Patent ID: 7451449

Claim:
A method of operating a work allocation system for allocating work items to worker resources including a plurality of groups of worker resources, each group comprising a plurality of individual worker resources, said work allocation system comprising a work allocation server; a group terminal for each group; and a communication link between said work allocation server and each group terminal, said method of operation comprising: storing in a group store, for each group of worker resources, a data structure identifying attributes of work items previously allocated to at least some of the worker resources in the group; adding or removing from said data structure contributions from work items previously allocated to an individual worker resource when said individual worker resource respectively joins or leaves a group; operating said work allocation server to send one or more offers of work items to each said group terminal via said communications link; operating a group terminal for each group to: i) receive an offer of a work item for the group, said offer including attributes of said work item; ii) retrieve at least data relevant to said offer from said group store for the group; iii) using at least one of said attributes of said work item to compare said work item with the data structure to evaluate the probability that one of the worker resources in the group will carry out the work item; iv) compare the evaluated probability with a suitability criterion so as to identify whether one of the worker resources in said workgroup is suitable to carry out the work item; v) generate a bid for said work item in response to said offer on finding that at least one of said worker resources is suitable to carry out the work item; and vi) send said generated bid to said work allocation server via said communications link.