Matching criteria for work items in Work scheduler
Summarize
Summary of Matching criteria for work items in Work scheduler
The assignment workbench in ServiceNow's Work Scheduler uses configurable matching criteria to evaluate and rank agents within a selected group for work assignment. These criteria consider factors such as skills, availability, and workload to prioritize agents effectively.
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Types of Matching Criteria
- Simple Match: Performs one-to-one matching, like aligning an agent’s time zone with the task location.
- Aggregate: Executes queries on tables with filters and aggregates, returning a set of users based on defined conditions.
- Scripted: Uses custom scripted queries that return a list of users.
Predefined Matching Criteria
- Availability Today: Calculates agent availability based on work schedules, assigned tasks, and personal time off; higher availability improves ranking.
- Matching Skills: Counts how many required skills an agent possesses; more matching skills increase the agent’s rank.
- Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support: Filters out agents lacking mandatory skills and ranks those who meet the mandatory skill set.
- Assigned Incidents: Considers the number of incidents already assigned to an agent; more incidents reduce the agent’s ranking to balance workload.
- Last Assigned: Prioritizes agents based on the time of their last assignment to distribute work evenly.
Configuring Matching Criteria
To create matching criteria, select the type and build the query using relevant fields. These criteria are then grouped into matching rules that configure the assignment workbench.
For each matching criterion, you can specify:
- Ranking and Display Usage: Choose whether the criterion is used for ranking, display only, or both.
- Ranking Method: Select whether “more is better” (e.g., availability) or “less is better” (e.g., assigned incidents).
- Weight: Assign importance to each criterion with a default weight of 10; higher weights give greater influence on ranking.
- Threshold: Set minimum criteria values to filter agents (e.g., minimum skills or availability hours).
- Active/Inactive Status: Enable or disable individual criteria instantly affecting agent rankings.
Agent Ranking Calculation
The workbench calculates an overall ranking for each agent by normalizing each criterion’s value against its maximum, multiplying by the criterion’s weight, dividing by the total weight sum, and summing across all criteria.
This normalized weighted sum produces a ranking score, where a higher value indicates a better match. Agents are ranked accordingly to optimize assignment decisions.
Example: An agent with partial matching skills, availability, and assigned incidents is scored by normalizing each metric, applying weights, and combining results to yield an overall ranking score of 0.53.
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 Mandatory Skills 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.