Advance Work Assignment vs Matching Rules

[Patrick Canary]

I spun up a PDI to learn a bit about AWA.  I'm having a rough go at it.

I installed the plugins with all demo data.  I started playing around with the queues to change the conditions that they fire off of.  I created an HR Service Case Option called "Auto Assign" and wanted it to only run on the HR Services that had this case option.  This was to simulate that we won't be using automatic agent assignments on all HR Cases.

However, whenever I tested, it automatically assigned the case to the Roger Seid agent in the PDI. Every time. No matter how I changed the configuration.

I did a little more digging and found the HR Administration -> Assignment Rules -> HR Matching Rules.  Seems that the system prioritized these over AWA.  So I set all of these records to false and ran another couple tests.  Now I just get a notification that there are no agents available to auto assignment.

I'm confused.  What am I doing wrong here?  This is an OOB PDI with demo data and it seems like AWA just doesn't do anything.  I know it's something I'm doing/not doing.  Ideas?

[pratikjagtap]

Hi @Patrick Canary ,

Please try below steps :

• 1. AWA is turned on for the right HR Services
  Make sure your HR Service (that you're testing) has:
• Assignment group empty (or use queue-based assignment only)
• A linked Case Option like "Auto Assign"
• Auto assign = true
• If Auto assign is false or missing, AWA won’t engage even if the queue is correct.

2. Queue Routing Conditions
Check the Queue (AWA > Queues) and confirm:

You updated the routing condition to include something like:

current.case_option.auto_assign == true

• The queue has the HR Case channel enabled.

• The queue is active.

3. Eligible Agents in Queue

Make sure the queue has:

• Assigned agents (check AWA > Queue Members)

• Agent availability status = Available

• The agent belongs to the correct Assignment Group (this is crucial)

4. Test with a Case that 100% meets all conditions

Try manually creating an HR Case with:

• A service tied to your "Auto Assign" Case Option

• No direct assignment group

• Priority and configuration matching the queue

You can also enable Transaction Logs to monitor AWA routing:

Go to AWA > Administration > Assignment Workbench Logs or enable debugging via sys_properties:

• awa.debug = true
• awa.debug.queue = true

5. Set HR Matching Rules to False Properly

You said you set them to false, which is good — but double-check:

• Go to HR Administration > Assignment Rules > HR Matching Rules

• Ensure Active is unchecked

• If unsure, clone one and experiment

6. Enable this property:

awa.routing.log.debug = true

If my response helped, please hit the 👍Thumb Icon and accept the solution so that it benefits future readers.

Regards,
Pratik

[Patrick Canary]

I played around a little bit more today and I saw that by default, it would only allow 8 items to be assigned to an agent via AWA.  I changed that number for an agent and suddenly a whirlwind of demo tickets flooded the agent, so I think this is part of my issue. 

I will enable those debugging options and play some more.

One thing I don't understand is this seems to compete with the concept of Matching Rules.  Where Matching Rules will pass a ticket even if the user isn't "Available" in Agent Workspace.  It almost seems like that is the better way to go because for the simple purpose of assigning tickets to a queue of agents, I don't think I'd want to wait for them to decide that they are available when we could just assign it to them and they check their queue when they log in.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the use case for AWA?  Any advice?