Allocation of responsibility

The allocation concept is a central feature of F2. It can be thought of as a digital version of an organisation’s physical mail distribution in which incoming mail pertaining to formal cases are allocated to units or users without using the email function.

Organisations with a central postal unit scanning letters may have this unit allocate responsibility for letters to other units which in turn may allocate/distribute them to individual users. The selected unit or user will then have responsibility for the record.

The responsible participant

The allocation of responsibility typically means that the formal responsibility lies with a specific unit or user, the responsibility of the unit being derived from one of its users.

All records that are created in F2 or imported via an email system are born with an allocation of responsibility, either to the user or to the unit creating or receiving the record. The record manager can always allocate the responsibility of the record to another user or unit.

If responsibility for a record is reallocated, the record appears in the inbox of the newly appointed responsible user or unit.

When a user allocates the responsibility for a record to themself, the record does not appears in the user’s personal inbox. To add a record to the personal inbox, click the

icon in the record ribbon. Read more about personal record management.

When the responsibility for a record is reallocated, the following happens:

If a unit is inserted in the “Responsible” field, the record will appear in the unit’s inbox and no longer appear in the user’s “In process: Me” list.
If a new user is inserted in the “Responsible” field, the record will appear in their inbox. F2 automatically adds the “Responsible unit” based on the user’s affiliation. This lets records whose responsibility rests with specific users appear in the “In process: Unit” list and makes it possible for users to sort F2’s result list using the “Responsible unit” column.

Reallocate responsibility

In order to reallocate the responsibility for a record, it must be in edit mode. Enter a new user or unit in the “Responsible” field and click Save.

Figure 1. Reallocating responsibility

When the record is in edit mode, the participant icon appears in the “Responsible” field. Clicking on the icon opens F2’s participant register in which a user or unit may be found via the “Choose participants” dialogue.

Suggestions in the “To”, “Cc”, and “Xbc” fields can be configured so they are more relevant to the individual user. The configuration is performed in cooperation with cBrain.

The record creator’s access when reallocating responsibility

The record creator may lose write access when reallocating the responsibility. This happens when the responsibility for a record is reallocated to a user in another unit, for example. The new user receives full write access to the record, while the record creator retains read access only. As a consequence, reallocating the responsibility of a record to another unit or user cannot be undone as the reallocating user loses full write access to the record in the process.

However, if the user or unit in the “Responsible” field is removed, the full write access reverts back to the record creator. The “Participants” tab in the record window shows both the currently responsible user or unit as well as the record’s creator.

Figure 2. The “Participants” tab

A user who is removed from a record’s “Responsible” field will also lose read access if no other circumstances grant the user access. For records with the access level “Involved”, this means that only the users/units currently involved in the record have read access to it.