4Overview of Siebel Assignment Manager
Overview of Siebel Assignment Manager
This chapter provides an overview of Siebel Assignment Manager concepts and functionality. It includes the following topics:
Siebel Assignment Manager Terminology
Siebel Assignment Manager uses different terminology than what you might be accustomed to in standard business terminology. The following table compares some of these terms and describes how they differ from standard business terminology and what they represent in the context of the Assignment Manager application. Familiarize yourself with these terms before planning and creating your assignment rules.
Business Term |
Siebel Assignment Manager Term |
Description |
|---|---|---|
Territories |
Assignment Rules |
In standard business terminology, a territory is a collection of accounts, contacts, and or assets that are managed by a team of positions. Usually a territory is based on a geographic area: either a collection of postal codes or geographic zones. In Siebel Assignment Manager, an assignment rule is a collection of logical business boundaries. These business boundaries include:
|
Territories (continued) |
Assignment Rules (continued) |
You can also enforce additional business rules using assignment rules. For example, you can define a rule so that a specific account manager manages a particular account and the account's related opportunities.
Note: The word territory is used in other places in the GUI, where it is not related to the assignment territory features described in this guide. For example, the terms described in this table are not the same as the terms used with the Siebel Territory Management module. See also
Siebel Territory Management Guide.
|
Territory Conditions |
Assignment Criteria |
In standard business terminology, territory conditions constrain the accounts, contacts, and assets that can be assigned. In Siebel Assignment Manager, assignment criteria enforce business conditions when applied to assignment rules. An assignment rule can have one or more assignment criteria. For example, if a sales representative's territory is Northern California, but excludes City Y and Z for Products A, B, and C, then there are three territory conditions (assignment criteria) that define the sales representative's territory. The three conditions are:
|
Territory Condition Values |
Assignment Criteria Values |
In standard business terminology, territory condition values are applied to territory conditions to further constrain the accounts, contacts, and assets that can be assigned. In Siebel Assignment Manager, assignment criteria values are applied to a specific assignment criterion for a particular business condition. For example:
|
Business Entity |
Assignment Object |
In standard business terminology, business entities can be Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts, Sales Leads, Orders, Campaigns, Service Requests, Trouble Tickets, Activities, and so on. The business representatives for these entities include field service agents, telesales representatives, account executives, and so on. In Siebel Assignment Manager, business entities are known as assignment objects. An assignment rule is associated with one or more assignment objects. |
Territory Managers and Territory Teams |
Assignment Candidates |
In standard business terminology, territory managers and territory teams are generic terms used mostly in sales organizations. For a given business boundary, territory managers and their teams manage accounts, opportunities, contacts, or other business entities (or a combination of any or all of these). They are associated with a particular sales business entity because they satisfy or qualify for the business conditions enforced by their organizations. Such business entities might be Account, Opportunity, Contact, Partner, and so on. In Siebel Assignment Manager, assignment candidates apply not only to sales entities but to service entities as well. Service objects (entities) include Service Request, Product Defect, and so on. For sales organizations, candidates are positions or organizations. For example, a territory for a sales representative might be Northern California, with the exclusion of City Y and City Z for Products A, B, and C. For service organizations, candidates are employees or organizations. For example, a territory for a field service installation technician might be City A and City B. |
Assignment Concepts
Siebel Assignment Manager routes business entities and work items to the most appropriate candidates by enforcing business rules set by sales, service, and marketing organizations. Assignment Manager does this 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.
To define assignment rules, you select:
Objects to which each assignment rule applies.
Rule groups to which each assignment rule belongs.
Candidates for each assignment rule. Candidates can be persons (employees or positions), organizations, or both.
Criteria for each assignment rule.
(Optional) Values for assignment criteria.
For rules that match attributes of an assignment object with attributes of candidates, you can optionally define:Define workload distribution rules 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.
Skills to match assignment rules to candidate attributes.
A skill is a generic row-level attribute that qualifies a person, organization, or assignment object row. For example, if an employee speaks English and Spanish, then language is the skill he or she possesses, and English and Spanish are the skill items. Employee, position, and organization skills are used to store skills possessed; the skill tables for objects are used to store skills required. Assignment Manager uses skill tables to do skill matching by comparing skills on the object with the skills of an employee, position, or organization to determine if they pass the rule.
Expertise levels to weigh skill scores (to measure competency in a certain area for each candidate).
Scores for each assignment rule, criterion, and value and a personal score for each individual candidate.
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.
Defining workload distribution rules to balance work among the candidates.
Define workload distribution rules 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 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
Using inclusion and exclusion methods
Using workload distribution rules
Using wildcard values
Defining how assignment rules are matched by using:
Assignment rule groups
Assignment rule sequencing
Defining how candidates are assigned based on person and organization relationships using multitiered assignment.
Creating and configuring your own entities, including:
Assignment objects
Assignment criteria
Assignment attributes
Workload distribution rules to make assignments based on current workload
Dynamic candidates and candidate teams that are assigned dynamically depending on the object row assigned
Running Assignment Manager in different operating modes to process assignments:
Interactively in real time
Dynamically when object rows are created or attributes on object rows are changed by connected or mobile users
Periodically assigning objects in batches
Running Assignment Manager against reporting tables to test the desired behavior of assignment rules and rule groups before running against production tables.
Checking availability before assigning employees to objects.
Defining which servers are used to run selected groups of rules.
Delegating the task of creating business logic through rules and criteria to others.
Summary of Assignment Manager Customization Tasks
The following table summarizes the Assignment Manager customization tasks and where you can find more information.
Task |
For More Information, See … |
|---|---|
Define assignment rules |
|
Match attributes of an assignment object with attributes of candidates |
|
Defining workload distribution rules to balance work among the candidates |
|
Define how attributes are matched |
|
Define how assignment rules are matched using rule groups and rule sequencing |
|
Define how candidates are assigned based on person and organization relationships using multitiered assignment |
|
Create and configure your own entities |
|
Run Assignment Manager in different operating modes to process assignments |
|
Running what-if analysis on possible assignments before making actual assignments |
|
Define which servers are used to run selected groups of rules |
How Siebel Assignment Manager Uses Server Key Mappings to Load Rules to a Particular Siebel Server |
Delegate the task of creating business logic through rules and criteria to others |
|
Check availability before assigning employees to objects |
Essential Building Blocks of Siebel Assignment Manager
Siebel Assignment Manager consists of several essential building blocks. This topic provides a brief description of these building blocks, each of which is described in greater detail in other chapters throughout this guide.
Assignment Rules
An assignment rule is a logical collection of business conditions, and Assignment Manager evaluates potential candidates based on these rules. For example, assume that the U.S. Western Sales Representative position is responsible for sales of Products A, B, and C in ZIP Codes 94401, 94402, and 94403.
In Siebel Assignment Manager, this example translates as follows:
An assignment rule exists for the U.S. Western region.
The assignment rule candidate is the U.S. Western Sales Representative.
One criterion for the assignment rule includes only those accounts with ZIP Codes 94401, 94402, and 94403.
Another criterion for the assignment rule includes only products in the Product A, B, or C product line.
Siebel Assignment Manager uses assignment rules to match assignment objects to candidates. Multiple assignment rules can be active for each assignment object. An assignment rule can also apply to multiple objects.
Assignment rules use criteria and scores to rate candidates and select potential assignees. Candidates that qualify for an assignment rule have the assignment rule score added to their total score. For example, if you have an assignment rule with the Score field set to 20 points, then each candidate that meets the rule's criteria has 20 points applied to his or her total score.
Each assignment rule also has a candidate passing score value. After the total score for a candidate is calculated, Assignment Manager compares this score with the candidate passing score for the assignment rule. If a candidate's score is less than the candidate passing score, then the candidate does not meet the criteria and is not assigned.
Assignment Objects
In Siebel Assignment Manager, assignment objects represent assignment entities to which candidates are matched based on assignment rules. The concept is analogous to business objects in Siebel Business Applications. You must associate every assignment rule with at least one assignment object.
Assignment Criteria and Criteria Values
Assignment criteria are the fundamental building blocks for assignment rules. You translate the assignment business logic that you determine into assignment criteria. Assignment rules use criteria to determine which candidates qualify as potential assignees. Criteria also determine which assignment rule is evaluated in assigning an object. An assignment rule can include none (zero), one, or many criteria.
An assignment criterion is usually defined along with criteria values. For example, assume that you want an assignment requirement that employees speak German. When you create your assignment rule, you select the predefined Language rule criterion and German (or DEU, which is the language code for German) as the criterion value.
You can have several criteria values for the same criterion. For example, assume that a Language rule criterion uses four languages as criteria values: German, Spanish, Italian, and French. Assuming that this assignment rule's candidate passing score is 10 points, and that each language is worth 5 points, the candidates for this assignment rule that possess expertise in at least two of these languages qualify for the assignment rule.
Assignment Manager provides predefined criteria values that are available dynamically based upon the criterion you select, or you can create your own criteria values using Siebel Tools. For example, if you want activities of type Repair or Break-fix handled by a certain employee, then create a rule criterion called Activity Type with two criteria values, Repair and Break-fix. For more information about creating new criteria with values, see Process of Creating Assignment Criteria for Use in Assignment Rules.
Assignment Rule Groups
Assignment Manager allows you to group assignment rules, splitting them up by business function or other categories. An assignment rule group can include multiple assignment rules, however, an assignment rule can belong to only one rule group. You must associate each assignment rule with a rule group.
You can split rules and execute a subset of rules at any time. Typically, you want to split rules into rule groups based on business logic.
For example, you can have one set of business rules for assigning repair activities and another set of rules for assigning similar, but different, activities, such as appointment activities. In this situation, you could create two rule groups with five rules each. Then, when assigning a particular activity, you specify the rule group that you want Assignment Manager to process. Only the five rules from the rule group that you specified are processed during assignment of the activity, for example, the five repair activity rules.
Assignment Candidates
In Siebel Assignment Manager, candidates represent the people who or organizations that are evaluated as potential assignees for objects. Depending on the assignment rule that you use, and the object to which a candidate is assigned, candidates can be positions, employees, or organizations, and can be assigned as individuals or as members of a team. Alternatively, you can associate all people or all organizations defined in the database as candidates for a rule. You can also specify a particular candidate or one member of a team as the primary assignee on a specific assignment rule.
Static Versus Dynamic Candidates
When processing rules, Assignment Manager determines potential candidates either statically or dynamically. Assignment Manager determines candidates statically in these cases:
When candidates are explicitly added to an assignment rule.
When the All People or All Organizations flags are checked on an assignment rule.
When qualifying candidates based on their skills.
Static candidates do not change as Assignment Manager processes rules (unless you intentionally associate other, different candidates) whereas dynamic candidates are identified during assignment.
Dynamic candidates can come from different, but related business entities. For example, Assignment Manager can assign an activity related to an asset and then dynamically generate a candidate list from the asset team.
Assignment Manager determines dynamic candidates as potential assignees for objects from an attribute on the object row. For example, assume that you have an activity that is associated to an asset. The asset, in turn, is associated with a list of employees. You might want Assignment Manager to treat the list of employees associated with the asset as potential candidates for assignment of that activity. In this situation, the potential candidates are dynamic candidates because they are not statically associated with an assignment rule; instead, they are identified during assignment.
Also note that, if the activity is later associated with a different asset that is associated with a different set of employees, then the list of potential candidates for the same activity can change during the next assignment.
In summary, the following points explain how static candidate assignment differs from dynamic candidate assignment:
For static candidate assignment, candidates for each assignment rule are loaded when the server processes start up.
For dynamic candidate assignment, candidates are retrieved from related business entities (attribute team table) with respect to the object row during an assignment.
Employee Candidates
Employees represent candidates distinguished by their skills and product expertise and are typically used as candidates in service organizations. For example, a service organization would want to assign employees with the proper skills and expertise to objects, because these employees possess specific skills that are related to the service request or activity. Assignment Manager can also take into account a specific employee's work schedule, calendar, and regional schedule when determining assignments by creating rules based on an employee's availability. For more information about availability-based assignment, see Availability-Based Assignment
Position Candidates
Positions represent candidates distinguished by their job functions and are typically used as candidates in sales organizations. For example, a sales organization would want to assign positions to objects, because these positions are responsible for a region or territory.
By assigning positions to objects, you can have one sales representative inherit the opportunities, accounts, and contacts from another representative by reassigning the employee responsible for a specific position.
Organization Candidates
An organization represents a group of positions that has limited visibility to particular application data. For example, your company can create separate and distinct organizations to distribute specific information to organizational groups both inside and outside of your enterprise. Both internal and external users are granted access only to the information that the organization wants them to be able to see (such as accounts, opportunities, and contacts) and to the data that these users need to see (such as price lists, products, and literature).
By assigning objects to organizations, you can maintain better security and promote proper business practices by controlling data access and visibility between different organizations. For example, you can limit your distributors' data access by giving them visibility to product information, but restricting their visibility to price lists for the products. To restrict price list visibility, you can create a separate organization for your distributors that does not have access to the price list data. In this case, the price lists are not available to your distributors even if they are assigned to the products.
Some objects allow the assignment of a single organization, whereas other objects allow the assignment of multiple organizations to the same object. For more information about which candidates can be assigned to each of the predefined assignment objects, see the following table.
Teams Versus Individual Candidates
A team represents a group of employees or positions. Assigning a team allows you to assign a group of individuals that possess various skills or job functions to a particular object.
In sales organizations, teams are typically assigned to objects. For example, you can assign a sales representative and a sales consultant to an opportunity. Alternately, you can assign a team of sales professionals (such as two district representatives, a regional manager, and a sales engineer) to work a single, large sales opportunity.
An individual represents a single employee or a position. Assigning individuals allows you to assign exclusive ownership to an individual who possesses a specific skill or expertise for a particular object.
In service organizations, individuals are typically assigned to objects. For example, you can assign a customer service representative with expertise in disk drives to all service requests that are marked for this area.
Assignment objects can be team-based, individual-based, or both. That is, the same assignment object can be team-based for employees and individual-based for organizations.
The following table shows which candidates can be assigned to some of the predefined assignment objects. This table also shows which assignment objects are restricted to a single assignee, and assignment objects that are capable of incorporating a team of assignees. S indicates the ability to allow only single owner assignments; M indicates the ability to allow multiple owners or team assignments.
Assignment Object |
Employee Candidate |
Position Candidate |
Organization Candidate |
|---|---|---|---|
Account |
Not applicable |
M |
M |
Activity |
M |
Not applicable |
Not applicable |
Campaign |
Not applicable |
M |
M |
Campaign Contact |
Not applicable |
S |
S |
Contact |
Not applicable |
M |
M |
Opportunity |
Not applicable |
M |
M |
Product Defect |
S |
Not applicable |
Not applicable |
Project |
M |
Not applicable |
M |
Project Team |
M |
Not applicable |
Not applicable |
Service Request |
S |
Not applicable |
M |
TM Account |
Not applicable |
M |
Not applicable |
TM Asset |
Not applicable |
M |
Not applicable |
TM Contact |
Not applicable |
M |
Not applicable |
Primary Assignees
A primary assignee (also referred to as a primary) on an assignment rule represents the candidate (employee, position, or organization) that is assigned as the primary owner, or main owner, of an assignment object if the candidate passes the criteria for that object. This assigned primary is usually the highest-scoring assignee from the highest-scoring assignment rule.
Alternatively, you can configure Assignment Manager to assign one member of a team as the primary assignee. In addition, you can manually assign a particular candidate as the primary assignee on a specific assignment rule.
Optional Building Blocks of Siebel Assignment Manager
Siebel Assignment Manager provides several optional building blocks that you can use with your assignment rules. This topic provides a brief description of these optional building blocks, each of which is described in greater detail in other chapters throughout this guide.
Assignment Rule Sequencing
When you assign sequence numbers to assignment rules, Assignment Manager evaluates those rules in ascending order of the sequence numbers. Assignment rule sequencing provides a means for you to prioritize the rules that apply to any given assignment object by order of importance, thereby limiting the number of rules that Assignment Manager processes for assignment. For example, you might want to run Assignment Manager only for your higher priority rules first. If those rules pass, then stop processing additional rules, because candidates are already successfully matched.
Assignment Workload
Assignment Manager allows you to apply predefined workload distribution rules to assignment rules to balance workload among candidates. Alternatively, you can create and apply your own rules for this purpose. Candidates that have workloads in excess of the maximum workload are eliminated from the assignment rule. This workload distribution prevents employees from being overloaded. Each assignment rule can include multiple workload criteria.
Assignment Scoring
You can add scores to assignment rules to rate candidates and select potential assignees. Candidates that qualify for an assignment rule have the assignment rule score added to their total score. For example, if you have an assignment rule with the Score field set to 20 points, then each candidate that meets the rule's criteria has 20 points applied to his or her total score.
You can also assign a candidate passing score value to each assignment rule. After the total score for a candidate is calculated, Assignment Manager compares this score with the candidate passing score for the assignment rule. If a candidate's score is less than the candidate passing score, then the candidate does not meet the criteria and is not assigned.
Alternatively, you can add scores for the same candidate across multiple assignment rules.
Assignment Skills, Expertise Codes, and Weighting Factors
Skills are a special criteria type that you can use to minimize the number of assignment rules. One assignment rule can match different candidates to various objects based on the object characteristics and candidate skills.
Skills are the type of criteria that you use most frequently for implementing assignments in a customer service environment. For optimal assignment, you determine the criteria that you want to evaluate for each candidate to make sure that the candidate possesses the proper skills to handle the task.
The Siebel Business Applications provide predefined skills, and you enable and configure those skills at the criteria level using Siebel Tools. However, you can also create new skills using Siebel Tools. After you enable skills, Assignment Manager matches skills based on an assignment criteria comparison method in the same manner in which attributes are matched. Assignment Manager then applies scores and other filters to find the best candidate after a match has been made.
You can apply expertise codes that define an employee's expertise level for a particular skill with weighting factors to weigh skill scores to measure competency in a certain area for each candidate. Assignment Manager uses expertise codes to rank skills to find the most suitable candidate. For example, assume that you do not want to assign a novice to a service request that requires an expert. By using expertise codes, you can prevent assigning objects to underqualified candidates.
Server Key Mappings
Server key mappings allow you to define multiple rule groups that you want a specific server to load and process, thus allowing you to use different servers for different business purposes. Server key mappings use an internal key-based routing mechanism to route requests to a particular server; however, this routing is done in the background and is not apparent. You can also specify multiple servers to load the same rule group.
Assignment Policies
Assignment policies are specialized workflow policies used to create dynamic assignment triggers. Assignment policies allow you to define policies that can act as triggers to execute a workflow process, such as dynamic assignment. A policy consists of one or more policy conditions. When the policy conditions are met, the policy action is executed. Assignment Manager provides preconfigured policies for each of the predefined assignment objects. To use assignment policies, you have to first activate them using Siebel Tools.
Denormalization
Denormalization is an assignment mode in which Assignment Manager introduces duplicate data to facilitate specific visibility requirements. In Siebel Assignment Manager, you use the prebuilt contact denormalization and product denormalization features to denormalize positions or organizations.
Email Activity Assignment
Assignment Manager can assign or route inbound emails created by Siebel Email Response to an appropriate agent. The Communications Server, that is, the Communications Inbound Manager server component, works in conjunction with Siebel Email Response to create inbound emails as activities.
To assign inbound emails, the assignment administrator creates assignment rules and criteria for the Activity assignment object. For more information about routing inbound emails, see Siebel Email Administration Guide (Workflow section). See also Siebel CTI Administration Guide.
Multitiered Assignment
By default, Assignment Manager assigns people and organizations independently. Multitiered assignment allows Assignment Manager to consider the relationship between people and organizations when determining the proper assignment. This feature requires configuration of assignment objects using Siebel Tools before implementing.
Availability-Based Assignment
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. This feature requires advanced configuration of assignment objects using Siebel Tools before implementing.
Siebel Assignment Manager Operating Modes
This topic explains the various operating modes available for running Siebel Assignment Manager. Depending on the operating mode, you invoke Assignment Manager using the server administration views, using the Server Manager command-line interface (srvrmgr) to run server component jobs, or both.
About the Assignment Manager Operating Modes
There are three assignment operating modes:
Batch assignment
Dynamic assignment
Interactive assignment
Batch Assignment
You can use batch assignment to assign multiple records in a single batch. For example, you can assign orders that are created during the business day at the end of business using batch assignment so that the assignments are made before start of business the next morning. Another example of batch assignment is when you change assignment rule definitions: you can use batch assignment to reassign objects using the new assignment rules. Batch assignment is optimized to process a large number of items efficiently.
Dynamic Assignment
Dynamic assignment performs assignments automatically as other users and server programs create records or modify existing records. For example, if a user creates a new opportunity or changes the revenue amount or the address of an opportunity, then dynamic assignment automatically detects the change and invokes Assignment Manager to reassign the opportunity to a different territory or sales team, as determined by the assignment rule.
Interactive Assignment
Interactive assignment allows end users to invoke Assignment Manager by a click of a button or menu selection, review the list of assignees generated by Assignment Manager, and then accept or override the assignees.
About Different Modes of Running Assignment Manager
You can choose one of two ways (default mode or rule group mode) to run Assignment Manager, depending on which rules that you want processed.
Default mode. In this mode, all active rules for all rule groups are loaded and processed. By default, interactive and dynamic assignment run in default mode. However, you can configure interactive assignment to run in rule group mode.
Rule group mode. In this mode, you can process rules of one particular rule group when you assign an object row.
The following table shows the supported operating modes and server components used for running each mode. The components are Assignment Manager (AsgnSrvr), Batch Assignment (AsgnBatch), Generate Triggers (GenTrig), and Workflow Monitor Agent (WorkMon).
Operating Mode |
Description |
Default Mode |
Rule Group Mode |
AsgnSrvr |
AsgnBatch |
GenTrig or WorkMon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Batch |
Assigns a set of rows in a single request. |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
Dynamic |
Uses database triggers to assigns objects as soon as they are created or when they are modified. |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
Interactive |
Uses the Assignment Manager engine to filter out certain candidates (in the evaluation phase), outputs a list of potential candidates to the user, and then the user manually assigns. |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Specialized Siebel Assignment Manager Features
Siebel Assignment Manager provides several specialized features. This topic provides a brief description of these specialized features, each of which is described in greater detail in other chapters throughout this guide.
Mobile Assignment
Mobile assignment allows mobile users to make interactive and dynamic assignments. Changes to a Mobile Web Client's local database are queued and are applied to the server the next time the mobile user synchronizes.
Assignment Manager automatically performs interactive assignments made by the mobile user after synchronization. Changes to assignment rules and objects are updated, and affected objects are reassigned dynamically.
Mobile users might also be assigned records on the server and will retrieve those assignments when they synchronize.
Delegated Assignment
Delegated assignment provides assignment administrators (AAs) the ability to delegate rule administration to other administrators and partners to route leads, activities, accounts (and other assignment objects) to employees or positions. These delegates are known as delegated administrators (DAs). A DA can, in turn, delegate assignment rule administration to others.
This hierarchical assignment feature is well-suited to sales organizations and organizations that work closely with partners.
Assignment Load Splitter Configuration
The assignment load splitter configuration feature provides assignment administrators (AAs) a tool for performing batch assignment for a significant number of objects. It eliminates the need for AAs to plan and implement complex load distribution logic.
You can configure Assignment Manager to automatically split objects for processing into separate batches and submit those batch requests to multiple servers. This type of configuration balances the task load across multiple servers, which in turn improves processing performance.
Modes for Processing Assignment Rules
Siebel Assignment Manager supports two modes for processing assignment rules: the reporting mode and the production mode. By default, Assignment Manager processes assignment rules in the production mode.
Reporting Mode
Assignment Manager provides a special mode for processing assignment rules that allows assignment administrators (AAs) to run and preview trial assignments for what-if analysis before making actual assignments. The reporting mode stages the simulated assignments into a set of temporary results tables, known as reporting tables, rather than into the actual database tables. After this staging process is complete, AAs review the results and, when satisfied, apply those changes by executing Assignment Manager in production mode.
Production Mode
The production mode is the mode in which actual assignments are made. Assignments are written into the team tables (account/position or contact/position tables) in the Siebel Enterprise database.
For example, an AA might want to perform trial runs to confirm new assignment rules in the reporting mode. After accomplishing satisfactory results, the AA can then apply the same changes in the production mode.