servicenow advanced work assignment incident

Tips & Tricks: Advanced Work Assignment

  [madrid] use the servicenow® advanced work assignment (awa) feature to automatically assign work items to your agents, based on their availability, capacity, and optionally, skills., awa pushes work to qualified agents using work item queues, routing conditions, and assignment criteria that you define. agents see their assignments in their agent workspace inbox., customers use different channels to request service, for example, chats, cases, or incidents. requests from customers create task or interaction records that store information about these objects, called work items., awa automatically routes work items to queues that focus on certain types of support, using criteria (such as priority or customer status) that you provide. queues can be defined based on need or type, for example product or critical cases. you also identify the agent groups responsible for work in the queue. awa then applies assignment rules that you set and uses agent availability, capacity, and skills (if defined) to assign work to the most qualified agent..

Advanced Work Assignment components

  service channels, a means of providing customer service. awa offers base system channels for chats, cases, incidents, and walk-up centers. for each channel, you can set attributes such as agent capacity and utilization conditions to control the work handled in the channel., a single piece of work to be handled by an agent from start to completion. for example, one chat or one case are objects that are routed and assigned to agents., work item queues, a queue stores a work item for a specified service channel. awa admins can create queues that focus on certain types of support within the channel, such as vip customers or critical cases. awa routes work items to queues based on specific conditions or requirements that you define, such as customer status, or region. groups assigned to each queue handle the incoming work items. once work items are placed in a queue, awa can then assign items to available agents based on assignment rules and agent availability and capacity., assignment groups, agents belong to specific groups that are organized by the type of work assigned to them. you provide details about an assignment group including the name and description, manager, and group email. you can also set up roles, groups and group members, queues, and agent capacity overrides for agents in an assignment group., assignment rule, criteria that determines how work items are pushed to the appropriate agent within a qualified assignment group., agent capacity, the maximum number of work items on a particular service channel that an agent may actively work on at one time., agent availability, states that indicate agent presence and whether the agent is available for work or is busy or offline. awa uses the agent availability state to determine if an agent is able to receive work., inbox layout, a configuration tied to a service channel that defines which fields of a record representing a work item are shown in agent inboxes. a layout defines what the agent sees in agent workspace., advanced work assignment roles, awa adds the following roles for users who configure, manage, and receive work assignments., basic process for configuring awa, users with the awa_admin role determine:, what to route – configure the base service channels to be used., where to route – define the work item queues and the routing rules, execution order, work item sort order, and strategy, how to assign work items – define the assignment rules that determine the work items pushed to agents, what the agent sees – set the inbox card layouts and presence (availability) states that agents use in their agent workspace, for more information: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-servicenow-platform/page/administer/advanced-work-assignment/concept/awa-overview.html.

ServiceNow® Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) - a clever automation of your workload distribution

The proper distribution of tickets and workload is a key factor in providing rapid resolution and enhanced user experience in all enterprises. It used to be that assignments would go through several iterations and many conversations, sometimes even with end-user involvement, until the task finally landed on the proper agent to work on it. All of this is time-consuming, error-prone, and both a bottleneck and a single point of failure in the process. As an illustration of the nature of the challenge, consider the steps involved in finding an agent with the appropriate language skills in a multi-language environment.

The ServiceNow® Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) feature is a way to cleverly automate your workload distribution. Assigning work items to your agents is based on their availability, capacity, and optionally, skills. AWA uses queues, routing conditions, and assignment criteria to select the best-qualified agent for the task.

Figure 1. AWA Overview (Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/administer/advanced-work-assignment/image/awa-overview-flow.png)

AWA was introduced with the Madrid release in early 2019 as a way to manage agents’ ITSM tasks. In recent releases, it has become available across the whole platform to take advantage of the huge benefits it offers.

AWA functionality is available and embedded into the Workspace environment, which is an advanced UI created and enhanced for fulfillers and agents. There is a dedicated inbox section where fulfillers and agents can monitor incoming tasks and requests. Agent availability is set according to their schedules and includes omnichannel presence, but the system also allows the agent to set their presence across one or more channels.

Figure 2. Agent availability in Workspace Inbox

Customers can interact with ServiceNow through different service channels such as incidents, cases, walk-ups, and chats. When the customer makes a request, a work item is created. This is a single piece of work that can be handled by an agent from start to finish.

Advanced Work Assignment allows the system to push work to agents. It uses configurable criteria to automatically route work items to queues that focus on various support channels. This lets the platform enforce assignments to the proper group or agents.

Queues collect and store a specific type of work item for a dedicated service channel. Queues can be configured to focus on a certain type of support, such as VIP customers or critical cases. AWA routes work items to queues based on specific conditions or requirements that you define, such as customer status or region. Groups assigned to each queue then handle the incoming work items. Once work items are placed in a queue, AWA can assign items to available agents based on assignment rules, agent availability, and capacity. In each queue, there is a possibility to set a timer that allows agents to respond to the work item.

Agent capacity is also configurable. Agent capacity is the maximum number of work items on a particular service channel that an agent may actively work on at one time. Another characteristic that is measured and managed by the platform is the agent affinity. There are three major types of affinities:

• Historical affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's history of serving the same customer;
• Related task affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's past assignments on related tasks.
• Account team affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's responsibility or role in the account team.

If multiple rules are relevant, they can be ordered to be able to achieve the maximum result for this capacity.

Another adjustment is the possibility to set up the layout of the inbox. This is set in a configuration tied to a service channel that defines which fields of a record representing a work item are shown in agent inboxes. A layout defines what the agent sees in their corresponding Workspace area.

If a work item is rejected, the agent must provide a reason, such as being in a phone call with another customer. When a rejection occurs or the job is timed out, the work item is returned back to the queue to find the next available agent. Whenever an entry is missed by an agent or is timed out, AWA automatically marks the status of the user to ‘away’ to avoid sending additional assignments to them until they are available again.

After an agent accepts a work item, all relevant information is available to them, including historical data. During fulfillment, there may be a need for additional skills to complete the request; in this case, rerouting is an option.

Skill-based routing and assignment is an advanced part of AWA. One example of its usage is when a chat is initiated from a specific location, a required language skill can automatically be added to the conversation. This means that there is no need for separate dedicated queues only to the required skill - availability and capacity should be measured to properly route this work item.

AWA Overflow Strategy is another key feature. It automatically kicks in when one of the channels becomes overloaded - a backup group of agents can be utilized to work on the items. In this instance, cases are automatically routed to secondary or tertiary support groups to help take on work. There are two major benefits that this brings: First there is no proliferation of separate queues, which offers simpler queue management. Secondly, the work item stays in the queue, which means the integrity of the queue reports and work item reports is maintained. This is a very powerful concept which few competing products can match.

Advanced Work Assignment provides dedicated reports and dashboards, which enable managers to monitor work item handling so that agents can better support customer needs.

Figure 4. Advanced Work Assignment dashboard for Operations

The helpdesk or call center manager and team leads are the most experienced people within the team and their time is critical. By utilizing this feature they can be freed up from manual assignment to focus on monitoring, coaching, and training agents, which would be a better use of their time.

From a customer standpoint, there is less wait time and improved customer satisfaction, also known as CSAT.

This article was written by  Bulcsu Boros , Principal ServiceNow Consultant at GuideVision.

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Understanding Advanced Work Assignment – Not Every ServiceNow Module Uses Groups

With the ServiceNow Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) application, work is directly delivered to agents’ inboxes, so they don’t have to choose work items from queues manually. AWA routes and assigns work items automatically based on agent skills , capacity, and availability. By using assignment criteria, routing conditions, and work item queues that you define, AWA pushes work to the most qualified agents. Agents, on the other hand, use their AWA inbox to see their work items, accept or reject work items, and set their availability.

To request service, customers can use different channels, such as incidents, cases, or chats. Requests from customers create interaction or task records to store information about work items. Using criteria that you provide, Advanced Work Assignment routes work items to queues that focus on specific types of support. Users can define queues based on type or need, as well as identify the agent groups responsible for work in a certain queue. Then, AWA applies pre-set assignment rules to assign work to the most qualified person.

Components of Advanced Work Assignment

• Work Items are defined as any type of single piece of work that needs to be handled by an agent. For example, one case or one chat is a work item or object that gets routed and assigned to an agent.
• Service channels . AWA offers multiple base system channels for incidents, cases, chats, and walk-up centers. Service channels are a means of providing customer service. Assignment rule . Pre-set criteria that determine how objects will be pushed to the right agent within a certain assignment group.
• Assignment groups . Groups are organized by the type of work that’s assigned to them, and every agent belongs to a group. You provide a name, description, manager, group email, and other details about a group. You also set up roles, queues, group members, and agent capacity overrides.
• Work item queues. A specific type of work item for a service channel is stored in a queue. AWA routes work items to appropriate queues, based on specific requirements and conditions that you define.
• Inbox layout . A configuration that defines which field of a work item is shown in agent inboxes.
• Agent capacity and availability . Agent capacity refers to the maximum number of work items that an agent may work on at one time. Agent availability indicates agent presence and whether he or she is available for work, offline, or busy.

The Main Benefit of Using AWA

The main benefit of using AWA is increasing customer satisfaction rates. Advanced Work Assignment will help your clients assign work to the right agent more easily and in a shorter time period. Also, it means that an agent will have more time to resolve their requests. Because work assignments are set up based on agent’s skills, availability, and capacity, you will be sure that agents are available and have the right skills to fulfill a request with a high-quality solution in mind.

Reach out to Finite Partners if you need assistance with using ServiceNow and any of its integrations. Feel free to call us or ask a question on Twitter .

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