The skills groups must constitute a structure to all the skills required within an organization.

It is not possible to identify all the skills beforehand and certainly not all the various levels of distinctions between each of them.

Thus it will be from day to day that the skill group structure will be constructed and updated. In fact it is on the basis of the experience that each employee develops, that the spectrum of skills will grow. As a result, the structure must reflect this development.

During the initial entry, it is important to concentrate on the definition of the large generic groups and on a few skill sub-levels.

The employee management associated with the skills groups must be carried out with care. It is important to take into account the arrival of new employees, the departure of others, the increased skills of some of them as a result of training etc.

Prerequisite

See also Refer to documentation Implementation

Screen management

Sequence no. (field NUM)

This field is associated by default with an automatic sequence number counter, but you also have the possibility to use a manual counter.
Shortcut (field SUT)

Use this field to associate a shortcut with a skill group identifier.
This option is particularly useful when associated with the identifiers automatically-generated by sequence number counters.

When shortcuts are available, you can enter a skill group by only entering a code made up of a short combination of letters, instead of using a 15 character-long identifier.
When a shortcut is entered in a skills group field, it is automatically replaced with its actual (15 character) identifier.
Description (field GRPPBLDESA)

Enter a short name used to determine, in a clear unambiguous manner, the application field covered by the skill.

This long description is used as a title in screens and reports. This title can be translated and is recorded in the user's connection language.
You can add your translation in another language using the Translation function.

  • Click Translation from the Actions icon in the field concerned.
  • In the Translation window, add a new language code with the translation in this language.
Parent group (field PAEGRPNUM)

This field indicates the group for which the group being described constitutes a more specific sub-group. If this field is blank, the skill group corresponds to a generic group.
field PBLCLA

Tab Employees

Block number 1

Include parent skill group employees (field ALLREP)

This field offers help with entry for large teams. In general, it is useful to place a large number of qualified employees in a generic group. The definition of a sub-group is facilitated by using this field. In this case, it is necessary to work by process of elimination. All employees from the parent group are automatically loaded. It is sufficient to eliminate any employees incapable of performing a task in the specified domain and so on for all lower levels.

Grid Qualified employees

User (field REPNUM)

This field displays the list of all the competent employees for a given skill group.

Warning Linking an employee to a skill group only affects the given skill group. This presumes nothing of their skills on more precise subjects or on a generic domain. Taking the example of an employee qualified on all of the different aspects of a branch: their name will have to be entered for each skill group included in the branch.

Note:

In the same way, in the Service requests, the automatic assignment process of a request based on a skill group only works for the employees who are qualified for the specified skill level. No ascending or descending tree-structure search is run. As a consequence, it is important to specify the same employee on each relevant skill group, as many times as necessary.

Tab Queues

Block number 1

Include parent skill group queues (field ALLQUE)

Use this field, as for the previous tab, to recover all the queues from a parent group. In this way, when defining a complete branch of skills, it is possible to work by process of elimination.

Note:

Considering the difference between employees, it may be useful in certain businesses to associate just one unique queue to each skill group. In this case, this field is of little use.

Grid Corresponding queues

Queue (field QUENUM)

This field contains the list of all queues associated with a skill group. This type of assignment is free and depends completely on the organization type defined for use of queues within the customer support service.

Points management

Standard debit (field PBLPITDEB)

You can enter a point debit rule directly on a skill group. This entry leads to the creation of a point debit rule where only the skill component is entered.

The debit indicated on the skill only concerns the fixed debit. All the additional debits must be entered on the points debit rule.
Taking into account null value (field NULPIO)

Use this option to block the tree structure of rules for debiting points during the analysis of a service request coverage.
In other words, it is used to block any consumption of points for the service requests requiring this skill, without using an installed base.

Customer

Customer filter (field PBLBPC)

Use this field to link a skill structure to a specific customer: you can thus declare a skill group as being specific to a customer. The entry of a business partner code is only possible for a skill which is at the top of level of the tree structure. All the daughter skill groups then inherit the customer filter.

Such skills are only visible in the service requests for the selected customer.

Use this action to access the points debit rule for the selected skills group.

Use this action to access the service requests with the selected skills group.

Limitations

The import of skill groups is not supported by Sage X3.

Error messages

In addition to the generic error messages, the following messages can appear during the entry :

This employee has already been entered.

This message appears when the user attempts to associate the same employee more than once with a single skills group

This queue has already been entered.

This message appears when the user attempts to associate the same queue more than once with a single skills group.

It is impossible to associate a skills group with itself. Entry rejected.

This message appears when the user attempts to enter the current skills group in the parent group field.

Tables used

See also Refer to documentation Implementation