Yes, but you must make an assumption (which you should follow up on) and you should follow specific guidelines.
Sometimes departments need to initiate Merit actions for academic appointees who have open cases involving Joint or Split appointments. Because Opus does not group additional appointments (Joints or Splits) into sets with their primary appointments until their cases have been completed, users can't select the required set when starting a case for the Merit action (because the set either does not exist, or does not yet include the new Joint or Split appointment).
The recommended course of action in this scenario is to change the step in the Joint or Split appointment to the one it would be if the Merit action were approved.
For example, if a case for a Joint appointment is opened for an appointee currently at step 3, and the department is aware that a Merit action will take place before this appointment becomes active, they should change the step to 4 when starting the case for the Joint appointment. Doing it this way introduces a risk that if the Merit action is not approved, the step in the Joint action will be incorrect. If this happens, the department that started the case for the Merit will need to contact the Office of Academic Affairs and Personnel to fix this data in Opus. For this reason, academic personnel staff in the department should follow up on cases where they use this strategy, to ensure the data in Opus remains correct.
See Also
What Are Primary and Additional Departments' Responsibilities?