Assignment Count

The assignment_count field has been made available in the Requests API. This field keeps track of the number of times a request was assigned to a new team. What makes this field so special is that its value is different depending on the 4me account from which a request’s data is retrieved.

An example will help to illustrate this. Let’s say that a request was submitted by an end user and that it was initially routed to the service desk of account ‘A’. Subsequently, the service desk passed this request on to a support team of account ‘B’. This team reviewed the request and reassigned it to another team of account ‘B’.

Now, when account ‘A’ uses the Requests API to look up the assignment count for the request, the response will be 1. But if account ‘B’ does the same thing, the response will be 2. Accounts ‘A’ and ‘B’ can only see how many times a request was assigned to one of their teams; they cannot see how many times a request was assigned to a team of another account.

There are some interesting things that can be done with the assignment_count field. For example, in case of an internal service desk it is now possible to look up the assignment count for all completed requests which team equals the account’s service desk team. A value of 1 would indicate a first line resolution.

curl -k -u “api-token:x” -H “X-4me-Account: weu-it” -X GET “https://api.4me.com/v1/requests/completed?fields=id,subject&team_id=22&assignment_count=1”

If first line support is outsourced and an end user submits a request, this request gets assigned to the external service desk team. This is a team that belongs to another account. If this service desk team resolves the request, and the account that outsourced its service desk function looks up the assignment count, the value that will be returned is 0. That’s because the request was never assigned to a team of their account.

curl -k -u “api-token:x” -H “X-4me-Account: wna-it” -X GET “https://api.4me.com/v1/requests/completed?fields=id,subject,team&assignment_count=0”

And some organizations may want to look up the assignment count for all of their open requests. An assignment count of 4 or greater might mean that something is going wrong with a request.

curl -u “api-token:x” -H “X-4me-Account: wdc” -X GET “https://api.4me.com/v1/requests/open?fields=id,subject,assignment_count&assignment_count=>=4&sort=-assignment_count&per_page=10”

Note that in the above examples, api-token represents your 4me API token. You can find your API token in the ‘Personal Information’ section of the Settings console.

Give it a try. You can probably think of some more ways to make use of this new API feature.