Assigning Back to Previous Owner

[SJEaton]

Hiya

Is there a way you can automatically assign a request back to the previous owner?  I know you can assign to a particular owner in an automatic task but is there something you can enter to tell the workflow to assign to whoever the owner was previously?   

Sam

[Lyonel]

@SJEaton I don't think this is possible without reading through the timeline and manually finding out who was the previous owner...

 

[SJEaton]

ok no worries, thanks

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Sam,

I'm not sure if this would be of any help.  There is a BPM Operation for setting the owner back to the original person who raised the request.

Regards,

James

[SJEaton]

Hi James

Wouldn't this assign it to the customer rather than the original request  owner?

Sam

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Sam,

Yes, if requests have been raised by the customer on Self Service it looks like this may be the case.  So, this may only work on requests raised by the support staff.  You would have to have a check on the Source and make sure that if the Source is Self Service then don't assign.  So possibly not a complete solution for you.  I'll have a think about some other options.  

Regards,

James

[Guest]

Hi @SJEaton

The only way I think this could potentially be possible is via a mix between custom fields and our new "Assign to Owner (Variable)" Node. 

The way I'm thinking is that if you have defined points at which you know an owner will change in your process (e.g. the initial assignment, at an escalation point, as part of a review etc) you could use the "Update Custom Fields" nodes to populate these with the Old and New Owner. Then, at the point of your choosing, you could automatically reassign back to the person stored in the "Old" custom field. 

I've knocked up a Proof of Concept and it seems to work (obviously this doesn't work for "ad hoc" reassignments as the process won't know to write it to the fields)

 

This is what my flow looks like:

 

Custom Field A gets populated when the first owner is set:

 

Using a task, or "Suspend wait for new owner" node, we then populate the NEW owner into Custom A, but whatever is currently stored in custom a, into custom B - therefore, Custom B holding the PREVIOUS owner

 

Finally we use the new "Assign to Owner (Variable)" node to automatically assign to whichever (previous) owner is stored within Custom B:

 

This may not work exactly for you, but its certainly something to think about. The new Assign to Owner (Variable) node has certainly opened up lots of doors for us as Product Specialists because it does not require you to enter a specific team either (if multiple teams exist for this person, the node will pick the first one it finds). 

I hope this helps

Bob Dickinson

[SJEaton]

Definitely something to think about so I will see how I get on with exploring this potential solution.  Thanks

Sam