Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide > Assignment Manager Concepts >

Assignment Manager Concepts Overview

Siebel Assignment Manager allows sales, service, and marketing organizations to assign the most qualified people to specific tasks. Assignment Manager accomplishes this function by matching candidates (that is, employees, positions, and organizations) to predefined and user-configurable assignment objects. To assign the most qualified candidate to each object, Assignment Manager applies assignment rules that you define to each candidate. For you to define assignment rules, you select:

• Assignment object or objects to which each assignment rule applies
• A rule group to which each assignment rule belongs
• Candidates—person (employee or position), organization, or both—for each assignment rule
• Criteria for each assignment rule
• Values for each assignment criterion

For rules that match attributes of an assignment object with attributes of the candidates, you define:

• Skills to match assignment rules or objects to employees, positions, and organizations
• (Optional) Expertise levels to weigh skill scores (to measure competency in a certain area for each candidate)
• (Optional) Scores for each assignment rule, criteria, and value and a personal score for each individual candidate

If you want to distribute the workload rules evenly between the candidates or if your business logic includes limits on the maximum amount of work that can be handled at one time, you define:

• Workload rules to balance work among the candidates

For example, in a sales organization, you can create an assignment rule that scores positions (candidates) based on territory definitions (criteria) for an opportunity (object). In a service organization, you can create an assignment rule that scores employees (candidates) based on product expertise (criteria) for a service request or product defect (object). Using the sum of scores at the assignment rule level, Assignment Manager assigns the best candidate for each rule and the best candidates for the object.

You can also customize the way Assignment Manager makes assignments by:

• Defining how attributes are matched by using:
  • Different comparison methods
  • Making criteria required (compulsory) or optional
  • Inclusion and exclusion methods
  • Scores weighted based on expertise levels
  • Wildcard values
• Defining how assignment rules are matched by using:
  • Assignment rule groups
  • Assignment rule sequencing
• Defining how candidates are assigned by using multitiered assignment
• Creating and configuring your own components, including:
  • Assignment objects
  • Assignment criteria
  • Assignment attributes
• Running Assignment Manager in different operation modes to process assignments:
  • Interactively, in real time using Assignment Manager (AsgnSrvr) server component
  • Dynamically, when object rows are created or attributes on object rows are changed by connected or mobile users
  • Assigning objects in batches using the Batch Assignment (AsgnBatch) server component
• Defining which servers are used to run selected groups of rules
• Checking availability before assigning employees to objects