Where a Service Can Be Assigned
Assigning a service sometimes gives you a single list of employees. Sometimes you get two lists, employees and locations. And sometimes the marketplace shows fewer services than you expected.
None of that is arbitrary. It follows one rule, and knowing it explains several things at once.
Every service carries its allowed targets
Each service defines which kinds of targets it can be assigned to:
an employee
a location — sites and warehouses both count here
a cloud service
your company as a whole, for services that are not tied to a single person or place
an existing service, for add-ons that extend something you already have
This belongs to the service definition. It is decided when the service is set up in the portfolio, not when you order it, so the target type is not something you can change at ordering time.
Why some services offer two lists
A service can allow more than one target type, and one of them can be optional.
The most common combination is employee and location, where assigning to an employee is possible but not required. That is why the assignment dialog offers both lists and lets you decide whether the service goes to a person or straight to a site.
That combination exists for a good reason: it keeps hardware mobile across its lifecycle. A notebook belongs to an employee while they are with the company. When they leave, it does not disappear — it moves to a location such as a warehouse, and later to a new colleague. Same service throughout, no duplicates.
Services with only one allowed target behave more strictly. A service that allows only employees always needs a person attached to it.
Why the marketplace sometimes shows less
The same rule shapes what you see while browsing.
Open the marketplace from an employee and you see only services assignable to an employee. From a location, only location-assignable services. From a cloud service, only cloud services. Browsing the marketplace directly, without a target in mind, shows the full set your permissions allow.
So a shorter list usually does not mean a service is missing. It means the marketplace is narrowing to what actually fits the target you started from.
Where you notice this again
When you move services from the inventory, the dialog checks every possible target and reports the result in the Availability column. A target that cannot receive the selected services is flagged there, rather than letting the move fail later.
It is the same rule doing the same job, just at a different point in the process.
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