Routing definitions

1. From the main menu, select Administration > Configuration > Routing Definitions.

2. In the Routing Definitions pane on the left, click New.

3. Enter a name and a description and click Launch editor. The Routing definition editor opens. The root node appears at the top of the routing definition.

4. Click the root node and click the Edit  button. In the dialog box, select a default group.
5. Optionally, click in the Additional suggested groups box and select additional groups. The additional groups are relevant for the Define suggested values feature.
6. Click the root node again and click the Add button.

7. In the Route by dialog box, select the routing option for the next lane of the definition. The available options are:

   • Organizations
   • Actual services

   • Locations

   The selected routing option of the lane appears on the left side of the lane, vertically.

   Based on your selection, select an option and a group. For example, if you select Organizations for the lane routing option, you could select Human Resources as the organization and Administrative services as the group. This will route changes, incidents, and problems related to Human Resources to the Administrative services group. You can also click in the Additional suggested groups box and select additional groups.

   Click Update to update the routing definition with your selection.

8. Optionally, click the Add button on the Service desk node again and add an additional option of the same type to the same lane.

   Note You can only add options of the same type to a single lane. Once you select an organization, for example, you can only add additional organization to that lane.

9. Click the node you added to the second lane and click the Add button.

10. In the Route by dialog box, select the routing option for the next lane of the definition. You can select the same option as the previous lane, or a different one.

    Based on your selection, select an option and a group. Using the above example, if you click the Human Resources node and select Actual Services as the option for the next lane, you could then select Communications as the actual service and Communication services as the group. This will route changes, incidents, and problems related to Human Resources and connected with the Communications actual service to the Communication services group.

    Click Update to update the routing definition with your selection.

11. Click Save.

When the routing definition is applied to a record type using a business rule, Service Management attempts to route the record to the correct group or apply the correct suggested values according to the routing definition's path. If the record does not match any of the nodes in the last lane, it reverts to the previous lane. If there is no match in that lane, it reverts to the root node as the default group.

The following use case demonstrates how a routing definition is applied to set a group field value using a business rule in a real world example:

The administrator has defined the User based routing definition, which has a Service desk root node and two other lanes. The first lane is defined by organization; there are two organizations: Internal Sales and Cool Cake. The next lane is defined based on location; there are two locations under Internal Sales and four under Cool Cake.

The administrator also defined a business rule in the Request workflow to set the value of the Help desk group field based on this routing definition.

According to the rule's condition, the rule will apply to requests when no group is assigned to the Help desk group field and no actual service is assigned.

The rule defines the parameters for the definition. There is one parameter for each lane. The parameters are entered as Expression Language phrases which return an ID value.

The following expression returns the ID for the user's organization:

The following expression returns the ID for the user's location:

For more information on the Expression Language, see Expression Language.

When the rule runs, it routes the requests to the appropriate Help desk group according to the User based routing definition. For example, consider the requests submitted by the following employees:

• John, who works for Cool Cake in Europe. The request is routed to the Field support group.
• Pete, who works for the R&D organization in North America. The request is routed to the Service desk. Because no R&D group is defined in the routing definition, it goes to the root node by default.
• Frank, who works for the Internal Sales organization in South America. The request is routed to the Problem analysts team group. South America is not defined under Internal Sales in the routing definition, so the request defaults to the Internal Sales node in the Organizations lane.

If you update an employee's information, the Help desk group field updates accordingly.

The following use case demonstrates how to use a routing definition to define suggested values for a group field:

The administrator defines the User based routing definition as in the previous example. In this case, he defines the following business rule in the Request workflow to define suggested values for the Help desk group field based on this routing definition.

According to the rule's condition, the rule will apply to requests when no actual service is assigned.

The rule defines the header title to be Suggested for user. This will be the name of the subsection of the drop-down list where the suggested values will appear.

The rule defines the parameters for the definition. There is one parameter for each lane. The parameters are entered as Expression Language phrases which return an ID value.

The following expression returns the ID for the user's organization:

The following expression returns the ID for the user's location:

For more information on the Expression Language, see Expression Language.

When the rule runs, it assigns the default group and additional suggested groups for the Help desk group field according to the User based routing definition. For example, consider the requests submitted by the following employees:

• John, who works for Cool Cake in Europe. The default group is the Field support group and the additional suggested groups are Application services and Customer service.

  

  The additional values will appear in the drop-down list for the Help desk field in the Suggested for user subsection.

• Pete, who works for the R&D organization in North America. Because no R&D group is defined in the routing definition, it goes to the root node by default. The default group is the Service desk and the additional suggested groups are Customer service and Escalation team.

  

  The additional values will appear in the drop-down list for the Help desk field in the Suggested for user subsection.

If you update an employee's information, the Help desk group field suggested values update accordingly.