If you’re an OnBase user, understanding the concepts of load balancing and ownership can significantly streamline your process. This blog will outline the difference between load balancing and ownership and break down 7 tips that’ll help you master workflow load balancing and ownership in OnBase.
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Workflow Load Balancing and Ownership Best Practices in OnBase
First off, let’s start with some definitions:
What is Load Balancing in OnBase?
Load balancing in Workflow gives you the ability to determine who can see the items in Workflow and when they can see them, allowing you to better control the flow of work for departmental teams.
Load balancing work occurs before system work. It can contain task list, actions, and rules. Often, load balancing work is used to assign users to work.
What is Ownership in OnBase?
When ownership is used in conjunction with load balancing, items can only be viewed by their owners within Workflow. Ownership takes precedence over load balancing.
An example of ownership could be a group of users are working on claims. After the claims are load balanced to different groups of users, a single user within the group can take ownership of an item to work on. When an item is owned, only that user can work on the claim.
7 Best Practices for Workflow Load Balancing and Ownership Best Practices
Tip 1: Load Balance by User Group or Role (Not by Individual User)
It’s recommended to load balance by user group or role rather than by individual user. Load balancing by user group reduces bottlenecks and needs less administration.
To do this, click on the “load balance” tab, choose your load balance type, and select “user groups” under the “assignment type.” Then, you may click “add all” to a queue or click “add to” select specific user groups. For roles, click on the “load balance” tab, choose your load balance type, select “roles” under the assignment type, and then select “add” to add your members.
Tip 2: Consider Using Ownership Instead of Load Balancing
If you are using user-based load balancing, it’s recommended that you use ownership instead of load balancing. This ensures that individual users have exclusive access to items.
With ownership, there is no administrative overhead of making sure the load balance members are up to date or needing to manually rebalance queues because different users work at different rates. In order to use the ownership functionality, the lifecycle must be configured to allow ownership.
To configure a lifecycle for ownership, select the lifecycle you want to configure, and in the “general” tab, select supports ownership checkbox. Next, you will create an action to assign ownership and set that as your action type.
You will then select your “target,” your “assigned in life cycle,” and your “queue.” If you want to assign ownership to the currently logged in user, select “current user.” The “selected user” option allows you to select a specific user that is assigned rights to the selected queue. Then, we have “current or last owner in queue” as another option. If you want to pull the user from a keyword type value, select “keyword” and select the keyword type that contains the value from the dropdown list. And if you want to pull the user from a property value, select “property” and enter the name of the property that contains the value. Consider using ownership in conjunction with load balancing to distribute items most efficiently.
Tip 3: Use Ownership in Conjunction with Load Balancing
To distribute items as efficiently as possible, consider using ownership in conjunction with load balancing. You can choose to load balance by user group or by role in order to deliver items that each user is entitled to perform work on. Then, use “ownership” to give each user exclusive access to the particular items they are actively working on.
Tip 4: Delete the Keyword Value from the Document as it Exits Workflow When Using “Match Keyword to User Name.”
When using “match keyword to username,” delete the keyword value from the document as it exits workflow. When the document exits workflow, delete any keyword value that was used for load balancing purposes. Deleting the keyword value helps manage the size of the keyword table and thus controls performance over time. If deleting the keyword value is not an option, as it must remain on the document for reporting or retrieval purposes, consider purging documents and document maintenance.
To do this, you must create an action to delete keyword. You will then select your “action type” and then you will select your “target,” be it “current item” or “related item.” Then you will select the keyword type you wish to remove and then enter that keyword value.
Tip 5: Don’t Use Actions Requiring User Interaction as Load Balancing Work
It is recommended that actions that require user interaction not be used as load balancing work.
Some examples of actions that require user interaction could be a few ad hoc tasks such as approve or deny requests, route for approval, or assigning GL codes, or some Unity forms that need to be filled out.
Tip 6: Consider Using Rule-Based Load Balancing Rather Than Match Keyword to Username.
When assigning work to a user whose name is defined in a keyword value, consider using “rule based” load balancing instead of “match keyword to username.” When implementing rules based load balancing, one can utilize the task assigned to user, which allows one to assign the document to a user whose name is defined in a keyword. Rules based load balancing is a static form of load balancing. Therefore, it is much faster than “match keyword to username.”
When using “match keyword to username,” be aware of potential performance impacts. When a solution is first deployed, the database is typically small and performance issues are not exposed. But over time, the table structures in the database grow, and it is important to manage them for optimal performance.
Tip 7: Avoid Transitions in Load Balancing Work
If you must transition and load balancing work, set a property and transition and system work instead.
Lastly, know that when an item leaves a queue, clear any load balance assignments, unless there exists a good business reason to maintain them. If it is desired to ensure the same user works on an item, use the last owner rather than the last load balancing assignee.
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