Matching criteria for work items in Work scheduler
Summarize
Summary of Matching criteria for work items in Work scheduler
The assignment workbench in ServiceNow uses configurable matching criteria to evaluate and rank agents within a selected group for task assignments. These criteria consider factors such as skills, availability, and workload to optimize agent selection, improving task distribution and efficiency.
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Matching Criteria Types
- Simple Match: One-to-one matching, e.g., matching agent and task time zones.
- Aggregate: Uses filters on tables to return a set of users based on aggregate fields like "Assigned to".
- Scripted: Uses scripted queries to generate a user list.
Predefined Matching Criteria Examples
- Availability Today: Calculates agent availability considering their schedule, assigned work, and personal time off. More availability increases ranking.
- Matching Skills: Counts skills matching the task requirements; more matches increase ranking.
- Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support: Filters out agents lacking mandatory skills and ranks those remaining based on skill matches.
- Assigned Incidents: Counts current assignments; more assigned incidents lower ranking to balance workload.
- Last Assigned: Prioritizes agents based on when they were last assigned work to promote balanced task distribution.
Configuring Matching Criteria
ServiceNow customers can create and customize matching criteria by selecting the type and defining query parameters or scripts. These criteria are then used to build matching rules for the assignment workbench configuration.
Settings for Each Criterion
- Ranking and Display Usage: Choose whether the criterion affects agent ranking, is displayed only, or both.
- Ranking Method: Define if "more is better" (e.g., availability) or "less is better" (e.g., assigned incidents).
- Weight: Assign a relative importance to each criterion (default is 10), allowing prioritization of key factors.
- Threshold: Set minimum acceptable values to filter agents, such as minimum skills matched or availability hours.
- Active/Inactive: Enable or disable criteria dynamically to immediately impact agent rankings without deleting configurations.
Calculating Agent Ranking
The assignment workbench calculates an overall agent ranking by:
- Calculating a normalized score for each criterion (based on actual vs. maximum values).
- Multiplying each score by its criterion weight.
- Dividing by the total of all criterion weights.
- Summing the weighted scores to produce a final ranking value.
Agents within the assignment group are then ranked from highest to lowest based on these calculations, facilitating objective and balanced task assignments.
Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers
By leveraging configurable matching criteria and ranking methods, customers can tailor the work scheduler to their organizational needs, ensuring that tasks are assigned to the most suitable agents. This enables improved resource utilization, balanced workloads, and adherence to skill and availability requirements, ultimately enhancing operational efficiency.
The assignment workbench uses configurable matching criteria, such as skills and availability, to evaluate the agents in a selected group and provide an overall ranking.
- Simple Match: creates one-to-one matching, such as matching the time zone of an agent with the time zone of a task location.
- Aggregate: uses a simple query and returns an aggregate result. For an aggregate type, select a table and create a filter, and then select an aggregate field such as the Assigned to field. This type of query returns a set of users.
- Scripted: uses a scripted query which returns a list of users.
- Availability Today: Availability is calculated based on the agent's work schedule, assigned work, and personal time off. The more availability an agent has, the higher the contribution to the agent's overall rank.
- Matching Skills: The number of agent skills that match the skills required for the incident. The more skills that match, the higher the contribution to the agent's overall rank.
- Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support Calculates the number
of agent skills that match the mandatory skills. It does this by filtering out all agents
who do not have the mandatory skills and ranks the remaining agents. The more skills that
match, the higher the contribution to the agent's overall rank. Note:If using the mandatory skills feature, use the Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support criterion to match agents with the Configuring the mandatory skills feature identified for an incident.
- Assigned Incidents: The number of incidents already assigned to this agent. The more incidents assigned, the lower the contribution to the agent's overall rank.
- Last Assigned: For the sake of balancing assigned work, prioritized the agent based on the last assigned work.
To create matching criteria, select the type and use the fields related to that type to build the query. After creating matching criteria, you can create a configuration for the assignment workbench by creating a matching rule of the type Selection criteria and selecting the desired matching criteria.
- ranking and display usage
- ranking method
- ranking weight
- threshold
- active/inactive
Ranking and display usage
- Ranking and display: uses the criterion to determine agent ranking and displays it in a column on the workbench.
- Display only: displays the criterion in a column on the workbench but does not use it to determine agent ranking.
- Ranking only: uses the criterion to determine agent ranking but does not display it on the workbench.
Ranking method
- More is better: for example, more availability is better when determining the agent ranking.
- Less is better: for example, fewer assigned incidents are better when determining agent ranking.
Weight
Each matching criterion has an assigned weight. By default, the matching criteria has an assigned weight of 10. You can assign a higher weight to the criteria that's more important.
Threshold
A threshold sets a minimum requirement for a criterion. For example, set the threshold of the Matching Skills criterion to 3 if you want to see only those agents who have at least three of the required skills for a task. For availability, set the threshold to the desired number of hours to display only those agents who have that minimum number of work hours available. You can set the threshold in the Select Criteria related list on the Matching Rule form. If necessary, personalize the list and add the Threshold column.
Active/Inactive
There can be several matching criteria associated with the matching rule that determines the assignment workbench configuration. Each individual criterion can be set to active or inactive. Changing this setting has an immediate impact on the agent ranking. You can make this change in the Select Criteria related list on the Matching Rule form. If necessary, personalize the list and add the Active column.
Calculating the agent ranking
- Calculate a number for each criterion.
- Multiply that number by the criterion weight.
- Divide the result by the total of all criterion.
- Repeat for each criterion and add the results.
- Matching Skills with Mandatory Skills Support: 5/6
- Availability Today: 7 hours
- Assigned Incidents: 2
- Matching Skills:
2 / 3 = 0.666(with 3 being the maximum number of skills) - Availability Today:
7 / 8 = 0.875(with 8 being the maximum number of hours) - Assigned Incidents:
2 / 26 = 0.0769(with 26 being the total number of tasks in the table) - Weight: each matching criteria has an equal weight of 10
((0.666 x 10) / Total of criterion weight (10+10+10)) + ((0.875 x 10) / Total of criterion weight (10+10+10)) + ((0.0769 x 10) / Total of criterion weight (10+10+10))(6.66 / 30) + (8.75 / 30) + (0.769 / 30)0.222 + 0.291 + 0.0256 = 0.53This calculation is performed for each agent in the assignment group. Agents are ranked based on the value of this calculation, with the highest number earning the highest ranking.