Point Allocations and Enforcing Allocations

Overview

Point Allocations is a feature to help multiple teams manage usage across the same Catchpoint contract. This feature can be used to just to allocate and measure usage per team, or furthermore, to also restrict each team to their share of the contract points by enforcing the allocation. If enforced, the UI will prevent any edits that are projected to cause the allocated item to exceed its allocations.

Point Allocations and enforcement can be applied to a Product or Division’s usage. If you are using Divisions, then the parent Division must have an allocation before being able to set a product allocation.

To use this feature, the client must have the following settings

Active synthetic contract
Division Allocation: automatically given if Divisions are enabled
Product Allocation: ‘Product Allocations’ must be enabled on client properties

Setting an Allocation

Setting an Allocation creates a total static share of contract points for the Product or Division and continuously measures usage against that share. The allocation applies to all Products, Folders, and Tests contained within the Division or Product.

Setting an allocation is for usage tracking only. Overages can still incur, but the allocated overage will be measured to track which allocated team went in to overages. If you do not want any allocated item to use more points than allocated, use the Enforcement setting.

Once an item is allocated, all used points from the start of contract are deducted from the allocated share
Available points are the points remaining in the allocation
Available points and days left in the contract are used to establish a daily rate
This daily rate establishes the baseline usage the item must maintain to exactly use all allocated points at contract end
An allocated item has exceeded its allocation in the following two scenarios
- If the actual daily rate exceeds the allocated daily rate
- If the total used points is greater than the allocated points

To set an allocation, users must have the ‘Manage Allocation > Create and Modify’ permission.

From the Settings navigation, go to the Point Allocations page and click ‘Edit’

Note: you will not be able to allocate usage for the following conditions:

No active contract
Parent is not allocated (applies only to allocating Products within a Division)
Allocating 0 points
Allocating more than contracted points
Allocating a Product more than it’s Division’s allocated points (applies only to allocating Products within a Division)

Choose whether to input allocation amounts using points or percent of contract. The allocation input is the total points for the allocation, measured from the contract start. Percent of points is calculated from the total contract points or total allocated points.

If it is a division or product without division allocation: % is applied to the total contract points
If it is a product under an allocated division, % is applied to the division’s total allocation.

To create a new allocation:
- Click the ‘+’ from the not allocated portion of the table
- Add your amount to the input box in the Allocations column and confirm your allocation to the right of the input box
To edit an existing item, just update the input box
Click Save to apply your changes. Cancel will return to the previous allocations.

Allocation Warning Report

To get automatic daily warnings if items are exceeding the allocation: use the Allocation Warning Report

The Allocation Warning email checks daily if an allocated item exceeds its daily rate. This signals that if usage continues at this rate, the Product or Division is estimated to consume allocated points before the contract ends.

At the client level, the Allocation Warning Report also checks for the daily total rates for all allocated and unallocated items.

To add recipients to this report, subscribe via the Point Allocations page.

Recipients will receive allocation warnings for the data included on that page

Enforcing an Allocation

Enforcing an allocation will prevent any changes on allocated Test, Folder, or Property pages while the Point Estimator is signaling there is no room in the allocation. Enforcing will not stop any active tests from running. It is only applied to the creation and editing of allocated Products, Folders, and Tests.

If the Point Estimator is red, the user will not be able to save the Product, Folder, or Test unless they make changes to reduce the usage to allowable levels.

Editing Products and Folders will account for the tests inheriting Targeting settings

Note: The allowance is an approximation from recent data and thus may not detect the impact of immediate preceding actions, such as editing several tests or drastically reducing usage. Go to the Point Allocation page for real-time tracking of usage rates or subscribe to the Allocation Warning Report for a daily usage warning.

If immediate changes in testing are required, disabling the enforcement will allow changes

Best Practices

Editing/creating allocated Products, Folders, or Tests

When creating new Products or Folders, keep in mind that the allowance is approximated from recent data. Some changes will not be caught by the Point Estimator at real-time.
When creating tests, refer to the % of Allocation on the point estimator tooltip to get an understanding of how much usage of the allocation that test is predicted to have.
If you are creating or editing Products, Folders, or Tests and are getting stopped by the enforcement, then you have the following options
- Mark the item as ‘inactive’ and Save, this will keep the current settings
- Cancel and the current testing will stay the same
- Contact an admin to modify the enforcement
- Wait for the allowance to detect any recent drastic reduction in usage. This may take 1-3 hours.

Allocation Manager

Make sure you have a good understanding of a team’s required usage before enforcing the allocation
You can enable/disable the enforcement whenever
You can re-allocate points whenever. The total used will always be from the contract start date, even if reallocated.
If you want to allocate only on remaining points, account for total used points already
The enforcement will not stop existing tests. So if something is enforced, but the allocated item’s usage rate is already over the allocated usage rate, then that item will go in to overages unless any manual changes are made to reduce usage
Since the allowance approximation is based off recent data, it might take a moment for recent changes to take effect.
Make sure to sign up for allocation warning emails. Pay attention to those as they will catch any rate changes not caught from the allowance approximation.
Creating new products or folders – keep an eye on usage or check back within 3 hours