Case Roles tab
Within the Case Type configuration page there is a tab called Case Roles which is where you specify the different relationships that individuals or organisations can have within the Case.
Note: Throughout the Knowledge Base we talk about Case Roles but in fact they are really Relationship Types, as discussed in the article here. However, for the purpose of these articles we will continue to call them Roles since that is the language used in the context of Cases.
Often you can use the out of the box Roles, but sometimes you may need to create new Roles for a particular workflow use case.
Each Role in a Case has a number of attributes:
Assign to Creator: Select whether this role should be automatically assigned to the creator of the record. Since the Creator of a Case could be an external person filling in an online form you need to make sure you set this flag wisely.
Is Manager: Select whether this role will be considered the manager of the record for access and reporting purposes. Contacts with “Is Manager” roles always have permission to view and edit the case, even if standard permissions are more restrictive. Also, in many of CiviPlus’s reports and dashboard there is a filter or view like “Cases I’m Managing.”
Restrict to Groups: You can limit which individual and/or organisation is allowed to fill a particular Role, so for example you might want to limit the role of "Reviewer is" to individuals who are in the "Approved Reviewers" Group.
Add Role: This is where you can add new roles to the Case Type - you can choose a role that already exists in the system from the drop down list, or create a new one "on the fly" within the same menu.
For a simple Client Support Case Type we will include 3 Roles:
"Case Coordinator Is" - the staff member who is managing the case. This is added as standard to any new Case Type, and although we could change to something else for this example we will simply use it.
"Client" - the person who is receiving support. In fact, we don't need to add this as a Role, since it is automatically added when a new Case is created.
Support Worker - the person who is helping the Client. This will be a new role that we will need to add to the system.
Lets start by configuring the Case Coordinator Role that has been automatically added to the Case Type. We will leave the Assign to Creator flag checked since these Cases are going to be created by a Staff Member from within CiviPlus, and we want whoever creates the case to be assigned as Case Coordinator. We'll also select the Is Manager option as we want this person to be able to administer all aspects of the Case, and be visible as the responsible staff in any reports and dashboards.
As mentioned earlier, we don't have to worry about the Client role for now, as this added as part of the Case creation process, so lets look at the Support Worker Role. This isn't one of the many Roles that come shipped with CiviPlus (although there are several that are virtually the same), so we will need to create a new Role. Luckily, this is really easy to do!
When we click the + Add Role button and type in "Support Worker" nothing appears in the drop down list as this Roles doesn't exist yet. We can create it by clicking the Support Worker (new) button.
What we now see is the New Relationship Type form (remember Roles are really relationships behind the scenes) and we fill that in to create the new "Support Worker is" Role for this Case Type.
Now that the "Support Worker Is" Role has been added to this Case Type we will just make a small tweak. To ensure that only the right people can be assigned as a Case Worker we will enter "Support Worker Team" in the Restrict to Groups option. Now when a new Case of this Type is created, you can only assign a Support Worker from this group.
That completes the configuration of the Roles tab for this new Case Type.