Skillgroups

A skillgroup represents a grouping of staff that have common skills, or belong to a common organizational structure.

Each staff member (a staff member who has a HelpMaster login) must belong to at least one skillgroup, however staff can belong to multiple skillgroups. When staff members belong to multiple skillgroups, one specific skillgroup to which they belong is defined as their default skillgroup.

The default skillgroup for each staff member is selected by the HelpMaster administrator.

Icons used throughout HelpMaster

	Staff member (belongs to one or more skillgroups)
	The skillgroup supervisor. There can only be one per skillgroup and must be set to one of the members of that skillgroup
	Skillgroup
	The default skillgroup for a person. When a staff member belongs to more than one skillgroup, this icon will be used to display their default skillgroup
	The "Unassigned" queue of a skillgroup

Viewing a Skillgroup and skillgroup "job queues"

When staff members belong to a skillgroup, they are able to view jobs within that skillgroup based on their security / workflow role privileges. When viewing, or working with jobs within a skillgroup, the following "job queues" become relevant.

These 3 "job queues" exist for each skillgroup.

My Jobs for the skillgroup

This section relates to any job that is assigned to the staff member belonging to the skillgroup. "My Jobs" refers to the person that is currently logged onto HelpMaster.

Other peoples jobs for the skillgroup

This section relates to jobs that are assigned to other people that belong to the same skillgroup as the staff member.

The Un-assigned jobs for the skillgroup

This section relates to jobs that are assigned directly to the skillgroup but not to a specific person within that skillgroup.

Visibility and job-related workflow for each of these queues is determined by the application security role / job security role privileges assigned to each staff member.

Skillgroups and job assigning / ownership

Skillgroups play an important role in the assignment of every job that is logged, or actioned. Every job that is logged or re-assigned must be assigned to either a specific staff member, or to a skillgroup itself. Furthermore...

When jobs are assigned to a specific staff member, they are also assigned to both the specific staff member and the skillgroup to which they belong. If a skillgroup is not selected during the assignment process, the default skillgroup for that staff member will be used.
When jobs are assigned to a skillgroup only, this means that every staff member that belongs to this skillgroup will be able to see the job, and be able to re-assign it to themself for further action. When a job is assigned directly to a skillgroup, it appears in the skillgroups unassigned job queue. Jobs in this state must be first assigned to a specific staff member before it can be actioned upon

See Reassigning a job for further details about this.

Skillgroup Supervisors

Each skillgroup must have a "skillgroup supervisor". The skillgroup supervisor will be one of the staff members belonging to that skillgroup. When there is only one staff member in a skillgroup, that staff member by default will be the skillgroup supervisor. Whenever a job is assigned to the unassigned queue of a skillgroup, any email that is sent to the "New Assignee", or "Current assignee" via the Action screen will be re-directed to the skillgroup supervisor. It is therefore important that every skillgroup supervisor has a valid email address specified for them in their client profile.

Administration

Only HelpMaster administrators can create, edit or delete Skillgroups. Administered is achieved via the Administration menu, Skillgroup button