Chapter 05. Skill Administration
About Skill Administration
Skills are the abilities and aptitudes of your workforce that are important for assigning and completing tasks for applications. Using skills, you can route work assignments generated from applications to the resource that best matches the skill requirements of the work item.
In StarPound Studio, the application modeler specifies the required skills for each task that generates a work item. The modeler can route the assignment using:
- Basic skills-based routing, which specifies only skill name and skill value requirements for the work item
- Advanced skills-based routing, which can specify skill name and value, skill factor percentages, and utilization requirements for the work item
In the Skill Administration area, you define skill names and skill values for your organization. You then assign skills and skill factors to roles, users, and teams in their respective areas of the Management Console.
Skill Names and Skill Values
Skills consist of a combination of a skill name and a skill value:
- Skill names are a means of categorizing and grouping skill values. For example, your organization could have a skill name Language, and the skill values associated with that skill name might be English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
- Work item routing uses the combination of skill name and skill value. To match a skill for a work item, the user must be assigned the same skill name-skill value pair. For example, the work item specifies a requirement for the skill name "Language" and the skill value "Chinese."
Skill names and skill values can be defined for your organization in the Skill Administration area. They can also be created during the role, user, and team administration as well.
Skill Factors (Proficiency and Desire to Use)
Skill factors are percentage values assigned to skills for advanced work item routing. Skill factors consist of two variables:
- Proficiency, which defines how proficient the user is with the skill in relation to other users in the organization
- Desire to Use, which defines how often the user should use the skill in relation to other users and in relation to the user's other skills.
Skill Factor Hierarchy
You can assign skill factors to your organization at different levels:
- To specific users
- To teams
- To roles
- To individual users whose roles are modified, so their role-skill factors are unique to them.
If skill factor values differ between role, team, and individual user, users inherit skill factors based on the following order of precedence:
- Skill factors assigned directly to the user override all other settings.
- If skill factors are not assigned directly to a user, skill factors assigned to the team override all other settings.
- If skill factors are not assigned to a user or a team, skill factors based on the skill factor - role modifier override the other setting.
- If all of the above skill factor settings are null, the system uses skill factors based on role assignment.
The following diagram summarizes the relationships between skill names, skill values, and skill factors:
Procedure: Administering Skills
To access skill administration functions, click the Skill Administration link on the Administration Home page. Clicking the Skill Administration link launches the Skill Administration wizard.
The Skill Administration wizard allows you to:
- Modify an existing skill name and skill values
- Create a new skill name and skill values
The following diagram is a map of the skill administration process:
Skill Administration Page
This section provides definitions for fields on the Skill Administration page:
Fields
Skill Name
Operations
Create Skill
Skill Name Page
This section provides definitions for fields on the Skill Name page.
You can add up to three skill value combinations on this page. Click the Add Skill Values button to save the new skill values.
Fields
Skill Name
Skill Value (1-3)
Existing Skill Values