Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide > Availability-Based Assignment >

About Availability-Based Assignment

Siebel Assignment Manager has the ability to assign employees based on their calendar availability and can find out whether candidates are working at the required time, and whether their calendar is free, before assigning an item to a candidate or team. This feature is used on employee-based assignment objects only, and requires the installation and licensing of the Field Service option, as it depends on a Field Service component, the Appointment Booking System (ABS), to check employee availability.

However, availability-based assignment is not limited to use in the Field Service application, and can be used in any application that has employee-based objects. In general, this feature is meant for use with employee-based objects that have an associated time duration, such as activities and service requests.

To use this feature, certain properties of the assignment object require configuration in Siebel Tools. The Activity assignment object is, by default, partially preconfigured for use with availability assignment; the Service Request assignment object, however, is not. Both of these assignment objects require configuration in Siebel Tools to activate availability-based assignment. See Process of Configuring Assignment Objects for Availability-Based Assignment for further information on these procedures. Assignment Manager can also be configured to create an activity in the calendar of the candidate assigned to the object.

After an object is configured for availability-based assignment, an assignment rule activates this feature by means of a check box on the Assignment Rule detail applet. You can further customize Assignment Manager for availability-based assignment, by configuring assignment object user properties.