Allocating a Work Item to a Member of an Offer Set

Use the Allocate to offer-set member distribution strategy to specify both an offer set for a work item, and a specific user to whom that work item should be allocated. When the work item is scheduled, if that user is not a valid member of the offer set, the work item is instead offered to the remaining members of the offer set, as if the Offer to all distribution strategy had been used instead.

The Allocate to offer-set member strategy allows you to support, for example, a case handler/account manager pattern, so that although the work item is originally allocated to a member of a team, the team manager can still:
  • see all items that were originally offered to the team.
  • re-allocate the work item to another member if required - for example, if the user who started the case is off work due to sickness.
  • report on work from a team perspective.
Note: The Allocate to offer-set member distribution strategy cannot be used with the Chained Execution, Separation of Duties or Retain Familiar workflow patterns.

Procedure

  1. Define a Performer field that will be used to identify the user to whom the work item should be allocated.

    The Performer field must not be an array field and must not contain an initial value defined as an RQL expression. In either case, an error marker will be displayed against the field.

  2. On the Properties tab of the User task, click Work Resource > Distribution Strategy > Allocate To Offer-set Member.
  3. In the Member Identifier field, enter the name of the Performer field you defined earlier.
  4. Modify the process so that it populates the Performer field with a suitable value before the user task is executed.
    The performer field must, at runtime, contain the GUID of a single resource who is a valid member of the work item's offer set, as defined by the user task's participant.
    Note: You can use scripting methods and attributes to obtain the resource's GUID. See "Process Manager and Work Manager Scripting" in the TIBCO ActiveMatrix® BPM Business Data Services Guide for more information.
    The performer field must not be populated by an RQL expression. (This will result in a runtime error.)

Result

At runtime, the work item will be allocated to the user identified by the GUID value in the performer field. If the performer field returns an invalid value:
  • The work item will instead be offered to all members of the offer set.
  • One or more of the following error messages will be returned (in the BPM log file and in relevant event or audit views).
Message ID of Error Possible Causes
BRM_RESOURCE_INVALID_DESCRIBE_ENTITY The provided GUID belongs to an organizational entity that is not a resource.

The performer field has been populated using an RQL expression (for example, resource(name="Leon"), so does not contain a GUID.

BRM_WORKITEM_SCHEDULE_MEMBER_INVALID The provided GUID belongs to an invalid resource.
BRM_WORKITEM_SCHEDULE_NOT_A_MEMBER The provided GUID belongs to a resource who is not a member of the offer set.
Related concepts
Related tasks