To support manual and automatic creation of milestones within an investigation, it is necessary to set up an association between a milestone configuration and the investigation type. There are two options for setting up these associations: either a new milestone configuration can be recorded at the same time it is associated with the investigation or an existing milestone configuration can be selected.
When recording a new milestone configuration as part of the association process, the milestone configuration information (as described in Configuring Investigation Milestones) must be defined. Additional association information can also be defined if the milestone is to be created automatically. The two main configuration settings for automatically created milestones are the creation event and the completion event. These events are used by the application to automatically create and complete an instance of the milestone.
For example, a milestone can be set up to track the life cycle of an investigation from approval through closure. To set up the automatic creation of this milestone, the Approve Investigation event can be selected as the creation event and the Close Investigation event can be selected as the completion event. When an investigation is approved in the application, the Approve Investigation event will trigger an instance of the milestone. Later when the investigation is closed, the Close Investigation event will close the milestone instance.
The matching process for creating milestones within an investigation can be further specified using the component type and component category settings. A clear distinction can be made between creation and completion events at the investigation level and at the investigation component level. For example, the investigation component, Action Plan, can be set, with a creation event of Create Action Plan and a completion event of Close Action Plan.
When an action plan is created within an investigation, the Create Action Plan event will trigger an instance of the milestone and the application will associate both the Action Plan ID and the Investigation ID with it. Later when the action plan is closed, the Close Action Plan event will use both of these IDs to find and close the correct milestone instance.