Workflow Rules: How to Assign Personnel
This article focusses on the ‘Assign Personnel’ outcome. The Assign Personnel outcome of Workflow Rules allows you to allocate the assignee and approver of a record based on criteria.
The article covers:
- Before you get started
- Best Practice for setting up Workflow Rules
- Allocate assignee or approver using the Outcome ‘Assign Personnel’
- Workflow Rules & Permissions: Which users can appear on the assignee & approver list
BEFORE YOU GET STARTED
The Assign Personnel outcome of Workflow Rules allows you to allocate the assignee and approver of a record based on criteria.
For this outcome, Assure’s default Approval workflow set up should cover most of your workflow process. You can then leverage Workflow Rules to cater for exceptions.
For example:
The default set up handles all incident reports except high severity incidents which need to follow a different path. You can set up a rule specifically for high severity incidents and set the correct assignee and approver to review these.
Before creating Workflow Rules in Assure we suggest you follow these steps to plan the rules you need to set up.
- Define your assignment and approval process Review what the process should look like and who in your business should approve records.
- Set your default assignee and approver in Assure (if required) Check out this article to set default assignees and approvers
- Create workflow rules for any exceptions that are not covered by the default setup.
- Communicate any changes you are making to your team, so they are aware why they are being assigned to a record.
- Monitor execution of rules
BEST PRACTICE FOR SETTING UP WORKFLOW RULES
- Plan before you build: Think through all scenarios.
- Review your current set-up first: Review your existing Org Unit approval assignments and update as required
- Set up rules to align to your org unit approval setting. See how permissions work further down.
- Define rules lean: If the submitter needs to change but not the approver, only create the rule for submitter. It is ok to leave a box blank.
- Use a standard naming convention: Include org unit, criteria used and outcome. The Name and description are searchable.
- Set up rules for create & edit if you want them to be applied when the criteria is updated during review.
ALLOCATING ASSIGNEE OR APPROVER USING THE OUTCOME ‘ASSIGN PERSONNEL’
Check out this article about how to create a workflow rule for a step by step guide to set up rules.
Decide what trigger/s you would like the rule to execute on.
- When a record is created:
- As soon as the record is created (by any source except data import) workflow rules will be checked to see if criteria are met, and execute the outcome accordingly.
- This can be used with when a record is edited.
- This can be used with all outcomes.
- When a record is edited:
- If a record is saved, the workflow rules will be checked to see if criteria are met, execute the outcome accordingly.
- This can be used with when a record is created.
- This can be used with all outcomes.
Note, the following triggers cannot be used with the assign personnel outcome:
- When a record is submitted:
- As soon as the record is submitted in the workflow, workflow rules will be checked to see if criteria are met, and execute the outcome accordingly.
- This can only be used with the set status to approved outcome.
- When a record is approved:
- As soon as the record is approved in the workflow, workflow rules will be checked to see if criteria are met, and execute the outcome accordingly.
- This can only be used with the set status to archived outcome.
Once you have set your trigger and filter criteria select ‘Assign personnel’ in the outcome section and complete details.
- Assignee: This is the user that a record should be assigned to if it meets the specified criteria. The assign will review the record and submit it to the approver.
NOTE: To appear on this Assignee list, users must have the ‘Assign’ permission for the module and organisational unit. If you have ticked ‘Include child organisational units’ that user permission must be for all units included. This stops a user being assigned a record they do not have permission to access. Please check further down for a couple of examples.
- Set days until Record Submission: when the record is assigned, did you want to give the assignee a due date by which they must submit the record?
- Days after Assignment: how many days do they have to submit the record once it has been assigned to them?
- Approver: This is the users that should be set as approver for the record if it meets the above criteria.
ALLOWING OVERRIDE OF A WORKFLOW RULE
Allowing to override a workflow can be set up in Settings > Module Setup > Incident Record.
- Allow override of rule outcome assignee: ticking this box will give your users the option to override any workflow rules.
- Allow override of rule outcome approver: This allows users to change an approver before submitting the recording, that may differ from the workflow rule.
1. Allow override of workflow rule for assignee
When a user re-assigns a record, and the option to override it enabled as in the image above, they will have the option to stop to override the workflow rules.
When assigning a record the following option will appear: ‘Override workflow rule for assignee field’
- If the user selects the box ‘Override workflow rule for assignee field’ no workflow rules will be applied, and the record will remain with the user who has been manually selected.
- If the user does not select the box, the system will check for any workflow rule and apply those, reassigning the record to the user allocated in the workflow rule.
2. Allow Override of workflow rule for approver
If the option to ‘allow override the workflow rule for outcome approver’ is enabled, the user will be able to select a different approver from the list instead of the approver being pre-selected based on the rule and fixed. You will see on the screenshot that the user selector is available:
WORKFLOW RULES AND PERMISSIONS - WHICH USERS CAN APPEAR ON THE ASSIGNEE & APPROVER LIST
Assignee:
Users must have the ‘assign’ permission in their role for the module the rule applies to.
Users must have access to the org unit that the rule applies to.
If ‘include child organisational units’ is ticked, the users must have access to all the units
Approver:
Users must have the ‘approve’ permission in their role for the module the rule applies to.
Users must have access to the org unit (including the child units)
If ‘include child organisational units’ is ticked, the users must have access to all the units
EXAMPLES:
A rule is created to set the assignee and approver if incident severity = major in org unit directorate 1.
This is the structure in Assure:
Example 1: Our user has this permission set to Directorate 1 including Children:
The Administrator role has both ‘Assign’ and ‘Approve’ set to allow.
If the rule is set like this, at Org Unit Evotix (include child organisational units):
Our user does not appear on the list of assignees, as they do not have access to every org unit included in the rule. We only see users who can access the whole of the structure:
If the rule is set like this, at org unit Directorate 1 (include child organisational units):
Our user will appear on the assignee list, as well as all the users who have access to the whole of the structure:
Example 2: Our user has this permission set to Directorate 1 NOT including Children:
The Administrator role has both ‘Assign’ and ‘Approve’ set to allow.
If the rule is set like this, at org unit Directorate 1 (include child organisational units):
Our user will not appear on the assignee list, as they do not have access to the child units of Directorate 1. We only see users who have permission to every unit within the rule.
If the rule is set like this, at Directorate 1 (does not include child organisational units):
Our user will appear on the list as they have permission to Directorate 1 only. We only see users who have permission to every unit within the rule: