Assigning and routing work

Scout HQ raises points — individual items with the proof behind them — into your living action item list. Every point carries an accountable destination: one team, and optionally one person on that team driving it. Scout proposes the destination; people confirm, change, or claim it.

Screenshot: the ACCOUNTABLE card on an open point.

Assignment is not visibility

Scout keeps two ideas apart on purpose. Assignment says who is accountable; visibility says who may see. Seeing something never makes anybody accountable for it, and a point drawn from one person's personal mailbox stays proposed for anybody else until the expansion is approved — see Personal mail, privacy, and the Visibility Review.

How Scout proposes a destination

Scout works down a fixed order and stops at the first answer it can prove. In plain terms:

1. The person named on the upstream record, if they are an active member here.
2. Whoever already owns the linked customer, opportunity, job, or invoice.
3. The team that owns the shared or company source the item came from.
4. The member who owns the personal source it came from.
5. The connection's default team.
6. Everyone, visibly marked UNASSIGNED.

Scout can also route to a team whose description matches the work, which is why What this team handles is worth writing carefully. And with Fall back to a person's primary team on, work Scout can place to a person but not to a work type goes to their primary team. See Teams.

Scout puts its reasoning on the item in words — "No Finance team exists yet, so money items fall to Everyone. Scout suggests Sales / Ray Alvarez." Where you own the source, it says so: "You are the source owner — the original thread stays in your mailbox, and assignment never moved it."

Claim work for yourself

1. Open the item.
2. Choose Claim on the ACCOUNTABLE card. On an item that has already lapsed the button reads Claim to revive.

You can claim work in a team you are on. Owners, Admins, and Members can claim; a Viewer cannot. Claiming makes you the driver and moves the item from open to claimed, so the rest of the shop can see it is in hand.

To hand it back, choose Return to Team. The assignment is removed and the item goes back to the team queue as unclaimed, recorded in its history as "Returned to team".

Assign to someone else

1. Choose Assign on the item's ACCOUNTABLE card, or Reassign if it already has a named driver.
2. Under ACCOUNTABLE TEAM, pick the team. Everyone appears with UNASSIGNED beside it. If you are a Member, this list holds one team — your own — and there is no transfer option.
3. Under DRIVER · TEAM MEMBERS ONLY, pick the person. Scout's suggestion is tagged SUGGESTED. Rows that cannot take the work are greyed with the reason on them — VIEWER · NO MUTATIONS or NOT IN TEAM.
4. Or choose Team only — leave unclaimed to make the team accountable and let whoever picks it up claim it.
5. Undo this assignment appears when the last change is still undoable.

The picker's footer states the rule: anyone outside the team is greyed because the pairing is checked by the database, not by the list, and moving work to another team is a transfer — Owner or Admin only, and audited.

Assign several items at once

An Owner or Admin can assign in bulk, from a team scope or All but not from Mine. Checkboxes appear on the rows you may change.

1. Set the scope pill to a team or to All.
2. Tick the rows you want. A toolbar appears showing "N selected", marked ADMIN ACTIONS.
3. Choose Assign and pick a team and driver in the same picker as above. Clear drops the selection.
4. Read the result line — "N points assigned", or "N assigned · M need attention" with a reason under each row that did not take. Choose Done.

The toolbar carries the guarantee: "Only the rows you checked are changed. Each is re-checked and audited separately, so a stale row fails alone." A row fails when it changed after you selected it, left this scope, lost its eligible team or driver, lost assignment access, or could not be confirmed — refresh and try that one again.

Good to know

• Working alone, nothing to assign. While a workspace has exactly one person who can act on work, Scout claims every new point for them automatically. A second seat — even a Viewer — stops that, and the scope pill appears.
• Deactivating a seat returns its work. Open assignments held by that person go back to the team queue as unclaimed; team assignments are untouched.
• Every assignment change is a record. Claims, returns, assignments, and transfers are written with the actor and the time, and show in the item's history and its Settled receipt.
• Scout prepares, you send. Assigning never sends anything to a customer or supplier. Where Scout has written a draft it waits on the item for you to copy.
• Reassigning a source moves its queue. If a whole mailbox or feed sits with the wrong team, move the source on the team page instead of reassigning items one by one — its unresolved queue goes with it.