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About Assignment Skills

Skills are extensions to attribute data stored in designated skill and skill item tables. By default, sales objects do not use skills.

The Siebel application provides predefined skills, however, you can create new skills using Siebel Tools. You can also enable and configure skills at the criteria level using Siebel Tools. After skills are enabled, Assignment Manager matches skills based on the assignment criteria comparison method in the same manner in which attributes are matched. Assignment Manager applies scores and other filters to find the best candidate after a match has been made.

For information about the predefined skills and creating new skills, see Creating New Skills. For more information about enabling and configuring skills, see Assignment Criteria Configuration. For more information about how skills are matched, see About Assignment Criteria and Criteria Methods.

Expertise Codes

Assignment Manager uses expertise codes to rank skills to find the most suitable candidate. For example, you do not want to assign a novice to a service request that requires an expert. Using expertise codes allows you to prevent assigning objects to underqualified candidates.

Expertise codes are predefined for the following skill types (or assignment criteria):

• Language Code
• Product
• Product Line
• Product Line Wildcard
• Product Wildcard

The three predefined expertise codes are Novice, Intermediate, and Expert. Expertise codes are stored in—and can be modified, added to, or deleted from—the List of Values data administration view. Expertise codes apply only to skills and are global; after they are defined, assignment criteria share the same set of expertise codes.

After you select an expertise code for a skill, Assignment Manager matches assignment rules based on the assignment criteria comparison method. If the expertise code belongs to a skill that uses the:

• Compare to Object criteria. The assignment rule passes if the skill's expertise code is equal to, or higher than, the object's expertise code.
• Compare Object to Person criteria. The assignment rule passes if the candidate's expertise code is equal to, or higher than, the object's expertise code.
• Compare Object to Organization criteria. The assignment rule passes if the organization's expertise code is equal to, or higher than, the object's expertise code.
• Compare to Person criteria. The assignment rule passes if the candidate's expertise code is equal to, or higher than, the skill's expertise code.
• Compare to Organization criteria. The assignment rules passes if the organization's expertise code is equal to, or higher than, the skill's expertise code.

For more information about assignment criteria comparison methods, see About Assignment Criteria and Criteria Methods.

Weighting Factors

Optionally, you can apply weighting factors to expertise codes. While you can use expertise codes to eliminate underqualified candidates, using weighted expertise codes allows you to weigh skill scores to find the most suitable candidate by further eliminating overqualified candidates. For example, you may not want to assign an expert to a service request that can be handled by a novice.

Using weighted expertise codes allows you to prevent assigning objects to overqualified candidates by applying a weight to the skill score. Each expertise code has a defined value, which is its weighting factor. The expertise code with the highest defined weighting factor represents the maximum weighting factor (Max Weighting Factor).

The weighting applied to a skill or criteria score is the percentage defined by an expertise code's weighting factor over the maximum weighting factor. For an example, see Table 8.

Weighted scores are calculated differently based on the comparison method chosen for the assignment rule:

• For the Compare to Person, Compare to Object, and Compare to Organization comparison methods, the weighted score is determined as follows:

  Score=Criteria Score + Skill Score*(Weighting Factor/Max Weighting Factor)

• For the Compare Object to Person and Compare Object to Organization comparison methods, because neither of these comparison methods can define skill scores, the weighted score is determined as follows:

  Score=Criteria Score*(Weighting Factor/Max Weighting Factor)

  NOTE:  When using the Compare Object to Person or the Compare Object to Organization comparison method, weighting factors are only applied if the expertise code is defined for both the object assignment skill item and the candidate skill item. If the expertise code is not defined for both, the weighting factors are ignored.

Assignment Manager applies the weighted skill scores and other scores to find the most suitable candidate when a match is made.

Weighting factors for expertise codes are stored in—and can be modified, added to, or deleted from—the List of Values data administration view. For procedures, see Defining Weighting Factors. Weighting factors for expertise codes apply only to skills and are global; after they are defined, assignment criteria share the same set of weighting factors for expertise codes.

Weighting factors weigh expertise codes by applying a specified percentage to the skill score. Table 8 shows sample weighting factors that can be used for the three types of predefined expertise codes.

In this example, candidates with an intermediate expertise for the matched skill are favored over other candidates, because they receive 100% of the skill score. This may be desired if your organization has many more service representatives with an intermediate expertise than service representatives with an expert expertise. In this case, you make sure that service requests that require only an intermediate expertise are assigned to service representatives with an intermediate expertise.

NOTE:  Use weighting factors to adjust relative scoring for expertise; do not define separate criteria and scores for different expertise levels.