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10 The Resource Service 281
the distribution process completes. If the set has members, the process moves to the
Allocate Interaction stage.
If the allocate interaction is specified as user-initiated, then the work item is
offered to all participants in the distribution set (i.e., placed on each of their Offered
queues) and the distribution process completes. If it is system-initiated, then the
specified allocation strategy is applied. All allocation strategies take the distribution
set and select exactly one participant from it. Allocators also are “pluggable,” and so
user-defined strategies for choosing a participant from the set may be made available
to this stage.
The chosen participant is then passed to the Start Interaction stage, which is
relatively straightforward: if the interaction is user-initiated, the work item is placed
on the participant’s Allocated queue, to be manually started by the participant at
some future time; if it is system-initiated, the work item is immediately started and
placed on the participant’s Started queue. The distribution process for the work item
is now complete.
This initial distribution process describes that followed by the service, commenc-
ing with the notification of a new enabled work item, and completing with the
placement of the work item in one of the four queue types: on the Allocated or
Started queue of a particular participant; on the Unoffered queue of the administra-
tor (all administrators access the same queue); or on the Offered queue of one or
more participants (multiple work item references on multiple queues). Of course,
following the completion of this design-time specified process, participants and
administrators may manually move a work item off, on, and between queues, using
the various methods described in Sect. 10.7.

10.6 Privileges

Some of the actions that a participant may take for a work item are allowed only
when the participant has the necessary privileges. Thus, privileges are a way of con-
trolling the access of participants to certain functionalities of the Resource Service.
There are three different categories of privileges.
The first type is the level of logon access that a participant may hold: user or
administrator. Simply, a participant with default user access privileges may access
their own work queues and may view their own profile. They may also be granted
certain privileges of the other two types (see below), which extend to some degree
their access to particular system actions. Conversely, if a participant is granted
administrator privileges, unrestricted access to the system is permitted, overriding
any individually set privileges of the two types below, in addition to permitting the
various administration activities such as user management, organizational data man-
agement, loading and unloading specifications, starting and canceling cases, loading
and unloading custom services, and access to the administration work queues. Note
that the generic “admin” userid gains administration access to the system, but is not
considered a participant, and so does not have any work queues or profile. All users