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Running Assignment Manager in Batch Mode

This topic explains how to run Assignment Manager in batch mode. Typically, you want to run batch jobs periodically when you anticipate the least amount of database activity (such as daily or weekly after-hours).

Use batch assignment to assign an assignment object in a single batch. You must run Assignment Manager in batch mode if you change non-object data that can affect assignments. This happens whenever you:

• Modify assignment rules and want these changes to affect existing objects. You modify assignment rules when you:
  • Add or remove employees, positions, or organizations
  • Add, remove, or update assignment criteria or criteria values
  • Associate a rule with a different rule group or change the rule sequence number
  • Change scores
  • Change activation and expiration dates
  • Change exclusive mode
• Modify the list of employees, positions, or organizations and you want these changes to affect existing objects. You modify the list of employees, positions, or organizations when you:
  • Add new employees, positions, or organizations (if you use assignment rules with the All People setting)
  • Change skills of employees, positions, or organizations (these values are cached in memory)
• Change the Assignment Manager configuration in Siebel Tools and you want your changes to affect existing objects. You change the Assignment Manager configuration when you:
  • Change Assignment Attribute definitions
  • Change Assignment Criteria definitions
  • Change Assignment Object definitions
  • Change Workflow Policy Object definitions
• Use EIM (Enterprise Integration Manager) to perform initial loads (if you do not run Generate Triggers to create the appropriate triggers).

  NOTE:  When using EIM to load assignment rules, make sure the column ASGN_TYPE_CD includes a value. If it is left NULL, which is permissible in EIM, the rules are loaded but Assignment Manager fails.

• Feel that existing assignments may not be accurate. Assignment Manager does not change assignments if the existing assignments are correct.

  NOTE:  When batch mode is run on correct assignments, although there are no changes to the team or primary, an update of the record occurs. This situation can disturb other workflow policies relying on various record fields. For example, a workflow policy relying on PR_POSTN_ID field to trigger an action does not work properly if this field is updated from a new batch assignment. If your deployment uses SQL Server, this note does not apply.

If you run both batch assignment and batch assignment in your environment, the batch assignment can activate batch assignment due to triggers created in the database required to run batch assignment. Before running batch assignment, you should deactivate all assignment policies and drop related triggers to prevent batch assignment from processing modified rules, objects, and candidates. For more information, see To deactivate an assignment policy and To run Generate Triggers. After completing batch assignment, you can activate the assignment policies and re-enable batch assignment. For more information on batch assignment, see About Batch Assignment. For more information, see To activate an assignment policy.

NOTE:  For performance reasons, do not run dynamic assignment while running batch assignment.

You can have a batch assignment task load only a particular group of rules into memory by specifying the ROW ID of the rule group in the Assignment Key parameter when you start the task. If no rule group is specified for this parameter, the batch task loads all rules in the Default Group into memory. If no rule groups have been defined in the application, then all active rules in the database load. For more information, see About Assignment Rule Groups.

To run batch assignment

1. From the application-level menu, choose Navigate > Site Map > Administration - Server Management > Jobs.
2. In the Jobs list, click New.

   A new record appears with a system-defined ID automatically populated with a status of Creating.

3. In the new record, enter the relevant information for the new job.
   1. In the Component/Job field, select Batch Assignment.
   2. In the Server field, type the name of the server on which you want to run this batch request.
   3. Optionally, if you want to run a specific rule group for this batch, type the row Id of the assignment rule group for which you want rules processed for the AsgnKey parameter.
   4. Complete the rest of the fields for the new record, if needed.
4. In the Job Parameters list, click New to create a new record, and enter relevant information for the assignment object that you want to assign as part of this batch request.
   1. In Name field, click the select button.
   2. In the Job Parameters dialog box, select Assignment Object Name, and then click OK.
   3. In the Value field, enter the name of the assignment object for the parameter.

      Use the exact name found in Siebel Tools, such as Service Request or Order (Sales Credit Assignment).

      NOTE:  Because batch assignment cannot run more than one assignment object per batch, you should run batch assignment on only one assignment object for each batch.

5. While still in the Job Parameters list, click New to create a new record so that Assignment Manager uses the Object WHERE clause to limit the number of rows processed at one time.
   1. In Name field, click the select button.
   2. In the Job Parameters dialog box, query for ObjWhereClause, click Go, and then click OK.
   3. In the Value field, enter a WHERE clause to select the object instance that you want to process; the WHERE clause can include up to 100 characters.

      For example, to select object instances beginning with ibm, type:

   WHERE name like 'ibm%'

   NOTE:  If you leave the value field blank, all object instances are selected. However, it is strongly recommended that you limit the number of rows that Assignment Manager processes to make sure that sufficient rollback space is available.

   For more information about using the Object WHERE clause, see Table 38 and further description following the table.

6. Optionally, if you want to enable Contact Denormalization for batch assignment, add two more component request parameter records with
   values from the following table:

   Parameter Name	Value
   Assignment Object Name	Contact Denormalization
   Assignment Mode	Denorm

7. Optionally, if you want to save changes to the database during batch processing, add another component request parameter as follows:
   1. In Name field, click the select button.
   2. In the Job Parameters dialog box, query for Batch Size, and then click Go.
   3. In the Value field, enter the number of objects to assign before committing each batch.
8. In the My Component Requests form, click the menu button and choose Submit request.