Overview of Services

Market: Federal/State/Local, House, Senate

Description: Offices assist members of the public to conduct services such as Casework, Flag Requests, Tour Requests, Internship Requests, etc. There may also be an internal business process, such as tracking different Projects & Grants, that your office wishes to perform within IQ. All of these examples are known as Services in IQ. Each of the templates to process their information is customized for that service.

In IQ the steps to process a service are very similar. Some services require a single step while complicated services may require multiple steps and actions that need to be routed to other staff members.

Steps and Actions

Services divide multi-part tasks into steps and actions. A step is a group of actions that are normally performed by the same IQ user. The number and function of steps is determined by the Service template that was used to create the Service. Some templates have just one step (for example Casework has only one step), and some include multiple steps (such as a Flag or Tour Request. These include steps such as request received, payment received, awaiting tour confirmation, etc.). The number of steps depends on the business process that the template is being used for. Templates are set up by your IQ Consultants so that certain conditions, or rules, must be met before a step can be completed.

Routing and Ownership

When a new Service is opened, such as a Casework, the user who opened the service is given ownership of it. The Service can then be routed (queued) to one or more users, or to a pre-defined group of users. The first user to open a queued Service is given the opportunity to acquire ownership of it. If the user does, then the Service record is assigned to that user; if the user doesn't, it remains queued.

If the Service includes only one step, the owner must complete the step before closing the Service. If the Service includes multiple steps, the owner must complete the steps in order and/or route it to someone else to complete the next step. Only when the last step is completed can the owner close the Service.