Matching criteria for case assignment

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Matching criteria for case assignment

    The assignment workbench in ServiceNow uses configurable matching criteria to evaluate and rank agents within a selected group for case assignment. These criteria help automate the selection of the most suitable agent based on factors like skills, availability, workload, and other customizable parameters.

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    Types of Matching Criteria

    • Simple Match: One-to-one matching, such as aligning an agent's time zone with the task location.
    • Aggregate: Queries a table with filters and aggregates fields to return a set of users matching certain conditions.
    • Scripted: Uses custom scripts to generate a list of matching users.

    Predefined Matching Criteria

    • Availability Today: Measures agent availability based on work schedules, current assignments, and time off. More availability increases an agent’s ranking.
    • Matching Skills: Counts the number of skills an agent has that match the case requirements, contributing positively to ranking.
    • Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support: Filters out agents lacking mandatory skills and ranks those who meet these critical requirements.
    • Assigned Cases: Counts cases already assigned to the agent; a higher number decreases the agent’s ranking to balance workload.
    • Last Assigned: Prioritizes agents based on the time since their last assignment to ensure fair distribution of work.

    Configuring Matching Criteria

    ServiceNow customers can create matching criteria by selecting the type and defining queries or scripts accordingly. These criteria are combined into matching rules that configure the assignment workbench.

    For each criterion, you can specify:

    • Ranking and Display Usage: Choose if the criterion is used for ranking, display only, or both.
    • Ranking Method: Define if "more is better" (e.g., availability) or "less is better" (e.g., assigned cases).
    • Weight: Assign importance to each criterion, allowing prioritization of critical factors by increasing their weight.
    • Threshold: Set minimum acceptable values to filter agents who do not meet baseline requirements (e.g., minimum skills or availability hours).
    • Active/Inactive: Enable or disable criteria instantly to affect agent ranking dynamically.

    How Agent Ranking Is Calculated

    The assignment workbench calculates an overall score for each agent by:

    1. Normalizing each criterion value relative to its maximum possible value.
    2. Multiplying the normalized value by the criterion’s weight.
    3. Dividing by the sum of all criterion weights.
    4. Summing these weighted values for all active criteria.

    Agents are then ranked based on their total scores, with the highest score indicating the best match for case assignment.

    This approach ensures balanced, skill-aligned, and availability-aware case distribution, improving assignment efficiency and fairness across agents.

    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.

    There are three types of matching criteria:
    • 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.
    Several matching criteria are provided with the assignment workbench:
    • 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 case. 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. The calculation is done by filtering out all agents who don’t 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 mandatory skills identified for a case.
    • Assigned Cases: The number of cases already assigned to this agent. The more cases assigned, the lower the contribution to the agent's overall rank.
    • Last Assigned: To balance assigned work, prioritize the agent based on their 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.

    As part of selecting the matching criteria for the workbench configuration, you can specify the following settings for each individual criterion:
    • ranking and display usage
    • ranking method
    • ranking weight
    • threshold
    • active/inactive

    Ranking and display usage

    In the Use for field, specify how you want that matching criterion to be used:
    • 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 doesn’t use it to determine agent ranking.
    • Ranking only: Uses the criterion to determine agent ranking but doesn’t display it on the workbench.

    Ranking method

    There are two ranking methods:
    • More is better: For example, more availability is better when determining the agent ranking.
    • Less is better: For example, fewer assigned cases are better when determining agent ranking.

    Weight

    Each matching criterion has an assigned weight. By default, the matching criteria in the Recommendation for Case Assignment matching rule have an assigned weight of 10. You can assign a higher weight to the criteria that are 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 change the Select Criteria related list on the Matching Rule form. If necessary, personalize the list and add the Active column.

    Calculating the agent ranking

    The assignment workbench adds the values of the matching criteria and their respective weights and uses these values to determine the overall agent ranking.
    1. Calculate a number for each criterion.
    2. Multiply that number by the criterion weight.
    3. Divide the result by the total of all criterion weights.
    4. Repeat for each criterion and add the results.
    The following example shows how the ranking is determined for an agent with these matching criteria values:
    • Matching Skills with Mandatory Skills Support: 5/6
    • Availability Today: 7 hours
    • Assigned Cases: 2
    Calculations:
    • 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 Cases: 2 / 26 = 0.0769 (with 26 being the total number of tasks in the table)
    • Weight: Each matching criterion 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 = 0.53

    This 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.