Background

Before Maximo 7.5, a workflow assignment was always designated to a Role. The assignment’s Role resolved to a Person, a Person Group, or a Data Set. All three of these entities eventually resolves to a person or set of persons. In the case of Person Group, the resolution is through the Person Group table. In the case of data det, the data set is represented in the form relationship(.relationship).attribute, where attribute is a foreign key to the Person table.

At run time, the designed assignment is resolved to individual person assignments. When the Task is marked “All,” each person must complete the assigned work. When the Task is marked “Any,” then when one person completes their work, the other persons’ assignments are removed and the Task is considered complete.

Overview of the Enhancement

With Maximo 7.5, a workflow assignment can be designated to a Role, or it can be designated to an Assignee Relationship. If designated to a Role, it will function the same as it used to.

When using Assignee Relationships you create multiple Assignment rows on a Task node. Each Assignment creates a group of assignees. Now one person in each group must complete the assignment for the Task to be considered complete. Not all people in all groups, just one person in each of the groups.

An Assignee Relationship is represented in the form relationship(.relationship). This resolves to a Person, Person Group, or Role, depending on the child object of the last relationship. Each of these three entities resolves to a person or set of persons. The resolution to persons is similar to pre-7.5, but the way the set is handled is different.

For example, an Assignee Relationship of SHOWTASKS.OWNERPERSON. The SHOWTASKS relationship is from Work Order to Work Orders, and is the set of Tasks for a Work Order. OWNERPERSON is a relationship from Work Order to Person, giving the person record for the Owner of the Work Order. You can have any number of names in the relationship, chained using dot notation. The relationships used in this example, SHOWTASKS and OWNERPERSON, are both out of the box relationships.

An Assignee Relationship on an assignment creates groups of active assignments at run time. Each group contains a set of individual assignments for persons. A Task typically contains multiple assignment groups, for example; Electrical, Catering, and Safety. One person in a group must complete the group’s assigned work. When one person in a group has completed the work, the assignments for other people in the group are removed.

The Task’s "Perform Accept Action" Any/All setting describes whether each group must complete its work, or whether only one group need complete its work for the Task to be complete.

For example, if the Task is marked All, then when one person in the Electrical group completes their work, and one person from Catering has completed theirs, and one person from Safety has completed theirs, the Task is complete. However, if the Task is marked Any, then when one person from any group completes their work, the Task is complete.

Typically, when using Assignee Relationships you set this setting to All.

This is what is meant by parallel assignments. Assignments are created for all groups at the same time. A person can complete an assignment for the group, but this doesn't affect assignments in other groups.

Change to Workflow Designer

The Task Node Properties dialog in Workflow Designer contains a new field, Assignee Relationship. (If this field is not displayed set the maxvar VIEWWFRELATION to 1.) The Role ID and Assignee Relationship fields are mutually exclusive; one of these fields must contain a value, but not both.

Example:

The most basic way to use Assignee Relationships is to add in a new Relationship from the Object you are going to put into WF (in this case WO) to Person group with a Where Clause of persongroup = the persongroup name such as:

persongroup = 'SAFETY'

Do this for each person group you are going to be using for Assignee Relationship assignments.

In WF Designer on the Task Node Properties dialog box,add one Assignment for each person group. Enter the Relationship created above in the Assignee Relationship field. It is also good practice to put the person group name in the Description and perhaps the Task title, too. In the examples shown below there is a substitution variable for the wonum and person group name has also been entered. When you see the Assignment in the Inbox or in the WF History, you are be able to tell which Person group from which Task node the Assignment came from. As always, putting a substitution variable like :wonum in the Description is letting you know the record the Assignment is for when you see it in the Inbox.

Make sure to select When All Assignments Are Accepted for the Perform Accept Action (the section at the very bottom of the Task Node Properties dialog box, see the second screen capture below).

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When you start a record into WF and it gets to a Task node using the Assignee Relationships your View WF Assignments dialog looks something like this if you put the Person group name into the Assignment Description:

Now one person from person group 1001, either Gormley, Miller or Wilson, must approve the Task and one person from Safety, Kazmier, must approve the Task for it to move forward. Without Assignee Relationships all 4 of the assignees would have had to approve it.