Assignee cleared out when attaching a Category having a group associated. At previous SDM 14.1 release, this functionality worked; the assignee contact remained associated to the ticket even after attaching a category having a group associated to it. The group was also included at the ticket group field despite of assignee was member or not member of the associated group. This behavior changed after migrating to 17.0 release.

Relevant options installed: 

Area_Defaults -> installed 
Assignee_set = Yes -> installed 
autoasg_override = 1 -> installed 

Installing "Any_Contact" option does not change the behavior 

Steps to reproduce it. 

Assign a group to an Area 
Open new Incident (or Request) 
Start filling up values for Requester, Affected end user 
Note that assignee has already a value 
Fill up the Area with one that has a group associated 
After selecting the Area, note that Assignee value gets cleared, and the group value is automatically filled with the group coming from the Area 

The expected behavior is to keep the Assignee previously filled and also with the group from the Area. 
Both assignee and group fields should have the values, despite of assignee is member of or not member of the group associated. 

The reported behavior was specifically considered as a bug in USRD problem # 3655.

CA Service Desk Manager 17.0

The design change was re-evaluated. and a testfix was created to address the change of behavior as per below problem:

PROBLEM SYMPTOM: WIN-ASSIGNEE OR GROUP MIGHT BE CLEARED ON TICKET

For Service Desk Manager 14.1 a test fix is required. Please open a Support case and request the fix.
For Service Desk Manager 17.1 the fix is included in the latest published fix.

The solution for this problem would bring the functionality as it was prior to 14.1.04. If the new functionality, post 14.1.04 would be required then the administrator would need to install a new option "clear_fields_if_empty_in_area" available in 'Options Manager' after testfix application.