Who can use this feature?
- Global admins or users with advanced permissions
- Available on all plans
Task assignment when created as part of a SuccessPlay includes three options for how to set the assignee when the play runs:
- Role: Based on account assignment
- Team Pool: Based on pools using matching criteria on the Totango user profile
- Team Member: A named user (not dynamic)
Prepare Totango user details
Before you create a Totango user pool, it's recommended to audit your list of Totango users to ensure default user profile data is populated for the criteria you may want to segment on for availability.
Totango user attributes are editable in the user profile or via file integration.
- Default user attributes. Populate values for any of the default user attributes, such as Country, Region, Timezone, etc.
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Custom user attributes. Optionally add custom Totango user attributes to the user profile (Totango Users > Totango Users Attributes). For example, you may want to specify which people on your team speak a certain language.
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Availability. Set a number for how many hours the user is available to spend on tasks. This number will be used in consideration when estimated task effort in hours is defined in a SuccessPlay.
It's best practice to change the display name for this user attribute to represent the timeframe your company uses (e.g., Availability in the next 30 days).
Allocation is a read-only attribute that sums estimated task effort for all open tasks the user is assigned. This value updates whenever an assigned task is completed, reassigned, or deleted. The system also calculates Remaining Availability, which is a view-only attribute for [Availability] - [Allocation]. You can view this value as a column in a Totango user pool segment.
Create a Totango user pool
Creating a Totango user pool enables SuccessPlay editors to assign a task to a team pool.
- From Settings, expand User Management > Dynamic Assignment.
- Click + Create New Pool. All Totango users are included in the pool.
- Name the pool.
- Click +More Filters to refine the list of results.
- Choose from the available Totango user filters (e.g., User Master Data > Timezone).
See above for preparing user details.
- Click Save.
The users that match the criteria are now part of this pool.
Click a user name from this segment to open user details. You can also click to edit columns to add more information, such as Allocation and Availability.
Assign a task to a team pool
The available team members in a pool for a SuccessPlay always intersect with the team; pool members must belong to the team in which the SuccessPlay is configured.
- Within the SuccessPlay you want to manage, edit or create a new task action.
- In the Assigned To drop-down, choose the Team Pool you want to use. The number of users who are in the pool appear.
- Set additional options for the assignment:
- Estimated task effort: Required to calculate allocation. Ensure task due date reasonably aligns with task effort.
- Refine pool criteria: Choose additional Totango user filters to apply to this pool. This criteria is specific to the SuccessPlay so that you can reuse pools across plays.
- Assignment criteria (account): Set additional matching criteria based on account attribute. For example, customer region matches the Totango user's region or timezone.
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Assignment criteria (order): Determine the order in which assignment occurs for the Totango users who meet all criteria.
- Next person in line: Users in the pool are randomly selected
- Next available person: Users in the pool who have enough remaining availability are randomly selected
- Most available person: The user in the pool with the highest remaining availability is selected. If multiple users have the same remaining availability, one will be randomly selected.
All assignment criteria behave as a required match, it means that if there is no Totango user found after using these criteria are applied, the task will be assigned to the fallback user (see below).
- Click Done to save task assignment details.
Fallbacks and exceptions
This is the system flow for assigning an availability-based task includes the following flow:
- Find all Totango users in the pool.
- Filter the Totango users by the additional criteria defined.
- Narrow down the Totango users left by the matching criteria.
- Filter the Totango users who do not have enough availability.
- Use the selected assignment order algorithm and pick the most relevant person to assign the task for.
- Assign the task to the selected Totango user.
- Add this task estimated effort time to the allocation attribute and recalculate the remaining availability.
In the event when there is no Totango user to assign the task to, the task is assigned to a fallback user, which is the SuccessPlay owner defined in the overall accountability of the play. If there is no owner, the task will be assigned to the SuccessPlay creator.
Fallback users have additional options for task reassignment:
- In case the SuccessPlay tasks are assigned to an account role where there is no account role person defined for that account
- In case the SuccessPlay tasks are assigned using dynamic assignment and there is no Totango User that matches the dynamic assignment criteria.
- In case the SuccessPlay tasks assigned using availability-based dynamic assignment and there is no Totango User with enough availability found.
FAQs
Question: I created a new pool that includes 10 people and when I try to select it as the task “assigned to” in the SuccessPlay, I see zero people in this pool.
Answer: The pool people in the SuccessPlay always intersect with the Team, meaning Totango user pool in the SuccessPlay considers only the Totango user who belongs to the pool AND to the Team you are in.
Question: I want Totango to dynamically assign an “assigned to” person for ALL the SuccessPlay tasks, is it feasible?
Answer: Currently no, the dynamic assignment is per task (each task individually).
Question: I want to create tasks for a part of my tech touch bucket of customers. This group of customers does not have any account assignment, therefore I would use random-based dynamic assignment, how should I define it?
Answer: Go to the SuccessPlay "Activities" step and select your relevant pre-defined Totango user pool. Click on the “Assignment” box and choose"Next Person In-line" as the assignment order.
Question: I want to dynamically assign a request information task to a group of Totango users, but I cannot find the Pools in the "Assigned to" dropdown, how can it be configured?
Answer: Currently you can only dynamically assign tasks and not a request information form.
Question: I do not see the Totango pool option in my SuccessPlay.
Answer: The SuccessPlay should reside in a particular SuccessBloc and not Global SuccessBloc.