Decision Engine Management Guide
Purpose: This document is intended to provide a high level overview and functionality of Decision Engine within the Levelpath Platform from the point of view of an Organizational Administrator.
What Is Decision Engine?
Decision Engine is the ability to use various data inputs such as cost centers, spend amounts, departments, categories, etc. to determine the Project Lead and/or project step assignees. Using Decision Engine allows for a more streamlined experience for both the stakeholder as well as an organization admin.
How Do I Get Started with Decision Engine?
The internal Levelpath team will support you with seeding your environment with an input and output that your company would like to utilize. Please contact Levelpath Support if you are ready to proceed with adding an input and output within Decision Engine.
Once an input and output are seeded, Decision Engine is managed within the Admin panel by any user with an “Org Admin” permission.
What Are Inputs?
Inputs are variable data points that represent specific information. These inputs will be translated into questions that can be added within a project. The stakeholder responses will lead to an automatic assignment of a leader within the project.
Inputs can include:
- Cost Centers
- Spend Amounts/Budget Ranges
- Departments
- Categories
- Requester
- Regions
- Agreement Category
How Do I Manage Decision Engine Inputs?
The internal Levelpath team will support you with seeding and managing your environment with an input your company would like to utilize. Please contact Levelpath Support if you are ready to proceed with adding or changing an input within Decision Engine.
What Are Outputs?
Outputs are the users or user groups that will be assigned as a leader within a project based on the selected input. These can include the following:
- Project Leads (the user who will manage the entire project)
- Step Owners (specific users/groups who manage the completion of actions within a step)
- Example: Approvers (users/groups, such as Finance, Legal, and Security, who are responsible for approving specific items)
How Do I Manage Outputs?
The internal Levelpath team will support you with seeding your environment with an output your company would like to utilize. Please contact Levelpath Support if you are ready to proceed with adding an output within Decision Engine.
Once your chosen outputs have been created, you can manage the assignees by following the steps below:
- Within Decision Engine, select Outputs
- Select the output you would like to edit or manage from the list
- Select “Add New Assignee”, then select the group or specific user within a user group to add them to a the Decision Engine output (Note: a user must be added to a user group to be selected as an output for Decision Engine)
What Are Rules?
Rules are the specified outcomes, or the end result, of the auto-assignments that the user is expecting to occur. It is the formula that equates to the desired assignment. Rules will consist of a matrix to assign and match inputs and outputs to create the auto-assignments within a project.
How Do I Create a New Rule?
Click "Rules" on the top left. Then, click "New Rule" on the top right.
Users will need to do the following:
- Give the rule a name and description
- Select the Assignment type
- Project Assignment - This rule assigns a leader of an entire project based on the input selected
- Step Assignment - This rule assigns an individual or group owner of a specific step within a project based on the selected by the requester.
- Select the input(s) for the rule
- Select the output
- Select Save and continue
How Do I Manage Decision Engine Rules?
Select the rule you would like to edit.
- Click "Create new version"
- Select the condition that you want to edit. Then use the matrix to select the correct users to be assigned the rule based on the inputs
- Select the gray circle to assign a user and the green check to deselect that user assignment
- When you have finished making the needed changes, select “Publish rule”
How Do I Test/Verify Decision Engine Rules?
When in the rule you’d like to verify, select the yellow “Validate assignments” button. If every condition has an assignment, you will get an “Assignments are valid” popup. If any condition does not have an assignment, that row will be highlighted yellow. Make sure to run this validation for all conditions in your rule.
To check a specific assignment, select the “Assignment” button and enter your desired input and output. Select “View Assignment” to view the user or group that will receive this assignment within a project.
Note: Our current functionality does not support the deletion of a rule. If a rule is no longer used, the matrix can be cleared. Any time an input is not assigned an output, the project or step will be default assigned from the Project Configuration.
You have now mastered Levelpath's Decision Engine! 🏆
If you have any additional questions, please reach out to Levelpath Support.