Instance Description Formula

Every process you start carries a short description that identifies that one run: “Acme Manufacturing | Invoice 10482 | Net 30” tells you at a glance which invoice you are looking at. The Instance Description Formula on the process template decides what that description says.

The description is built from the process’s own field values, so it fills in and updates itself as people work. You never type it by hand.

Where the description appears

• At the top of the Progress view for the process

• In the process lists: In Progress, Past Due, Scheduled, Completed, and Canceled

• On calendar tiles, see Process Calendars

• In Process Table Lookup fields, as the text of the linked process

• Anywhere you use the Process Instance Description field token, such as an email or a merge document

The default description

If you never touch the setting, the description is the value of the first three process fields, separated by a vertical bar:

Acme Manufacturing | Invoice 10482 | Net 30

Written as a formula, that default is:

[[ Process Field 1 (Text) ]]=APPEND( | ; [[ Process Field 2 (Text) ]])=APPEND( | ; [[ Process Field 3 (Text) ]])

Fields that are still empty are skipped, and their separator is skipped with them, so a process that has only its first field filled in reads “Acme Manufacturing” rather than “Acme Manufacturing | | ”.

Change the formula

1. Click Administration > Processes > Template Diagrams > click the Card of the process you want to edit

2. Click the gear icon on the top right side of the page to open the Settings Panel

3. Expand Instance Descriptions

4. Edit the Instance Description Formula box. Click the Import Field Tokens icon beside the box to insert a field

5. Save the template

Caution

Always insert tokens with the Import Field Tokens button. Do not type them by hand.

Tip

To go back to the default, clear the box completely and save. ProcessPlan puts the default formula back for you.

When you save a new formula, the processes already running on this template are re-labeled in the background, so the new wording reaches them too rather than only new processes.

Examples

These show the shape of a formula, using your own field names.

You want	Formula
Just the customer name	[[ Field: Customer (Text) ]]
Customer, then invoice number	[[ Field: Customer (Text) ]]=APPEND( - ; [[ Field: Invoice Number (Text) ]])
Wording of your own around a field	Onboarding for [[ Field: New Hire (Text) ]]
Who started it and when	[[ Process Initiator (Full Name) ]]=APPEND( on ; [[ Process Start Date (Date) ]])

The =APPEND function is what keeps the punctuation tidy: it adds the separator only when the value it is appending actually has something in it. Plain text and any other formula function work here too.

Things to know

• Spaces in the separator are kept exactly as you type them. =APPEND( - ; ...) gives you “Acme - 10482” while =APPEND(-; ...) gives you “Acme-10482”.

• Semicolons are removed from the finished description and replaced with a space, because semicolons separate values in filters and lists elsewhere in ProcessPlan.

• Repeated spaces are collapsed to a single space, and the description is trimmed at both ends.

• The formula can be up to 500 characters long. Anything past that is cut off when you save, so keep it short.

• Descriptions are recalculated whenever the process’s field values change, including changes made by automated actions and AI Employees. If you point the formula at a field nobody fills in until the last step, the description stays blank until then, so lead with a field that is answered early.