For most work queue users, work items appear in the Inbox based on their priority—the highest priority items are assigned to be worked on before lower priority work items. Priority, and aging settings are essential elements in the processing of work queue tasks. When the system creates a new work item, the server identifies the task as a work queue item, and checks for logic to enable it to assign an initial priority to the item. After the task is in the queue, an aging job increases the priority of the task based upon other logic, which moves the task higher in the Inbox until the task is worked on. Priority escalation may trigger the queue administrator to redistribute tasks or reallocate resources between work queues.

The priority level at which a task first appears, and the speed at which it increases in priority can be set either in the work queue policy or in the activity template for the task. For example, you set the initial priority for new tasks in a queue to 1, which means that all new tasks begin with a priority of 1. If you have set the Increment Priority to 10, then whenever the dm_QmPriorityAging job runs, the priority increases by a factor of ten, if the task has not been worked on. In this example, the task has remained in the queue, and the dm_QmPriorityAging job has run three times, increasing the priority to 31. The maximum priority field is set to 30, so the system sends a notification to the queue managers group, warning that the task has surpassed its maximum priority, and needs attending to.

Using a work queue policy, the queue administrator or queue manager can specify the initial priority of the task, and the frequency, and percentage at which it increments based on different values you set up in the policy. For more complex initialization, and aging scenarios, you use Documentum Application Builder to create a priority module that contains logic to dynamically calculate, and update the priority based on process data or other properties belonging to the process. A priority module can be associated with a work queue policy or a Process Builder activity template.