Delegating Primary Items to Another User

You can use the out-of-office feature to delegate active primary items owned by one user to another user for a specific time period. This is useful for ensuring that items are addressed during vacation periods, holidays, or other times when users may be unavailable.

For example, Nancy, an IT support technician, may own several outstanding requests for service. She can create an out-of-office entry to delegate these items to Chad, another support technician, for her two-week vacation period. Once the entry is active, the outstanding items are delegated to Chad, who is now responsible for them, along with incoming items that may normally be assigned to Nancy.

Delegations are recorded in the State Change History and Change History sections for each item. The user who created the out-of-office entry is reflected in this audit trail.

Once the out-of-office entry expires, all delegated items are returned to Nancy, except for items that Chad has moved to another state or to a different owner.

Considerations for Item Delegation

Consider the following information before delegating items to another user:

Users can delegate their items to another user, or administrators can delegate items on behalf of users. The user who created the out-of-office entry is listed on the Delegation of Items page.
Delegation applies to fields that define primary and secondary ownership of items. For example, an IT Technician field may be set as the owner in an "Assigned" state. The system will update this field based on out-of-office entries, but it will not modify fields used solely for data collection, such as Submitter or Last Modifier.
Use State Change or Change History reports to view delegation actions for specific projects or sets of users.
By default, the system checks for items to be delegated every 30 minutes. Administrators can modify this setting, however. For details, refer to the Knowledgebase at serena.com.
You can only delegate one user's items to one other user for each project. For example, you can delegate Chad's items to Nancy in Project X, but not to Nancy and Samir in the same project. You can, however, delegate Chad's items in Project X to Nancy and items in Project Z to Samir.
If you specify delegation for parent project, items in sub-projects are delegated as well. You must set up separate out-of-office entries for sibling projects, however.
To create a global out-of-office delegation for all projects, select the base project and Delegate items in sub-projects too.
Users to whom items are delegated must have privileges to own items in the selected parent project.
Active out-of-office entries cannot be deleted, and only the end date can be modified.

Creating Out-of-Office Entries

Users and administrators open the out-of-office delegation settings differently, but the steps for creating entries are the same.

To open delegation settings from the SBM User Workspace:

Click your user name in the upper right corner.
Select the Advanced tab.
Click the Edit button next to Delegation While Out of Office.

To open delegation settings from Serena Work Center:

Click your user icon in the upper right corner.
Select Out Of Office.

To open delegation settings from SBM Application Administrator:

From the Administrator Portal, select the Users icon.
Search for or navigate to the user for whom an out-of-office entry will be created, and then click Details.
Select the Out Of Office tab.

To create out-of-office entries:

On the Delegation view, click Add.
Select start and end dates and times for which items should be delegated. By default, times are set at 00:00, which represents midnight of the selected day.
Tip: To cancel a delegation, set the end date and time to the current time.
Search for or navigate to the project that contains items to be delegated.
Select the Delegate items in sub-projects too check box to delegate items in the selected project and its sub-projects.
Click Find to search for a user to whom items will be delegated. Only users who have privileges to own items in the selected project are listed.
Save your changes.