UW Connect Assignment Groups - Knowledge Portal

Overview

This article provides key information about Assignment Groups in UW Connect. The official role description can be found on the ITSM Wiki. KB0010440 has information about the group membership and management.

Audience

UW Connect users

Content

This article contains the following sections:
What Are Assignment Groups?
Assignment Group vs Assigned to
Assignment Group Manager
Key Assignment Group Settings
See Also......

What Are Assignment Groups?

Assignment Groups play a major role in record management, and are how Incidents, Requests, and corresponding tasks are assigned. They represent the collection of team members who work records related to specific configuration items (CIs), including business services, service offerings, systems, servers, and so forth.

Groups are designated as fulfillment groups and/or support groups associated with each service offering. For a CI, the Fulfillment Group is the default Assignment Group for Requests, while the Support Group is the default Assignment Group for Problems and Tasks. When a CI is selected on a task record (e.g., INC, REQ), the Group will default to that which is designated on the CI record, but can subsequently be changed.

Not all UW Connect Groups are assignable; they are used for additional purposes, such as allocating UW Connect roles (permissions).

"Assignment Group" vs. "Assigned to"

The "Assignment Group" field indicates which group has been selected to work a record, whereas the "Assigned to" field represents the individual who has ownership of the record.

Records routed through the Service Center will be done at the group level, and members of the selected Group will assign the record to someone in that group, as per their own working practices. When you select a Group, the list selector (magnifying glass) for the "Assigned to" field lists only members of that Group, but you can always put your own name in the field.

Assignment Group Manager

The "Manager" field is mapped from the groups web service's "Contact" field and should not be edited directly in UW Connect. (If you change it in UW Connect, it will be overwritten on the subsequent refresh from the groups service.) There is information on the expectations for this role in the ITSM Role Descriptions Wiki page.

The Assignment Group Manager will:

Be able to see records on the Assignment Group Snapshot, even if not otherwise a group member
Receive email notifications that are sent to the group, unless the "Exclude Manager" checkbox is ticked on the group record; this is editable directly in UW Connect

Key Assignment Group Settings

When setting up a new assignment group, you can determine the notification preferences for that group.

WHEN: The options are:

Always: Appropriate for groups that are not frequently in UW Connect, as well as groups whose members frequently handle each others' work, all members of the group will be notified via email when a record is created/updated.
Unassigned: The most common setting, this will notify all group members via email if a task is created/updated only if "Assigned to" is empty. If the task is assigned, only that person will be notified (as well as persons in the work notes list).
None: A rare setting, this is only appropriate for groups who are high volume and who have someone monitoring the queue during working hours, this will not send the group an email when a task is created/updated. The person in the Assigned to field will still be emailed.

WHO: The options are:

Send to the individual group member's email (official UW email). This is the default behavior, and the recommended practice. When an email is generated for the group, UW connect will send an email notification to the email of each group member.
Send to an email address/Group Email (e.g., shared NetID). This is not recommended, since there is no guarantee that the persons on the distribution list mirror those in the UW Connect Assignment Group, and not everyone may have a UW Connect license.

Additionally, you can determine how the "Assigned to" field is handled when a resolved task is reopened by ticking/unticking the "Unassign on Reopen" field:

Ticked: The Assigned to field will be blanked out, showing as unassigned, and more likely to be picked up in a timely manner for follow up.
Not Ticked: The person who resolved the task will remain in the Assigned to field. While this may make it more likely that the person most familiar with the issue will follow up, if that person is out of office, it can result in a delay for the caller.
Please Note: if an assigned record is changed to another Assignment Group the 'Assigned to' person will be blanked out when the current Assigned to person is not a member of the new Assignement Group.