Trouble Getting Skill Assignment to Work With Incidents

[Alan42]

I've gone through this tutorial a few times and also through all the other documentation I could dig up.   https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/yokohama-servicenow-platform/page/administer/advanced-work-as... 

I'm still unable to auto assign incidents to agents by established skills.  Our current assignment is done by service offering and a business rule.     No messages in system logs.    I do see  'Skill determination for incident'  being run after the initial assignment business rule.      Is there something additional I need to do to get this working? 

Plug ins have been installed and are active.    

Skills have been defined and added to users.     

Skill determination rules have been set up based off the service offering.     

Service channel and queue are established.    

Assignment rule is active.      

[Sanjay34]

Verify the below details.

1. Skills on Users/Groups

   • Go to the User record of your agents (sys_user).

   • Check the Skills related list and confirm they actually have the skills you expect.

   • Same for Assignment Groups if group assignment is in play.

2. Skill Criteria on Service Offering / CI

   • If you are driving assignment from Service Offering, ensure the Service Offering record has associated Skill requirements.

   • Path: Service Portfolio > Service Offerings > [Offering] → Related list → Skills.

3. Assignment Rule Configuration

   • ServiceNow uses Assignment Rules (not just business rules) to handle skills-based assignment.

   • Go to System Policy > Assignment > Assignment Rules.

   • Check if you have one active for Incident table that is configured with:

     • Condition (ex: Category, Service Offering, etc.)

     • Assign based on skills → Enabled.

   • If not, you may need to create one.

4. Task Assignment Workbench (TAW) / Matching Rules

   • If you’re on a newer release (Paris+), skills-based assignment is often done via Matching Rules and Assignment Workbench.

   • Path: Agent Intelligence > Assignment Workbench > Matching Rules.

   • Ensure a matching rule exists for Incident that includes:

     • Who can be assigned (Users/Groups with skills)

     • Which skills are required

     • Scoring logic.

5. Incident Assignment Behavior

   • Out of the box, ServiceNow first runs your business rule (service offering based).

   • Then, if enabled, the skill determination engine kicks in.

   • BUT—unless you explicitly tell the system to use Assignment Rules or Assignment Workbench, it won’t actually pick the “best skilled agent.”

6. System Property Check

   • Go to sys_properties.list.

   • Check glide.skill.assignment.enabled → must be set to true.

   • If not present, create it (Type: true/false).

[Alan42]

We're on Yokohama. 

1.   Set up as you mention.  

2.  No related list is available for selection with Skill in its name.     

3.  Configured as indicated.    

4.  We don't have TAW.  Matching rules exist under Routing and Assignment.  I set up as you indicated there with no change in behavior.    

5.  The consulting firm we used to bring up SN a couple years ago set up a business rule to assign incidents, problems, and change requests.   (See the screen shots and script for the setup and a trace.)

6.  I created the property with no change in behavior.