יום רביעי, 15 ביוני 2011

AM for life

It can be real pain for users to sit and assign requests manually when loads of requests are bombarding system at regular intervals. For them Assignment Manager(AM) comes as boon. One can leverage AM features to ease out assignment overhead either in batch mode or in dynamic mode. For those who still want to assign request manually we have interactive feature available.

In this post i am going to primarily discuss dynamic assignment, comparison methods available and components involved. Dynamic assignment primarily performs assignments of records automatically as users and server programs create records or modify existing records. It makes use of database triggers for assignment of request.

Well written rules can help us win half the battle of assignment. The Most interesting part while defining the rules is the usage of comparison method. This defines how attributes should be compared and candidate should be evaluated. There are 5 methods available .

1 - Compare to Object

This comparison method is used to filter out the records for assignment. This method checks if the record attribute matches the value specified in the rule criteria.

Example: If any service request is created with status of "Duplicate" then it should be always assigned to Particular Employee.


2 - Compare to Person/Compare to Organization

This comparison is to filter out the Potential Employee/Postion/Organization. This method checks if the Person/Organization Skills matches the value specified in the rule criteria.

Example: If any Service Request is created of High Priority then it should be assigned to employee with Skill of type "Industry" and Value "Services".



3 - Compare Object to Person/Compare Object to Organization

This comparison directly compares the record attribute with the potential Employee/Position/Organization skills. There is no Value defined in the criteria values.

Example: If any service request is created of specific Product then it should be assigned to employee with skill of type "Product" and value as given in the product associated with SR.


There are more advanced configuration options avialable involving scoring mechanism and workload distribution for more complex assignments.

Primary components involved in the Dynamic Assignment are:

1 - Generate Trigger
2 - Workflow Monitor Agent
3 - Assignment Manager

In order to run dynamic assignment we should create a Assignment Policy for the Object we need to assign. This policy should belong to a Policy Group. Create Assignment rules with criteria and potential candidates. Release the assignment rules.


Once rules are released, run "Generate Trigger" job. This will recreate triggers to be used during assignment. Now run a WorkMon task for the assignment policy group and ensure Assignment Manager component is up and running. Two key points to debug dynamic assignment are:

1 - S_ESCL_REQ table - Entry in this table suggest that triggers are properly generated

2 - WorkMon Log - WorkMon log comprehensively lists out all the steps taken during the assignment of request including rule evaulation/Candidate assignment.

Alex has already given terrific H.U.G. to AM. If used effectively AM can really ease out assignment tasks. We will discuss more on the other assignment modes in the future.

Happy Assignment!!

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