About Round-Robin Task Distribution

Edit online

Round-robin task distribution is a method for distributing instances of a task as equally as possible among a task's assignees. You can configure a task assignment to use round-robin distribution as described in Configuring Distribution Management for a Task Assignment.

Note: For round-robin, the assignee list must contain only roles, security roles, groups, or services that return role or group values. Individual user names cannot be in the assignee list for the round-robin distribution management methods.

Round-robin distribution considers the users that are members of a role or group in the assignee list when making task assignments. For example, when a task assignee list contains a role with multiple users, instances of the task are evenly distributed among all users in the role. The distribution steps through the list of users and then repeats the sequence — thus the name, "round-robin."

When the assignee list contains two or more roles, tasks are evenly distributed among all roles, then users within roles.

For example, if the assignee list contains three roles with two users in each role:

  • Task instance 1 is assigned to Role1 User1, Role 2 User1, and Role 3 User 1
  • Task instance 2 is assigned to Role1 User2, Role 2 User2, Role 3 User 2
  • Task instance 3 is assigned to Role1 User1, Role 2 User1, Role 3 User 1
  • Task instance 4 is assigned to Role1 User2, Role 2 User2, Role 3 User 2

And so on. Other considerations for round-robin distribution include:

  • When a role or group contains another (nested) role or group, the nested object is evaluated in sequence with all other users in the assignee list, just as if it were a user entry.
  • When an assignee list contains one or more security roles that are linked to IBM My webMethods Server roles, those security roles are handled exactly like other roles.