Use the ServiceNow®Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) feature to automatically assign work items to your agents,
based on their availability, capacity, and optionally, skills. AWA pushes work to qualified agents using work item queues,
routing conditions, and assignment criteria that you define. Agents see their assignments in
their Agent Workspace inbox.
Customers use different channels to request service, for example, chats, cases, or incidents.
Requests from customers create task or interaction records that store information about these
objects, called work items.
AWA automatically routes work items to queues that focus on
certain types of support, using criteria (such as priority or customer status) that you
provide. Queues can be defined based on need or type, for example product or critical cases.
You also identify the agent groups responsible for work in the queue. AWA then applies assignment rules that you set and uses agent
availability, capacity, and skills (if defined) to assign work to the most qualified
agent.
Advanced Work Assignment components
- Service channels
- A means of providing customer service. AWA offers base
system channels for chats, cases, incidents, and walk-up centers. For each channel,
you can set attributes such as agent capacity and utilization conditions to control
the work handled in the channel.
- Work items
- A single piece of work to be handled by an agent from start to completion. For example,
one chat or one case are objects that are routed and assigned to agents.
- Work item queues
- A queue stores a specific type of work item for a service channel. AWA admins can create queues that focus on certain
types of support within the channel, such as VIP customers or critical cases. AWA routes work items to queues based on specific
conditions or requirements that you define, such as customer status, or region. Groups
assigned to each queue handle the incoming work items. Once work items are placed in a
queue, AWA can then assign items to available agents
based on assignment rules and agent availability and capacity.
- Assignment groups
- Agents belong to specific groups that are organized by the type of work assigned to them.
You provide details about an assignment group including the name and description, manager,
and group email. You can also set up roles, groups and group members, queues, and agent
capacity overrides for agents in an assignment group.
- Assignment rule
- Criteria that determines how work items are pushed to the appropriate agent within a
qualified assignment group.
- Agent capacity
- The maximum number of work items on a particular service channel that an agent may
actively work on at one time.
- Agent availability
- States that indicate agent presence and whether the agent is available for work or is busy
or offline. AWA uses the agent availability state to
determine if an agent is able to receive work.
- Inbox layout
- A configuration tied to a service channel that defines which fields of a record
representing a work item are shown in agent inboxes. A layout defines what the agent
sees in Agent Workspace.
Advanced Work Assignment roles
AWA adds the following roles for users who configure, manage,
and receive work assignments.
| Role title [name] |
Description |
| AWA administrator [awa_admin] |
Admin role for the AWA feature. Configures
and administers across all channels. |
| AWA manager [awa_manager] |
Manager role for the AWA feature. Monitors
performance of agents across all service channels. |
| AWA agent [awa_agent] |
Agent role for the AWA feature. Handles
customer interactions and manages workload across multiple service channels.
|
| AWA developer [awa_integration] |
Developer role for using the AWA
API. |
Basic process for configuring AWA
Users with the awa_admin role determine:
- What to route – Configure the base service channels to be used.
- Where to route – Define the work item queues and the routing rules, execution order,
work item sort order, and strategy
- How to assign work items – Define the assignment rules that determine the work items
pushed to agents
- What the agent sees – Set the inbox card layouts and presence (availability) states
that agents use in their Agent Workspace inbox.
For details on the
AWA components and related
configuration, see these sections.
