Best Practices: assignment group on RITM or not?

[JP-ODU]

If I recall correctly, my Service Now Fundamentals training included a note: "always assign RITMs out." And I think, logically, this makes sense. I don't want RITM being lost bc a flow malfunctioned somehow and no one was responsible for the fate of the RITM.

But, recently, I've been getting requests to not assign RITMs. Agents feel that My Work/My Groups Work shows both RITMs and SCTASKS, ergo being assigned on both is "doubling their tickets."

When I try to google the topic, I can find people claiming both "never assign a RITM" and "always assign a RITM." So which is it? Just personal preference?

I'm inclined to say all RITMs should be assigned and then agents can either mostly ignore RITMs in My Work/My Groups Work, or even filter them out, but that I'd like all RITMs to have an owner. What do you do?

[Steven Parker]

If you want to assign RITMs, but they are complaining about duplicate tickets in My Work/My Groups Work...you can change the default filter to not show RITMs in My Work/My Groups Work.  That's one thought.

We do not assign RITMs and never have.  Personally, I feel when you have a workflow that assigns multiple tasks, it's hard to assign the RITM to one individual or group.  I like to have the tasks handle the workload of the RITM.  We've also never had the RITM get lost or unworked.  Assigning the RITM could also cause some confusion in my opinion and could also lead to someone closing the RITM versus closing a Tasks when others may still have tasks currently open for a given RITM.  

[Allen Andreas]

Hi,

I believe most RITMs aren't actually assigned to a group unless that's set in the catalog item and there's for sure only one owner. Commonly, multiple catalog tasks are involved or multiple groups and then on top of that...agents don't work from the RITM, they work from the tasks.

It may be slightly different per organization, but for the most part, in all of my engagements, it wasn't mission critical to assign those RITMs, directly.

As has been mentioned above, you could also change the filter as well, but then it sort of defeats the purpose if your point was to ensure RITMs don't get "left behind".

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Community Alums]

Based on my own experience, I prefer that all Catalog Items have an assignment group that is overall accountable for the delivery.  That doesn't mean that they are responsible for all related tasks, but it allows for easy dashboard creation  on Items fulfillment status and also SLA management if required. You could always decide that each category of the catalog is under a specific group responsibility, but in a complex Service Catalog, I find it ideal to have an assignment group assigned to each item.

[CathyD]

We don't have the assignment group populate until the record is approved. We don't want the SLA to run if the record is pending approval. However, we're running into an issue if the approver is out of the office so we'd like to just cancel the RITM, but we can't cancel it without an assignment group being populated.