.
Work through the queue
What opens depends on which function raised the task, and each view lets you resolve the problem in place.
Table 7. What opens, by source
Source |
You get |
|---|---|
AP Helpdesk |
The email thread: inbound message, any reply, and the pipeline trace. Where a value is missing, resolve the gap in place: accept the suggested answer, override it, or select from options, then approve and send. |
AP Invoices |
The document: extracted header and line fields, the PDF, and which check failed. Correcting a value and re-running the match is a single inline action. |
Previous and Next move through the current filtered set, which is what makes high-volume review workable.
There is no bulk action bar. Each task is opened, resolved, and marked done individually. A per-row dismiss clears a task from the current session without deleting it.
Prioritizing a long queue
Sort by vendor status, not date. Unknown or Unenrolled blocks the write entirely. Those invoices cannot post however well they extracted.
Low and Medium confidence needs your eyes. High usually does not.
The SLA chip reflects how long the task has been open, not its priority.
Work the accounts payable department’s queue rather than your own
The scope toggle is the same for everyone. What changes by role is where you land: Analyst roles open on My Tasks, and every other role opens on All Tasks.
Table 8. What each scope covers
Scope |
What it covers |
|---|---|
My Tasks |
Your own queue, opened with a Status = Open chip already applied. The Assigned To filter is removed here, because the scope has already done that job. |
Team Tasks |
Your teammates’ work, not the whole accounts payable department. Membership is resolved when the list loads, so it follows your current team rather than a value stamped on the task. Setting an Assigned To filter is more specific and takes precedence over the scope. |
All Tasks |
Every task for the selected agent. For Analyst roles this is narrower, covering tasks assigned to you plus tasks still unassigned. |
How a task gets its assignee
Assignment is decided when the task is created, not when the list renders. A condition-and-action rule set evaluates sender type, detected category, and similar attributes top to bottom, and the first match wins.
One rule overrides that: thread continuity. Every follow-up on an existing conversation stays with whoever is already working it, regardless of what the distribution rules would otherwise say. This stops a vendor conversation being answered by three different people, but it also means a badly-assigned first message stays badly assigned for the whole thread.
Table 9. Why a task reached the wrong person
Cause |
Check |
|---|---|
A distribution rule matched first |
The rule order. Rules evaluate top to bottom. |
Thread continuity |
Whether an earlier message on the thread was assigned to that person. |
Manual assignment |
The meta line reads “Assigned by” rather than showing a vendor. |
Sender type was misclassified |
Contact management. The classification drives the rule match. |
When the list is missing or empty
Table 10. Diagnosing an absent or empty task list
Symptom |
Most likely cause |
|---|---|
The tab is not there at all |
Your role lacks read access to SmartVendor AP Helpdesk. |
The tab is there but this list is not |
This agent is not set up for the task list described here, so the tab shows the earlier task list instead. |
The list is empty on My Tasks |
Nothing is assigned to you. Switch to All Tasks. |
The list is empty on every scope |
Check the agent run state in the header. Pausing stops replies only, so a paused agent still raises tasks; a stopped instance is removed from the Agent Co-workers list rather than shown as stopped. Tasks raised before the agent moved to Governed Autonomy are not migrated automatically, so a queue can look empty while an older backlog still sits outside this list. |
Related information
To read a single task, see Read a Task.
For the counters that filter this list, see Homepage Counters.
For the panels beside an open task, see Task Side Panels.