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Assignment shapes in processes

Updated on November 22, 2021

Assignment shapes represent tasks that users complete in a process. To ensure that your business process meets all your unique requirements, you can add an assignment shape for each place in a business process that requires human judgment and input.

For example, you can add assignments to the life cycle of a case to collect information from users with different roles or levels of expertise, such as a form that a recruiter completes after interviewing a job candidate and reviewing the list of necessary documents in the recruitment process. You can also increase the functionality of your application by assigning tasks to an external application or to a robotic queue.

Assignment shapes

You can create assignments by adding certain steps, such as the Collect information, Approve/Reject, or Form steps, to a process in Case Designer or by adding one of the assignment shapes to a process on the Diagram tab on the Flow form, which gives you more configuration options.

You can add, and then configure, the following assignment shapes:

Assignment
The basic assignment shape that you use to collect data from users. The shape creates a task in a work queue or worklist, so that a user can provide input to the process. For example, you can use this shape in a mortgage case type to create a task for a case worker to calculate a new interest rate.

For more information, see Flow shapes and Collecting information from a user.

Note: Some advanced settings for the Assignment shape are not available in Case Designer. You can access these settings on the Diagram tab by double-clicking an assignment in a flow diagram.
Assignment Service
An advanced shape that you use to continue your work flow in an external system. The shape calls an activity that requests and receives information from an external system by using a connect rule. For example, you can use the shape to retrieve a customer's financial history from an external system or department.

For more information, see Flow shapes and Assigning a task to an external application.

Note: Advanced shapes are available only in Dev Studio.
Assign to robot queue
An advanced shape that you use to call a robotic automation. For example, you can use this shape to run an automation that analyzes the information submitted with an insurance claim.

For more information, see Flow shapes and Assigning a task to a robotic work queue.

Note: Advanced shapes are available only in Dev Studio.

Assignment settings

You can decide how users process the assignments in your application by configuring the following settings:
Routing
Determines who processes the assignment. In a typical scenario, a regular assignment shape routes to a user (which in Dev Studio is known as the current or specific operator, or worklist), or a team (which in Dev Studio is known as a work queue, and formerly also known as workbasket).

For more information about the routing options, see Collecting information from a user, Assigning users automatically at run time, and Configuring custom routing logic for assignments.

The service-level agreement
Defines the recommended and required completion times for the assignment by creating goals and deadlines for case workers.

For more information, see Completing work on time and Creating a service-level agreement (SLA) rule.

Specification
Provides a description for the step. For more information, see Creating a specification.
Note: To take advantage of the latest Pega Platform tools, use features instead of specifications. For more information, see Adopting feature-driven development.
Assignment configuration
Defines assignment details such as harness, confirmation note, and screen navigation.

For more information, see Harnesses, Sending confirmations of completed assignments, and Creating navigation rules.

Local actions
Specifies local actions that users can choose to take before they complete the assignment. At run time, local actions are displayed in the header of a case. To configure a local action for an assignment, you create or select an existing flow action. Submitting a local action at run time does not complete the current assignment.

For more information, see About Flow Actions.

Notifications
Sends out correspondence, such as an email message, when a running flow creates an assignment. Typically, the application sends this correspondence to one or more of the work parties identified in the work item, and then reports progress to that party. Users can select a notify activity, which is an activity of the notify activity type, on the Security tab.

For more information, see Activity form - how to create activities for flows.

Tickets
Determines whether an assignment is associated with a ticket, which can be raised at any time by any process in the same case. Processing is connected to a ticket to respond to a business exception, error flow, or event, such as for example a user withdrawal from processing.

For more information, see Creating a ticket.

Optimization
Records work item properties that you want to use in the optimization analysis with the Process Optimization tool, which performs probability analysis on assignments to identify common flow patterns and trends.

Assignment types for custom routing options

Each assignment in a process has a type based on the standard activity that creates the assignment. You can select a standard activity when you define the routing options for an assignment in a flow diagram in Case Designer. When you select the Custom routing option on an assignment shape on the Diagram tab of the Flow form, you can then select an assignment activity from the list in the Assignment Type field:

Connect
Creates an assignment that waits for an external system to perform processing before moving to the next step in the process.
Note: This assignment type supports the Assignment Service shape, which is available only in flow diagrams. For more information, see Flow shapes and Assigning a task to an external application.
Dependency
Creates an assignment that waits for an event to occur, such as the resolution of another case.
Note:
  • This assignment type is available only in flow diagrams.
  • As a best practice, use the standard Wait shape instead of a Dependency assignment type. For more information, see Flow shapes and Pausing and resuming processes in cases.
  • Use this assignment type only if you want to fine-tune the waiting logic with a when rule.
External
Uses the Directed Web Access feature to create an external assignment, for example, to receive input from an external user.

For more information, see Directed Web Access in configuring assignments for external users.

Note: This assignment type is available only in flow diagrams.
Work queue
Creates an assignment that an application can route to a work queue that is common to multiple users.

For more information, see Configuring custom routing logic for assignments, Creating a work queue and Assigning users automatically at run time.

Worklist
Creates an assignment that an application can route to the worklist of a current user or a specific user that the router activity defines.

For more information, see Configuring custom routing logic for assignments and Assigning users automatically at run time.

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