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Workplace Services / Service Desk / Business Manager
Workplace Services / Service Desk / Service Desk Manager
Building Operations / On Demand Work / Business Manager

Building Operations / On Demand Work / Service Desk Manager

Schedule Substitutes

Note: The Schedule Substitutes task is available to both Business Managers and Service Desk Managers. While the Service Desk Manager can assign a substitute for any employee or craftsperson, the Business Manager can schedule only a substitute for himself.

When SLAs route work to various parties for approval, review, execution,estimation,scheduling, and so on, it is important that the party receiving the request respond in a timely manner so that the work process flows and a job is not stopped while waiting for a response. One potential cause for delay is if users to whom work is routed are absent. In this case, the service desk manager can answer the steps assigned to these workers, or can forward these steps to other people; however, this must be done individually request by request.

Instead of this manual re-assignment, you may wish to assign one or more substitutes for employees and craftspersons.

Substitutes can be either permanent or temporary.

• Temporary substitutes execute tasks only during a defined date range. For example, if you know that a party is going on vacation, you can assign a substitute to whom the system will route work during this period. Similarly, if an employee is sick and notifies you that they will be out for an extended period, you can assign a substitute until the party returns.
• If there are no dates specified, then the defined substitute is “permanent” and the system routes work to both the main responder and the substitute. A permanent sub is an extra set of eyes on a request, in case it's needed. Presumably, the sub knows when the main responder is out of the office and so knows when they must act on the request.

Note: If a substitute is specified for a time frame and an employee is out during a period not covered by this time frame, the system does not automatically send the substitute requests that are left unanswered. For example, suppose Allison Abernathy is the main employee and Paul Abbott is the substitute for a defined vacation period; if the vacation period has not yet arrived and Allison is out for a few days for illness, the system does not automatically route the work to Paul Abbott. Once a service desk manager is informed that Allison is out due to illness, they can set up a substitute for Allison.

Service Desk Manager can define substitutes for each step type in the workflow.

• approval
• estimation
• scheduling
• verify
• survey

For example, you may wish to define one substitute for approvals and another for estimating.

Rather than define substitutes for individual workflow step types, you may wish to set up substitutes according to role. For example, if an employee is a Supervisor, all the tasks that are routed to the employee based on their role as Supervisor will be routed to the specified substitute. The roles are and their applications are:

• Service Provider (Service Desk)
• Supervisor (On Demand)
• Craftsperson (On Demand)
• Service Desk Manager (Service Desk, On Demand)

For example, if AFM is defined as the Supervisor for the MARKET TEAM, and an SLA assigns the MARKET TEAM work team to work requests of certain problem types, then AFM would see those work requests in his queue. If AFM has an assigned substitute for the role Supervisor, then that substitute would also see those work requests and be able to act on them.

Responding as Substitute

If you are assigned as a substitute and the system routes work to you, the requests for which you are a substitute will be listed in your queue but will be shown in a distinct color so that you can easily identify the tasks for which you are acting as a substitute. The color is set with the SubstituteRecordColor application parameter.

When you respond to a step as a substitute, the system will identify you as the responder for this step. To inform other users that you performed this task in a substitute role, the system will include the following message in any comments that you enter: "Step performed by substitute of <original responsible name>."

Procedure for Assigning a Substitute (Service Desk Manager)

First, you will want to review the various work routed to employees and craftspersons so that you know the types of work for which to specify substitutes.

1. From the Process Navigator, select the Service Desk Manager/Schedule Substitutes task.
2. Choose the Add New button.
3. In the Workflow Substitutes form, specify either the employee or the craftsperson for which you want to assign a substitute.
4. Next, enter the substitute who will take over the work of the party specified in step 3. Depending on whether you entered an employee or craftsperson in step 3, complete either the Substitute Employee Name or Substitute Craftsperson Name field.
5. In the Substitute For field, enter the step type (approval, estimation, dispatching, etc) for which work should be routed to the substitute. If you want all work routed based on role, complete the field with Service Provider, Supervisor, Craftsperson, or Service Desk Manager.
6. If this substitution is for a set period of time, enter the Start Date and End Date of the period for which this party is unavailable. Leave these fields blank if this is a permanent substitution and you want the substitute to always receive work that is routed to the employee or craftsperson.
7. Enter a comment if you wish, and save your edit. For example, you may wish to enter that this substitution is for a vacation.

Procedure for Assigning a Substitute (Business Manager)

If you are running this task as a business manager, you can specify a substitute for yourself. For example, if you know that you'll be on vacation or out for a few days, you can specify another business manager to whom your work will be routed. You can set either a temporary or permanent sub for yourself.

1. From the Process Navigator, select the Business Manager/Schedule Substitutes task.
2. Choose the Add New button.
3. In the Workflow Substitutes screen, specify the business manager and their substitute.
4. The system automatically completes Employee Name with your name.
5. Complete Substitute Name with the name of the business manager who will take over your work. Note that you can choose only employees who are specified as Business Managers in the ARCHIBUS User Processes table.
6. Enter the Start and End Dates of the period for which you are unavailable.
7. Enter a comment if you wish, and save your edit.