Routing your work using Advanced Work Assignment
The Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) module rethinks work assignment within ServiceNow. Currently, many implementations see work being routed via set conditions within scripts or assignment rules to assign work to particular groups or users. However, in AWA, work is delivered to individual agents dynamically based on their assignment group, availability, capacity, and skills.
This feature is driven through the usage of queues. Incoming work is routed to a particular queue, which groups are assigned to monitoring. Agents are then offered the work based upon their current availability, capacity/workload, and skillset. If an agent receives the wrong piece of work or simply isn’t available at the time, they can reject the work item and send it back to the queue for another agent to pick up. Agents are also able to manually set their current availability, which helps to facilitate the scenario in which high priority work arrives and needs to be assigned to an agent that is currently available.
What is considered work?
A work item is the term for the work that is being routed to an agent. They can consist of any of the following:
- Incidents
- Requests
- Walk-up requests
- Cases
- Chats (Live Agent)
- SMS
Work Items are stored in the awa_work_item table when being using in AWA.
Why should I implement AWA for my work items?
AWA seeks to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your routing processes. Using its underlying intelligence, it can assign work items from a wide range of sources to those best suited to process it - freeing up your agents and their managers to focus on doing the work, rather than who to assign it to.
These features support use cases such as VIP prioritization, dynamic and context-based assignment, and omni-channel routing.
What configuration do I need to do to implement AWA for my work items?
There are two primary steps required to implement AWA. Further details can be found in the implementation guide below.
- Install the plugin [glide.interaction.awa]
- Configure the routing to your organization’s preferences. This involves, at a minimum, defining the following:
- Service Channels
- Source of the work items e.g., Live Chat, Incidents, SMS
- Queues
- Store the incoming work items that are yet to be assigned to a specific agent.
- Assignment Rules
- Define how work items arriving in the queue should be handled.
- Define how work items arriving in the queue should be handled.
Implementation Guide
See below for an overview on implementing AWA for each of the supported sources.
- Define what to route:
Create a service channel [awa_service_channel] by installing the plugin or setting up your own custom version.
|
Work Item |
Plugin |
Guide |
|
Case (CSM) |
Customer Service [com.sn_customerservice] |
N/A |
|
HR Case |
Advanced Work Assignment for HRSD [com.sn_hr_awa] |
|
|
Incident |
Advanced Work Assignment for Incidents [com.snc.incident.awa] |
N/A |
|
Chat |
Agent Chat [com.glide.interaction.awa] |
N/A |
|
Chat – Asynchronous |
Conversational Messaging [com.glide.messaging.awa] |
|
|
SMS |
Conversational SMS Service Channel [sn_awa_sms_int]
|
|
|
Line |
Conversational Integration with LINE [sn_va_line] |
|
|
Facebook Messenger |
Conversational Integration with Facebook Messenger [sn_va_fb_messenger] |
|
|
|
Conversational Integration with WhatsApp [sn_va_whatsapp_twi] |
Conversational Integration with WhatsApp (powered by Twilio) |
|
Walk-up |
Walk-up Experience plugin [com.snc.walkup] |
|
|
Others |
N/A |
- Define where to route:
Create a queue [awa_queue] to process the work item. From the related lists you can define in what order the work items should be prioritized within the queue (Work Item Sort Order) or attach an assignment rule (Assignment Eligibility).
- Define how the work items get assigned:
Create assignment rules to define to whom work items should be assigned to in the queue. Add these assignment rules to the Assignment Eligibility related list in your queue record.
- Define what the agent sees:
Follow the steps here to update the workspace view for the service channel
Troubleshooting Guidance
If your AWA implementation is not acting as expected, verify the below:
- Navigate to System Properties [sys_properties] and ensure awa.enabled is set to true.
- Queue schedules are correct – either leave them blank (available at all hours) or set a schedule.
- Queues have at least one assignment rule attached in the Assignment Eligibility related list.
- Ensure the Service Channel, Queue, and Assignment Rules are all set to active.
- Ensure all members of the group identified within the Assignment rule have the awa_agent role, and permissions to access the work item.
- Service Channels should not overlap. An example of a common mistake is to create one Service Channel for table = incident, and one for interaction.type = “incident”.
- Ensure your Service Channel has been included in the “Available” presence state.
Where can I look for more information on AWA?
