Creating Participant Lists Consisting of Value-Based Management Chains

Select a method for statically or dynamically assigning management chain parameters as task participants.

For conceptual information about:

Users, groups, or application roles, see Task Assignment and Routing.
Statically and dynamically assigning task participants, see Static, Dynamic, and Rule-Based Task Assignment.
Management chains, see Creating a Single Task Participant List.

To create participant lists based on value-based management chains:

From the Build a list of participants using list, select Management Chain.
Do either of the following:
- Select Let participants manually claim the task. If you select this option, then the task is assigned to all participants in the list. An individual user from the task assignees can then manually claim the task to work on it.
- Select Auto-assign to a single list, select User, then select an assignment pattern.
  
  To find out more about each assignment pattern, and to select and configure it, click Assignment Pattern. The Assignment Pattern dialog box appears. Figure 29-24 shows an example of an Assignment Pattern dialog box.
  
  When you specify an application server connection in the Application Server field, the assignment patterns are loaded into the Assignment Pattern list. When you select one of the patterns from the Assignment Pattern list, a description of your selection appears in the text box.
  
  If you want the assignment pattern to consider all types of tasks, then select Use tasks of all types to evaluate pattern criteria. Otherwise, the pattern considers only this task type when determining the selected user. For example, to assign a vacation request task to the least busy user, and you select Use tasks of all types to evaluate pattern criteria, then all assigned tasks are taken into consideration when determining the least busy user. If you do not select Use tasks of all types to evaluate pattern criteria, then only assigned vacation request tasks are considered when determining the least busy user.
  
  A particular pattern may enable you to specify input parameters that control how the pattern is evaluated. For example, as shown in Figure 29-24, the Most Productive pattern enables you to specify the Time Period (in days) over which the productivity is calculated. Input values can be static, or can be dynamically set by using an XPath expression. Not all patterns accept parameters.
From the Specify attributes using list, select Value-based.

The dialog box refreshes to display the fields shown in Figure 29-26.

Figure 29-26 Value-Based Management Chains

Description of "Figure 29-26 Value-Based Management Chains"
See Step 4 through Step 7 of Creating a Single Task Participant List for instructions on assigning a user, group, or application role to a list in the Starting Participant table.
In the Top Participant list, select a method for assigning the number of task participant levels:
- By Title: Select the title of the last (highest) approver in the management chain.
- XPath: Select to dynamically enter a top participant through the Expression Builder dialog box.
In the Number of Levels list, select a method for assigning a top participant:
- By Number: Enter a value for the number of levels in the management chain to include in this task. For example, if you enter 2 and the task is initially assigned to user jcooper, both the user jstein (manager of jcooper) and the user wfaulk (manager of jstein) are included in the list (apart from jcooper, the initial assignee).
- XPath: Select to dynamically enter a value through the Expression Builder dialog box.