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About the Required Field for Assignment Criteria

This topic is part of About Assignment Criteria.

The Required field on an assignment criterion gives you the ability to make certain criteria mandatory for the assignment rule. If candidates meet this criterion, the candidate's score is increased, providing that candidate a better chance of being assigned. You make assignment criteria required or not required by selecting one of the following choices from the picklist in the Required field in the Criteria list for the assignment rule: Always, Never, or When Available.

Required Assignment Criteria

A required criterion means that the criterion must be met. For the Compare To Object type criteria, if the object does not have the attribute to satisfy the criterion, the rule fails and none of the candidates from that rule qualify for assignment.

For person-based criteria (criteria with either a Compare To Person or a Compare Object to Person comparison method), if the criterion is not met, that person candidate fails and does not qualify for that assignment rule. Therefore, further person-based criteria are not evaluated for that person candidate.

For organization-based criteria (criteria with a Compare To Organization or a Compare Object to Organization comparison method), if the criterion is not met, that organization candidate fails and does not qualify for that assignment rule. Therefore, further organization-based criteria are not evaluated for that Organization candidate.

For example, an assignment rule can have a required Service Request Severity assignment criterion with a Compare to Object comparison method and a criteria value of 1-Critical. In this case, if the object to be assigned has a service request severity of 1-Critical, the object qualifies for the assignment rule. An object without a service request severity value or one that has a different service request severity value does not qualify for the assignment rule.

Required When Available Assignment Criteria

In some cases, you may want to use Required When Available as the required property on the assignment criterion. Your requirements may dictate that a particular criterion should be applied only if the object or the candidate has the attribute available. If the attribute is available, the criterion must be satisfied and Required When Available should be specified. You can make criteria required when available by selecting When Available from the picklist in the Required field.

For example, an assignment rule can have a required when available Service Request Severity assignment criteria with a Compare to Object comparison method and a criteria value of 1-Critical. In this case, if the object assigned has a service request severity of 1-Critical, the object qualifies for the assignment rule. An object that has a lower service request severity value does not qualify for the assignment rule. However, an object without a service request severity value qualifies for the assignment rule (because the criteria value is NULL, or not available).

NOTE:  If an assignment criterion uses a Compare Object to Person or a Compare Object to Organization comparison method, and has Required set to When Available, but the attribute value does not exist on a person or organization, this criterion fails. This behavior is different than when the Compare to Object comparison method is used, in which case the criterion would pass.

Nonrequired Assignment Criteria

Use nonrequired assignment criteria to further determine a suitable match between candidates and assignment rules. You can make criteria nonrequired by selecting Never from the picklist in the Required field. Use nonrequired criteria that include scores to apply scores to candidates. These scores are added to the total scores of the candidates for this assignment rule if they pass the criteria. By using nonrequired criteria with scores, you can add a higher score to candidates that satisfy this criteria, while keeping candidates that do not satisfy the criteria.

• If a candidate fails a nonrequired criterion, no score is added to the candidate; however, the candidate does not fail. Person candidates are evaluated for the rest of the person-based criteria and organization candidates are evaluated for the rest of the organization-based criteria.

  For example, use service-related criteria (such as Service Request Priority) for an assignment rule that is applied to service-related objects (such as Service Request). If you create an assignment rule with Server Request Priority as nonrequired criteria, Assignment Manager does not qualify any accounts for the criteria because Service Request Priority does not apply to accounts.

• If an assignment rule uses only nonrequired assignment criteria, then the assignment rule passes even if the minimum score for the rule is not satisfied, because the assignment criteria are not required. To avoid this behavior, you can alter Assignment Manager so that assignment rules pass only when the minimum score for the rule is satisfied, even if the assignment criteria are not required.
• To require that an assignment rule satisfies the minimum score for the rule to pass, you can use the UseRuleMinScore parameter. If you set this parameter to TRUE, each assignment rule score must be equal to or greater than the rule minimum score to pass. Also, candidates must have a total score from the rule greater than or equal to the rule minimum score in order to qualify for that rule as well.
• When running the Assignment Manager (AsgnSrvr) and Batch Assignment (AsgnBatch) components from the Server Manager command-line interface (srvrmgr), you can change the value for the UseRuleMinScore parameter. For dynamic assignment, you change the default value of the UseRuleMinScore parameter in the Assignment Request (In Process) workflow policy.