CarryForward Field & Tasks that can modify it
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There are situations where there it would be desirable to control triggering of a task based on events that happened in an earlier-filed case in the same family. For example, maybe you have a checklist that you want to have done when the first application in a family is filed, but you don't want to have it done for each subsequent application in the family.
Right now, I don't believe there is a mechanism that lets you autodocket tasks to account for such a scenario.
One way to add such capability would be to have a CarryForward field where the contents of the field are carried forward into the same field in subsequent matters that are based on that matter (using the "Save and Duplicate" function); this is already done for several fields when you use "Save and Duplicate," so this new field could simply be treated in the same way.
However, Tasks Type definitions would be updated to have several new parameters that allow a Task to modify the data in the CarryForward field. At a minimum, that ability would be to allow the task, when "Completed," to append specified text to the contents of the CarryForward field for the matter. In the checklist scenario, when the checklist task is "Completed," the checklist task could be set up to append "Checklist" to the CarryForward field for the matter (I included asterisks to serve as delimiters). When the next matter in the family is opened, it would get the "Checklist" data in the CarryForward field, and that could then be used as a trigger to prevent creation of a checklist task in the new matter.
If you wanted to give even more flexibility to this approach, the parameters that could be set in a Task could include:
Append specified text (as described above)
Remove specified text (delete specified text from field--this is where delimiters would be very prudent)
Replace specified text with other specified text
Clear entire fieldYou could also have these options able to be specified for different task states, e.g., when task is created/opened, closed, or changed to a particular TaskStatus.
Finally, it would be useful to have the ability for the specified text include form fields, e.g., "FiledOn( {Matter.FilingDate})" and for tasks to have the ability to have their RefDate or RespondBy dates set based on the date stored in such text in the CarryForward field. For example, in New Zealand, you have to request examination by 5 years from the filing date of the first NZ application (regardless of whether it is in that first NZ app or a DIV of it). You can't rely on priority date for the 5-year deadline since your first app might be a US provisional, and you can't rely on the NZ filing date since that wouldn't be the right one for DIV applications. Being able to pass on the relevant date to later applications would be a real help....
