A Person Group is a collection of people and is used in various places throughout Maximo but was originally created to support Workflow.

When a Person Group is added you would provide a description and decide whether it is going to be used within the Crews application, if so then you would check the “Crew Work Group” attribute. The action “Make Available to Crews” is available from the List tab and operates against the selected set of Person Group records, when used it sets the check box “Crew Work Group”.

When adding the set of people associated with the person group you can mark the person as the group default, organization default or site default. Only one person can be the site default for a site, only one person can be the organization default for an organization and only one person can be the group default. The sequence number is mandatory and is used in Workflow assignments. Only people with a status of ACTIVE can be added to a person group. You cannot change the status of a person to INACTIVE if they are a member of a person group.

When marking a person as the organization default an organization is needed. Similarly when marking a person as the site default a site is needed. There is no correlation between the site and the Person’s SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More attribute on the person record. You cannot add an organization or site after the person has been added to a person group. The record will need to be deleted and re-entered.

A person cannot belong to the same person group multiple times unless they are for different organizations or for different sites in an organization. A person can be an alternate for another person in the same group.

The top table window is sometimes referenced as the primary persons of the person group. Below it the “Alternates For” table window allows other people to be referenced which are alternates for the primary person. This is used in Workflow, however, when using the Select Owner dialog box on Tickets and Work Orders the alternate persons will still appear.

Where are Person Groups used?

A Person Group is commonly used as an Owner Group on the ticket or work order based applications. It can also be referenced:

• As the Owner Group on a Job Plan, Job Task, PM, Ticket Template or Ticket Template Activity.
• In numerous places where there is a reference to a Crew Work Group
• As a Contact Group for a Site
• As a Contact Group associated with a Service Group or Service
• As a Recipient on a Communication Template
• As the Audience on a Bulletin Board
• In a Role and hence an assignment or notification in a workflow process or a notification on an escalation

When attempting to delete a person group then many of these areas are checked to see whether the person group is still referenced on an active record.

Applying a Work Group to a Work Order

When a Work Group is selected on a work order then if there is a site default that matches the work orders’ site then this person will be assigned as the Lead. If there is no site default but an organization default that matches the organization then this person is selected as the Lead, otherwise the Group default person is added as the Lead on the work order.

Using a Person Group on a Workflow Assignment

In Workflow assignments you use a Role that resolves to a particular person or person group. When the role is represented by a person group then when the workflow assignment is set to broadcast each member of the person group will be assigned to the task. However, if broadcast remains unchecked then search logic is used to determine who to assign the task to.

• Find a person record with a matching calendar and shift to that for the assignment. If the application is at the:
  • Site level then find a person with a matching Use for Site value, search for primary persons before reviewing alternates. If none found then check for a matching Use for OrganizationA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More. If none found then search for persons with no Use for Site or Use for Organization values.
  • Organization level then find a person with a matching Use for Organization value, search for primary persons before reviewing alternates. If none found then search for persons with no Use for Site or Use for Organization values.
  • System level then find a person with no Use for Site or Use for Organization values.
  • In either of these cases the search starts with the person with the lowest sequence number and stops as soon as a match is found.
• If no person found with a matching calendar and shift then:
  • Select the person with the relevant Site Default for the site.
  • If still no person found the select the person with the relevant Organization Default for the organization
• If still no person found the workflow assignment is assigned to the person marked as the Group Default.