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Adding Employees, Positions, and Organizations to Assignment Rules

This topic provides procedures for adding employees, positions, and organizations to assignment rules as follows:

• Adding Employees to Assignment Rules
• Assigning Employees to Assignment Rules Based on Availability
• Adding Positions to Assignment Rules
• Adding Organizations to Assignment Rules

This task is a step in Process of Defining Assignment Rules.

For more information about employees, positions, and organizations, see About Assignment Candidates. For information about assigning skills to employees, positions, and organizations, see Assignment Strategy for Sales Organizations.

Adding Employees to Assignment Rules

This topic explains how to add employees to an assignment rule. Service organizations typically add employees to objects. For more information on employees, see Employee Candidates.

NOTE:  Assignment Manager does not prevent you from adding employees to an assignment rule that requires position assignment. Before adding employees, make sure that the objects for the assignment rule allow employee assignment.

To add employees to an assignment rule

1. Drill down on the assignment rule for which you want to add employees (Navigate > Site Map > Assignment Rules List), and then click the Employee Candidates view tab.
2. In the Employee Candidates list, click New.
3. In the Add Employees dialog box, select the employees to include for this assignment rule, and then click OK.

   TIP:   To select multiple employees, hold down the CTRL key while selecting employees.

4. In the new employee record, click in the available fields to enter or edit the relevant information.

Table 28 shows select predefined fields available.

If new candidates are added, make sure you release the assignment rules for the changes to take affect. For more information about releasing assignment rules, see Releasing Assignment Rules

NOTE:  Assignment Manager caches employee skills when the Siebel Server is started. Every time rules are released, employee skills are updated and cached. If you want to automatically refresh employee skills at a periodic interval, set the value of Refresh people skills interval (an AsgnSrvr component parameter) to the desired interval of update. For more information about employee skills, see Assignment Strategy for Sales Organizations. For information about the AsgnSrvr component parameter, see Running Interactive Assignment Using the Command-Line SRVRMGR Utility.

Assignment Manager can also assign employees based on their association with their parent organization. For example, only employees associated with a specific organization can be assigned to an assignment object even if other employees not associated with the organization qualify. This functionality is called multitiered assignment and must be configured for the appropriate assignment object. For more information multitiered assignment, see About Multitiered Assignment and Scenarios for Using Multitiered Assignment with Sales Assignment Rules.

Alternatively, you can set a default employee for assignment objects. For example, if you want records for a given assignment object assigned to a certain employee, you can change the Default Employee property on the assignment object using Siebel Tools. For more information about the Default Employee property, see Object Types Reference. For more information about setting this property, see Configuring Assignment Objects.

Assigning Employees to Assignment Rules Based on Availability

Assignment rules can be created for employee-based objects using availability-based assignment, which allows Assignment Manager to check an employee's calendar and to consider the employee's availability when determining assignment eligibility. Assignment objects must be preconfigured before using the assignment availability criteria feature. For more information on configuring assignment availability, see Configuring Assignment Objects for Availability-Based Assignment.

When an assignment object is configured for availability, a user specifies three times for the assignment object: an Early Start Time, a Must Start Time, and a Duration.

• (Optional) Early Start Time (which is specified in the Calendar Early Start Time Column property of the assignment object) is the earliest time the assignment object can be scheduled.

  If this time is specified, Assignment Manager looks for an available slot for the specified duration in the employees' schedules with the starting time anywhere between the Early Start Time and the Start Time. If this time is not specified, it defaults to the Must Start Time which means that Assignment Manager looks for an available slot for the specified duration starting exactly at the start time.

• Latest Start Time (which is specified in the Calendar Start Time Column property of the assignment object) is the latest time that the assignment object can be started.
• Duration (which is specified in the Calendar Duration Column property of the assignment object) is the time in minutes required to finish the assignment object's task.

Each of these times is accessed by Assignment Manager when determining the availability of an employee. Assignment Manager then uses the availability information like other criteria when evaluating employees for the assignment object. Assignment Manager can also be configured to add an activity to the calendar of the employee who is assigned the assignment object. For example, if a service request is created with times indicating a service duration of four hours, Assignment Manager evaluates the object's times and employees' schedules, and selects only employees who are available for the four hours indicated by the service object. Assignment Manager then selects the highest scoring employee available and creates an activity for the employee (if the object is configured to assign activities). Employees can manually insert activities into their calendar to block assignments during specific periods. Similarly, an employee can delete activities created by the original assignment so further assignments can be made.

Assignment Manager functions for both single employees and teams. If an object is assigned to a team, every employee within the team is assigned an activity for the duration of the assignment (if the object is configured to assign activities). Assignment Manager can assign activities for the same object at different times based on the calendars of individual team members. A calendar activity, however, cannot be split up across multiple dates and times. For more information about activities for availability assignment, see About Creation of Activities for Employees During Availability-Based Assignment.

When administrators define a new rule, selecting the Check Employee Calendar box activates the assignment availability criteria.

Adding Positions to Assignment Rules

This section explains how to add positions to an assignment rule. Sales organizations typically assign positions to objects. For more information on positions, see Position Candidates.

NOTE:  Assignment Manager does not prevent you from adding positions to an assignment rule that requires employee assignment. Before adding positions, make sure that the objects for the assignment rule allow employee assignment.

To add positions to an assignment rule

1. Drill down on the assignment rule for which you want to add positions (Navigate > Site Map > Assignment Rules List), and then click the Position Candidates view tab.
2. In the Position Candidates list, click New.
3. In the Add Positions dialog box, select the positions to include for this assignment rule, and then click OK.

   TIP:   To select multiple positions, hold down the CTRL key while selecting positions.

4. In the new record in the Positions list, click in the available fields to enter or edit the relevant information.

Table 29 shows select predefined fields available for editing.

NOTE:  You can configure Assignment Manager to define additional fields for Positions associated with an assignment rule. For more information, see Configuring Assignment Objects to Copy Additional Columns to the Team Table.

After you add positions for an assignment rule, only the active employees for each position are available. If Assignment Manager assigns the position, employees for the position have visibility to the assigned object.

To delete system-assigned positions from individual assignment objects, or to manually assign other positions, see the procedure in Maintaining the Manually Assigned Primary Position.

If new candidates are added, make sure you release the assignment rules for the changes to take affect. For more information about releasing assignment rules, see Releasing Assignment Rules

NOTE:  Assignment Manager caches position skills when the Siebel Server is started. Every time rules are released, position skills are updated and cached. If you want to automatically refresh position skills at a periodic interval, set the value of Refresh people skills interval (an AsgnSrvr component parameter) to the desired interval of update. For more information about position skills, see Assignment Strategy for Sales Organizations. For information about the AsgnSrvr component parameter, see Running Interactive Assignment Using the Command-Line SRVRMGR Utility.

Assignment Manager can also assign positions based on their association with their parent organization. For example, only positions associated with a specific organization can be assigned to an assignment object even if other positions not associated with the organization qualify. This functionality is called multitiered assignment and must be configured for the appropriate assignment object. For more information on this feature, see About Multitiered Assignment and Scenarios for Using Multitiered Assignment with Sales Assignment Rules.

Alternatively, you can set a default employee for assignment objects. For example, if you want records for a given assignment object assigned to a certain employee, you can change the Default Employee property on the assignment object using Siebel Tools. For more information about the Default Employee property, see Object Types Reference. For more information about setting this property, see Configuring Assignment Objects.

Adding Organizations to Assignment Rules

This topic explains how to add organizations to an assignment rule. For more information on organizations, see Organization Candidates.

To add organizations to an assignment rule

1. Drill down on the assignment rule for which you want to add organizations (Navigate > Site Map > Assignment Rules List), and then click the Organization Candidates view tab.
2. In the Organization Candidates list, click New.
3. In the Add Organization dialog box, select the organizations to include for this assignment rule, and then click OK.

   TIP:   To select multiple organizations, hold down the CTRL key while selecting organizations, and click OK.

4. In the new record in the Organizations list, click in the available fields to enter or edit the relevant information.

Table 30 shows select predefined fields available for editing.

If new candidates are added, make sure you release the assignment rules for the changes to take affect. For more information about releasing assignment rules, see Releasing Assignment Rules

NOTE:  Assignment Manager caches organization skills when the Siebel Server is started. Every time rules are released, organization skills are updated and cached. If you want to automatically refresh organization skills at a periodic interval, set the value of Refresh people skills interval (an AsgnSrvr component parameter) to the desired interval of update. For more information about organization skills, see Assignment Strategy for Sales Organizations. For information about the AsgnSrvr component parameter, see Running Interactive Assignment Using the Command-Line SRVRMGR Utility.

Assignment Manager can also assign organizations based on the positions associated within the organization. For example, positions assigned to an assignment object can also have their associated organizations assigned. This functionality is called multitiered assignment and must be configured for the appropriate assignment object. For more information on this feature, see About Multitiered Assignment and Scenarios for Using Multitiered Assignment with Sales Assignment Rules.

Alternatively, you can set a default organization for assignment objects. For example, if you want records for a given assignment object assigned to a certain organization, you can change the Default Org property on the assignment object using Siebel Tools. For more information about the Default Org property, see Object Types Reference. For more information about setting this property, see Configuring Assignment Objects.