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Enabling Assignment Objects for Skills

This topic is part of Configuring Assignment Objects.

Siebel Assignment Manager uses standard skills or custom expertise values to compare an object being assigned directly to a person when processing assignment rules. Assignment Manager criteria and skills are related transparently in the Siebel Data Model. Skills are extensions to attribute data stored in designated skill and skill item tables. At a high level, you can think of an assignment criterion as a skill, and each criteria value as a skill item, as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 20. Assignment Criteria and Skills Comparison

The Skill Table and Skill Item Table properties are child and grandchild tables, respectively, of the assignment object used to store skills, and skill items for assignment objects that are not stored as columns in the parent table itself. The S_EMP_SKILL employee skill table is used to store skills possessed by employees, such as languages spoken, product expertise, and so on.

For example, for an employee who speaks English and Spanish, there is one record in the employee skill table that specifies the skill name as Language. There are also two records in the child S_EMP_SK_IT employee skill item table that correspond to this skill record: one record for English, and another record for Spanish.

Several objects are preconfigured for skills: Account, Activity, Campaign, Employee, Opportunity (Revenue), Service Request, and so on. By default, sales objects do not use skills. Using Siebel Tools, you enable skills for other assignment objects by configuring the object's Skill Table and Skill Item Table properties.

NOTE:  Before enabling skills for an assignment object, make sure the Skill Table assignment object property exists in the Siebel Data Model.

To enable assignment objects for skills

1. Start Siebel Tools.
2. Select the assignment object for which you want to enable skills.
   1. In the Object Explorer, click Workflow Policy Object, and then in the Workflow Policy Objects list, query for an object.
   2. In the Object Explorer, click Assignment Object.
3. Lock the project for the assignment object by choosing Tools, then Lock Project (Alt+L).

   A pencil icon appears next to the Name field to indicate that the object's project is locked.

4. In the Assignment Objects list (or Properties window), enter values for the fields in the following table.

   Field	Description
   Skill Item Table	The name of the skill item table.
   Skill Table	The name of the skill table.

   NOTE:  Choose the table name from the drop-down menu. This LOV (list of values) is derived from tables specified in the Siebel repository.

5. Set the Employee Skill assignment criteria property to TRUE.
   1. In the Object Explorer, select Assignment Criteria.
   2. In the Assignment Criteria list, select the object you selected in Step 2.
   3. Set the Employee Skill property to TRUE.