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sourceDocument: Brazil Conversational Interfaces
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/conversational-interfaces

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ft:publication_title :

    - Brazil Conversational Interfaces

ft:clusterId :

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---

# Using Agent Affinity

# Using Agent Affinity {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Brazil  
Updated September 10, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 2 minutes to read
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![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI  
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.  

## Summary of Using Agent Affinity

Agent Affinity is a feature within Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) that enhances how work items are assigned in ServiceNow by leveraging an agent's prior interactions, related tasks, or account team roles.
It customizes the AWA process to identify the most suitable agent based on affinity, ensuring continuity by assigning similar work items to the same agent rather than repeatedly orienting new agents.
This improves customer experience and operational efficiency.
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Note that Agent Affinity rules work alongside AWA's existing eligibility and constraint criteria and do not override them.

## Key Features

* **Affinity Types:**
  * **Historical Affinity:** Identifies agents based on their history of serving the same customer.
  * **Related Task Affinity:** Selects agents who have previously handled related tasks for the work item.
  * **Account Team Affinity:** Assigns work based on an agent's role or responsibility within the customer's account team (available only for Customer Service Management customers).
* **Affinity Rules Association:** Up to three affinity rules can be linked to an AWA queue, with priority defined by affinity order. The system considers the highest priority affinity first when assigning work.

## How It Works

AWA evaluates affinities in the configured order to assign work:

* **Related Task Affinity:** If an agent has handled related tasks recently, AWA assigns the new work item to that agent, provided they have capacity.
* **Account Team Affinity:** If the related task agent is unavailable, AWA looks for agents responsible for the account team and assigns accordingly.
* **Historical Affinity:** If neither of the above agents is available, AWA assigns the work to an agent with recent interactions with the customer.

This approach ensures that customer cases, such as support chats or issues, are routed to agents familiar with the customer's history or account, improving service consistency and agent effectiveness.  
Agent Affinity is an Advanced Work Assignment feature that lets you
assign work items by an agent's work history, related task, or account team affinity.
Advanced Work Assignment assigns work items to agents by their availability,
capacity, and skills. You can use Agent Affinity to customize this AWA assignment process and identify the agent best suited for the
work item. Agent Affinity ensures that the same agent is assigned to a similar
work item instead of orienting a new agent every time.  
Note:  
Agent Affinity rules do not override assignment eligibility or constraints that are specified on AWA assignment rules.  
The types of affinities are:

Historical
:   Identifies the best agent based on the agent's history of serving the same customer.

Related task
:   Identifies the best agent based on the agent's past assignments of related tasks.

Account team
:   Identifies the best agent based on the agent's responsibility or role in the account
team.  
Note:  
Account team affinity is available only to Customer Service Management customers.
Affinity rules are associated with AWA queues. Up to three rules can be associated with each queue. The affinity order determines how the assignment engine ranks the agents. The agent with the higher order affinity rule is considered as the best agent first.

The following example shows how AWA uses Agent Affinity to determine the best agent for a work item. In this example, AWA is configured to use all three affinities in this order:
related task affinity, account team affinity, and historical affinity. George Warren, who is a
customer at the Boxeo company, has a router problem. George previously contacted support to
report an issue. That case was assigned to agent Ned. The primary support agent for Boxeo is
agent John. Within the past seven days, another agent, agent Beth, addressed a chat with Boxeo.

The next time George initiates a customer service chat from the case page, the case is
automatically added as a related task to the chat interaction. Agent Affinity
uses the related task affinity to look for an agent who has fulfilled past assignments for a
related task. Because agent Ned was assigned to a related task on the record, AWA assigns the work item to agent Ned if available with
capacity.  
Figure 1. Example of related task affinity

If agent Ned is unavailable or doesn't have the capacity, AWA
uses the account team affinity. AWA looks for another agent
based on an agent's responsibility or role in the account team. Because agent John is the
primary support agent for the Boxeo company, AWA assigns the
work item to Agent John if available with capacity.  
Figure 2. Example of account team affinity  
If agent John is not available, AWA uses the historical affinity and looks for an agent that has recently interacted with the company. This information is stored on the Agent Affinity screen. Because agent Beth addressed a chat with Boxeo within the past seven days, AWA assigns the work item to agent Beth if available with capacity. Figure 3. Example of historical affinity