Configuring Assignment Object Properties

This topic is part of Configuring Assignment Objects.

Siebel Assignment Manager uses definitions in the Siebel repository to assign objects to assignment rules and candidates.

An assignment object specifies a business entity to which a candidate can be assigned and the entities that are updated to accomplish that assignment. For example, an employee or position can be assigned ownership of an opportunity or account or made a member of the opportunity's or account's sales team. Similarly, an employee can be assigned ownership of a service request or product defect. Each of the corresponding business components has one or more fields that specify the owner or team. An assignment rule includes one or more assignment objects. When the rule is satisfied, specific columns underlying these fields are updated with replaced or added employee IDs appropriate for the settings in the assignment object.

An assignment object is a child object type of the Workflow Policy Object object. The parent workflow policy object provides a set of available column mappings through its child workflow policy component and grandchild workflow policy component column object types. These can be specified in Assignment Attribute Column object definitions as columns to test for value matches and to monitor in dynamic assignment for value changes.

Caution: If you inactivate a Workflow Policy Object that has a child assignment object, you must inactivate the assignment object as well, otherwise Assignment Manager components will not work.

Workflow policy objects have a one-to-one or a one-to-zero relationship with assignment objects (the Order and Quote workflow policy objects do not have predefined child assignment objects). You cannot add more assignment objects to workflow policy objects that already have a child assignment object.

Siebel Business Applications provide predefined definitions in the Siebel repository for several objects. The predefined Workflow Policy Object and Workflow Policy Component Column definitions include mappings for the most commonly used attributes for each object.

Caution: Siebel Tools allows the creation or configuration of an assignment object with both position- and employee-based assignment, but Assignment Manager does not correctly assign objects with this type of configuration. Only create or configure assignment objects for either position-based or employee-based assignment, not both.

To configure assignment object properties

1. Start Siebel Tools.

2. In the Object Explorer, expand Workflow Policy Object, and select the object that you want to configure.

   Objects are listed alphabetically by parent name in the Workflow Policy Objects window.

   Tip: Workflow policy objects are not included in the Object Explorer by default. Click View, then Options, then Object Explorer to add the workflow policy objects to the Object Explorer view.

3. With the assignment object selected, choose Tools, then Lock Project (or Alt+L), to lock the project.

4. In the Object Explorer, select Assignment Object.

   The property values of the assignment object appear in the Properties window as well as the Assignment Objects list, although naming conventions for the same property might differ.

5. In the Properties window, configure the assignment object by setting the appropriate values for each property.

   Note: The default values provided in the Siebel repository for assignment objects are provided for guidance purposes and might not be applicable to your business requirements. Therefore, it is recommended that you review the configuration of the predefined objects before using them. For detailed information about assignment objects and their default values, see Siebel Object Types Reference.

6. Update your deployment with the new configurations.

   For instructions, see Steps Updating Your Siebel Assignment Manager Deployment with New Configurations.

   Note: It is not necessary to redeploy the changes to the Siebel runtime repository when configuring an assignment object. For more information about when to redeploy, see Updating Your Siebel Assignment Manager Deployment with New Configurations and Using Siebel Tools.
   Note: If you are modifying the Default Employee, Default Position, or Default Organization properties, then make sure that the values specified exist in the appropriate base table. For example, if you change the default organization to My Organization, then there must be an entry called My Organization in the Administration - Group screen, Organizations view.