Bookshelf v7.8: How Assignment Manager Determines the Sequence in Which Rules Are Evaluated

When you assign sequence numbers to assignment rules, Assignment Manager evaluates those rules in ascending order of the sequence numbers. Assignment rule sequencing provides a means for you to prioritize the rules that apply to any given assignment object by order of importance, thereby limiting the number of rules that Assignment Manager processes for assignment. For example, you might want to run Assignment Manager only for your higher priority rules first, and then if those rules pass, stop processing additional rules because candidates are already successfully matched.

If none of the rules have a sequence number, or if all of the rules have the same sequence number, then Assignment Manager processes all the rules. However, if some of the rules in the group have sequence numbers and other rules do not, the rules with no specified sequence number are considered to have a sequence number of 0 and are evaluated first. Therefore, it is recommended that you give every rule a sequence number if you use sequencing.

After processing every assignment rule within a sequence number, Assignment Manager checks to see if each rule was successfully assigned. When a rule results in successful assignment, Assignment Manager processes the rest of the rules having the same sequence number and then stops processing. Subsequently, the rules with higher sequence numbers do not get processed.

As shown in Table 33, Assignment Manager identifies the beginning and end of a segment within a sequence by the change in sequence number. For example, Assignment Manager first evaluates rules with a sequence number of 1, then evaluates rules with a sequence number of 2, and so on. It does not matter, however, how rules within a segment are evaluated.

At run time, Assignment Manager evaluates the rules in the first segment (Segment 1) first, and then stops to find out whether an assignment has been made. If it has assigned, Assignment Manager does not continue. If it has not assigned, then Assignment Manager continues to the next sequence (Segment 2).

Table 33. Example of a Rule Sequence
Segment	Assignment Rule	Sequence #
1	Assign Sales Rep West	1
	Assign Sales Rep North	1
	Assign Sales Rep East	1
2	Assign Sales Rep West	2
2	Assign Sales Rep North	2
3	Assign Sales Rep West	3
	Assign Sales Rep North	3
	Assign Sales Rep East	3

If Assignment Manager is running in default mode and there are multiple rule groups defined, then Assignment Manager evaluates the rules as if they are part of one big group.

For example, if there are two rule groups loaded by the same Assignment Manager server with the sequences shown in Table 34.

Table 34. Example Group Rules A and B
Rule Group A	Rule Group B
1	1
1	1
1	2
2	2
2	3
3	3
3	3

Sequence numbers can be assigned to assignment rules when creating new assignment rules or can be added to assignment rules at a later time.

How Assignment Manager Determines the Sequence in Which Rules Are Evaluated

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