Skills Management

The Skills Management feature enables an administrator to assign configured competencies, called skills, to groups or individual users. These skills can then be used to determine who can be assigned to particular tasks.

Skills can contain other skills. Any access granted to a parent skill is granted to any skill that it contains. Once a skill is assigned to a group, all members of the group automatically inherit that skill and any others contained within it. The skills mechanism is similar to the ServiceNow platform role management.

Create a skill

You can create skills to specify the competencies of your users.

Before you begin

Role required: skill_admin or admin

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Skills > Skills.
  2. Click New.
  3. Enter a unique, descriptive Name.
  4. Enter a Description of the skill.
  5. Right-click the form header and click Save.
    The Contains Skills, Users, and Models related lists appear.
  6. (Optional) Use the Contains Skills related list to add subskills.
  7. (Optional) Use the Models related list to add any Models that are associated with the skill.
    The Users related list contains users (based on their User record or the groups they belong to) who have the skill and subskills named in this record. You can also add users to specify they have the skill.

Assign a user skill

You can assign skills individually to users.

Before you begin

Role required: skill_admin or admin

About this task

If you assign a skill that contains other skills to a user, the user automatically inherits the contained skills.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Skills > Users.
  2. Select a user from the list.
  3. In the User record, select the Skills related list.
  4. Click Edit and select one or more existing skills from the slushbucket.
  5. Click Save.

Assign a group skill

You can assign skills to groups, and the members of the group inherit all the assigned skills.

Before you begin

Role required: skill_admin or admin

About this task

If you assign a skill that contains other skills to a group, the group and all its members automatically inherit the contained skills.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Skills > Groups.
  2. Select a group from the list.
  3. In the Group record, select the Skills related list.
  4. Click Edit and select one or more existing skills from the slushbucket.
  5. Click Save.
    The skill is added to the group and all the group members who are granted this skill are listed at the top of the form.

Filter potential assignees based on skills

In the base system, field service management tasks and project tasks use skills to filter assignments. If a skill is identified in the Skill field, only groups or users with the appropriate skill can be assigned to the task.

The Skills Management feature contains a script include that builds a qualifier based on the assignment group and required skills for the task. For example, the Assigned To field on the Project Task record uses the following reference qualifier (using a dictionary override): 

javascript:var util = new SkillsUtils(); util.assignedToRefQual(current);

This script has the following results.

  • If an Assignment group is set, the list is filtered on members of that group.
  • If Skills are set (the Skills field may need to be added to the form), the list is filtered on users with all the selected skills.
  • If Assignment group and Skills are both set, the list is filtered on group members with the defined skills.

You can introduce the same behavior to other task tables by using the same reference qualifier.

Activate skills management

The Skills Management plugin is automatically activated by the Field Service Management and Project Management plugins. Administrators can also activate the Skills Management plugin manually.

  1. Navigate to System Definition > Plugins.
  2. Find and click the plugin name.
  3. On the System Plugin form, review the plugin details and then click the Activate/Upgrade related link.

    If the plugin depends on other plugins, these plugins are listed along with their activation status.

    If the plugin has optional features that are not functional because other plugins are inactive, those plugins are listed. A warning states that some files will not be installed. If you want the optional features to be installed, cancel this activation, activate the necessary plugins, and then return to activating the plugin.

  4. (Optional) If available, select the Load demo data check box.

    Some plugins include demo data—sample records that are designed to illustrate plugin features for common use cases. Loading demo data is a good policy when you first activate the plugin on a development or test instance.

    You can also load demo data after the plugin is activated by clicking the Load Demo Data Only related link on the System Plugin form.

  5. Click Activate.