Exception labelling in Duco greatly enhances visibility, categorization, and prioritisation of issues. This streamlines the investigation and resolution of exceptions. However, without a controlled labelling strategy that adheres to specific guidelines, labels can lead to confusion and inaccuracy. An effective labelling strategy can also improve downstream reporting, which is one of the key benefits of labelling in Duco.
This guide outlines general best practices for creating and applying labels in Duco. Although the implementation of the labels in your environment will depend on the use cases and governance structure of Duco specific to your organisation, these guidelines should serve as a starting point to develop a labelling strategy.
Define Clear Naming Conventions
Labels should be organised by clear, predefined categories that reflect the nature of the exceptions and the actions required.
- Descriptive: Use clear and descriptive names for your labels. For example, use "Pending Review" instead of something ambiguous like "PR."
- Consistent: Stick to a consistent naming convention across your organisation. This helps everyone understand and use the labels uniformly.
- Avoid Abbreviations: Unless they are universally understood within your organisation, avoid abbreviations that might be unclear to some users.
Categorisation
Common categories include the following:
- Status-Based Labels: Create labels based on the status of the workflow, such as "New", "In Progress", "Under Review", "Completed", "Escalated".
- Priority Levels: Use labels to indicate the priority of the task, like "High Priority", "Medium Priority", and "Low Priority".
- Data Quality Issues: For exceptions due to incorrect or missing data, for example "Ticker Missing at Vendor” or “Formatting Error”.
- Timing Differences: For exceptions arising from discrepancies in processing times, use labels like "Paydown Timing Issue", "Transaction Timing Difference", "Late Posting", etc
- Threshold Breaches: For items that exceed predefined tolerance levels, eg "Greater than 10 GBP or "Greater than 50 GBP".
Note that multiple labels can be applied to a single exception.
Use of Colour Coding
Using a consistent colour scheme helps to quickly identify the type of issue or its severity. The labels defined based on the categories can be assigned a colour to reflect the severity of the exception.
- Colour Association: Assign colours to labels to help users quickly identify the type or status of a workflow. For example, red for "High Priority", green for "On Track/ Low Priority", and yellow for "Medium Priority".
- Avoid Overuse: Don’t use too many different colours; it might overwhelm users. Stick to a manageable palette that users can easily remember.
Below is an example of a colour scheme based on urgency of resolution:
- Urgent Issues Requiring Immediate Investigation: Red labels
- Threshold breaches
- Timing Differences: Orange labels
- Late Posting
- Data Quality Issues: Blue labels
- Missing Values
- Annotation: Grey labels
- Duplicate
- Reclass
- Treasury
- Transfer
Using comments with labels
Labels should be used as quick and clear identification of why an exception exists or against a record. The use of comments within Duco should be used with labels to provide additional details of that record.
Optimal Number of Labels
To avoid clutter and confusion, limit the number of active labels at any given time. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than 20-30 labels in use across the environment. When labels are not tightly controlled, it can be difficult to unwind a messy setup down the line. To avoid a time consuming clean-up of erroneous labels, it is essentially that label privileges are tightly controlled initially.
Periodic Label Review
Establish a periodic review process (e.g., quarterly) to evaluate the relevance and utility of each label. If labels should be removed if they are no longer useful or overlap with others, assess the impact to process runs where the labels were applied before deleting them. Deleted labels will be removed from historical runs where they were applied.
Governance
Limiting access to a small number of Label Administrators (a designated System Role that needs to be added to a user account) helps maintain control over the labelling system.
Implementing a procedure for builders and users to request new labels is essential for accommodating evolving needs and ensuring the system remains relevant and adaptable. This procedure should include criteria for evaluating new label requests, a workflow for reviewing and approving requests, and mechanisms for communicating approved labels to relevant stakeholders. This procedure is often centrally managed by a dedicated Label Administration group in Duco, limited to a handful of users
Automate Label Assignment
Leverage Duco's exceptions workflow capabilities for automated labelling of exceptions based on predefined rules. This reduces manual errors and ensures consistency in labelling.
- Rules and Conditions: Set up automation rules where labels are assigned based on certain conditions or triggers. For example, a reconciliation item older than 5 days could automatically get a "Needs Attention" label.
- Workflows Integration: Integrate labels into your workflow steps so that as tasks move through different stages, appropriate labels are added or updated automatically.
Specific Examples for Common Scenarios
- Issue Tracking: Use labels like "Data Mismatch", "Missing Data", "System Error" to categorise common reconciliation issues.
- Task Ownership: Assign labels to indicate task ownership, such as "Assigned to John", "Assigned to IT", etc.
- Follow-Up Actions: Create labels to indicate follow-up actions required, like "Needs Clarification", "Awaiting Approval", "Follow-Up Required".