advanced work assignment servicenow plugin

ServiceNow® Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) - a clever automation of your workload distribution

The proper distribution of tickets and workload is a key factor in providing rapid resolution and enhanced user experience in all enterprises. It used to be that assignments would go through several iterations and many conversations, sometimes even with end-user involvement, until the task finally landed on the proper agent to work on it. All of this is time-consuming, error-prone, and both a bottleneck and a single point of failure in the process. As an illustration of the nature of the challenge, consider the steps involved in finding an agent with the appropriate language skills in a multi-language environment.

The ServiceNow® Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) feature is a way to cleverly automate your workload distribution. Assigning work items to your agents is based on their availability, capacity, and optionally, skills. AWA uses queues, routing conditions, and assignment criteria to select the best-qualified agent for the task.

Figure 1. AWA Overview (Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/administer/advanced-work-assignment/image/awa-overview-flow.png)

AWA was introduced with the Madrid release in early 2019 as a way to manage agents’ ITSM tasks. In recent releases, it has become available across the whole platform to take advantage of the huge benefits it offers.

AWA functionality is available and embedded into the Workspace environment, which is an advanced UI created and enhanced for fulfillers and agents. There is a dedicated inbox section where fulfillers and agents can monitor incoming tasks and requests. Agent availability is set according to their schedules and includes omnichannel presence, but the system also allows the agent to set their presence across one or more channels.

Figure 2. Agent availability in Workspace Inbox

Customers can interact with ServiceNow through different service channels such as incidents, cases, walk-ups, and chats. When the customer makes a request, a work item is created. This is a single piece of work that can be handled by an agent from start to finish.

Advanced Work Assignment allows the system to push work to agents. It uses configurable criteria to automatically route work items to queues that focus on various support channels. This lets the platform enforce assignments to the proper group or agents.

Queues collect and store a specific type of work item for a dedicated service channel. Queues can be configured to focus on a certain type of support, 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 then handle the incoming work items. Once work items are placed in a queue, AWA can assign items to available agents based on assignment rules, agent availability, and capacity. In each queue, there is a possibility to set a timer that allows agents to respond to the work item.

Agent capacity is also configurable. Agent capacity is the maximum number of work items on a particular service channel that an agent may actively work on at one time. Another characteristic that is measured and managed by the platform is the agent affinity. There are three major types of affinities:

• Historical affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's history of serving the same customer;
• Related task affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's past assignments on related tasks.
• Account team affinity, in which AWA tries to identify the best agent based on the agent's responsibility or role in the account team.

If multiple rules are relevant, they can be ordered to be able to achieve the maximum result for this capacity.

Another adjustment is the possibility to set up the layout of the inbox. This is set in 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 their corresponding Workspace area.

If a work item is rejected, the agent must provide a reason, such as being in a phone call with another customer. When a rejection occurs or the job is timed out, the work item is returned back to the queue to find the next available agent. Whenever an entry is missed by an agent or is timed out, AWA automatically marks the status of the user to ‘away’ to avoid sending additional assignments to them until they are available again.

After an agent accepts a work item, all relevant information is available to them, including historical data. During fulfillment, there may be a need for additional skills to complete the request; in this case, rerouting is an option.

Skill-based routing and assignment is an advanced part of AWA. One example of its usage is when a chat is initiated from a specific location, a required language skill can automatically be added to the conversation. This means that there is no need for separate dedicated queues only to the required skill - availability and capacity should be measured to properly route this work item.

AWA Overflow Strategy is another key feature. It automatically kicks in when one of the channels becomes overloaded - a backup group of agents can be utilized to work on the items. In this instance, cases are automatically routed to secondary or tertiary support groups to help take on work. There are two major benefits that this brings: First there is no proliferation of separate queues, which offers simpler queue management. Secondly, the work item stays in the queue, which means the integrity of the queue reports and work item reports is maintained. This is a very powerful concept which few competing products can match.

Advanced Work Assignment provides dedicated reports and dashboards, which enable managers to monitor work item handling so that agents can better support customer needs.

Figure 4. Advanced Work Assignment dashboard for Operations

The helpdesk or call center manager and team leads are the most experienced people within the team and their time is critical. By utilizing this feature they can be freed up from manual assignment to focus on monitoring, coaching, and training agents, which would be a better use of their time.

From a customer standpoint, there is less wait time and improved customer satisfaction, also known as CSAT.

This article was written by  Bulcsu Boros , Principal ServiceNow Consultant at GuideVision.

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ServiceNow Customer Service Management.

Introduction

CSM helps us to provide service and support to customer.

CSM application enables us to provide service and support for our external customers through communication channels such as web, email, chat, phone and social media. Customers contact our organization through this channels to seek assistance with the product or the service that they have purchased. Case Management helps organizations to effectively track and organize customer interactions. A customer/agent creates a new case to identify a customer question or an issue and to track the activities related to resolving the issue. Created cases are automatically routed to available customer service agent depending upon skill, availability and location.

High Level Architecture

Different Channel

Navigate to CSM module

Know your customer

Customer services cases store a variety of customer information such as accounts , contacts , consumers , assets , products , and service contracts .

The Customer Service Management application also stores information about account and contact relationships .

The foundation data enables agents to quickly and easily access case-related information.

Customer information includes the account and contact information for a customer or partner. Consumer information includes the name, phone number, and one or more addresses for a consumer.

A partner is a external customer that supports one or more customers. A partner account record stores information about a partner’s company.On a partner account record, the Partner field is enabled. A partner can report and manage cases on behalf of customers. A partner can also be a customer.

A consumer is a customer of a business-to-consumer (B2B) use case. A consumer record stores similar information as a contact record, such as the name, phone number, address, and email address. Consumers can have multiple addresses, one of which is the primary address.

An account is a supported external customer and the Account form stores the customer’s information, including the company name, contact names, addresses, phone numbers, and web and email addresses. An account can be a customer account, a partner account, or both.

An account can have one or more associated assets, service contracts, entitlements, and SLAs. An account can also be associated with the following entities:

• service contract
• entitlement

A contact is a user who is an employee of an account. A contact record stores information about a contact, such as the name, phone number, email and web address. An account can have multiple contacts but a contact can be associated with only one account. A contact can have one or more associated assets and service contracts. A contact can also have a user ID and can log in to the customer portal.

A service contract record stores information about the type of support that is provided to a designated company. A contract can include a company , contact and the specific assets that are covered. A contract can also include multiple service entitlements and SLAs.

7.Entitlements

An entitlement defines the type of support that a customer receives as well as the supported communication channels. An entitlement can be associated with a product, an asset, an account, or a contract.

An entitlement check is performed when a case is opened. This check takes into consideration the existing cases for the specific account, product, asset, and service contract. Entitlements can have associated workflows that drive recommended activities for a case.

Entitlements are counted on a per unit basis. The Unit field on the Service Entitlement form defines the unit type, either cases or hours.

Entitlements can also be tracked on a per unit basis. The Total Units field defines the total number of cases or hours available for this entitlement and the Remaining Units field tracks the number of units remaining. These counters are active if the Per Unit field is enabled.

Assign an asset to a customer contact who is responsible for managing that asset.

The system administrator can add a primary contact to an asset by selecting a user in the Primary Contact field on the Asset form. This field references the Contacts table and is filtered by the asset’s account.

The system administrator can also create relationships with additional contacts from the Asset Contacts related list on the Asset form.

When we create an asset contact relationship, we can select contacts from:

•The account that the asset belongs to.

•The partner of the account that the asset belongs to.

•Any contacts added to these accounts using contact relationships.

9.For Business-to-business (B2B) customers, configure these below entities

10.For Business-to-consumer (B2C) customers, configure these blow entities

Relationships

1.Bi-directional accounts

Create a relationship between two customer accounts or between a partner account and a customer account Once an account relationship record is created, it can be viewed on the Account form for either account in the Account Relationships related list.

2.Account relationship types

An account relationship is based on a defined account relationship type. Users with the system administrator role can define two types of relationships: partner-to-account and account-to-account.

3.Account relationship records

Once an account relationship type has been defined, users with the customer service manager role can use it to create relationship records between specific accounts or partners.

4.Account hierarchy

Use the account hierarchy feature to create a parent-child relationship between accounts. An account hierarchy represents the legal entity structure of the accounts and their relationships. It also represents an account’s customers, assets, and service entitlements.

Customer administrators can do the following for all of the accounts in the hierarchy:

Account hierarchy

5.Contact relationship

A contact relationship allows a contact with the customer role or customer administrator role to manage the account for which the contact relationship has been established. These contacts can view information and perform actions on behalf of the accounts, such as creating or updating cases from the customer portal.

To configure foundation data:

1.Create or import data for associated entities.

2.Assign roles to groups or to individual users.

3.Create service contracts and entitlements.

4.Create customer relationships, asset relationships, and account teams.

To create a customer account

Navigate to Customer Service > Customer > Accounts.

To create a partner account

Navigate to Customer Service > Customer > Partners.

• Fill in the fields on the Account form, as appropriate.

Create Contact

4.Enter the name of the contact’s company in the Account field.

• Select the Timezone.
• Select a Notification setting.
• Click Submit .

Create a consumer record

Consumer service agents and managers can create a consumer record from the Customer Service Management application.

4.Fill in the fields on the Primary Address tab.

A consumer can have multiple addresses but only one primary address. The primary address is stored in the Primary Address tab on the Consumer form and in the Addresses related list.

5.If desired, set any of the fields on the Preferences tab.

6.Click Submit .

The record is added to the Consumers table (csm_consumer) . The primary address is added to the Addresses related list and the Primary field is set to true.

Consumers can have multiple addresses, including one primary address.

Create contracts

Create Entitlements

1.Navigate to Customer Service > Contracts > Entitlements. You can also create an entitlement from the Entitlements related list on the Account and Contract forms.

Create Account relationship types

1.Navigate to Customer Service > Administration > Account Relationship Types.

2.Click New.

3.Fill in the fields on the Account Relationship Type form.

Account relationship records

• Navigate to Customer Service > Customer > Accounts or Partners.
• Select an account.
• From the Account Relationships related list, click New.

Create a relationship between accounts and Contact.

• In the Contact Relationships related list, click New.
• Fill in the fields on the Contact Relationship form.

Create asset contact relationships

Assign a primary contact to an asset

• Navigate to Customer Service > Products > Assets.
• Click the desired asset.
• Select a Primary Contact

Assign a contact to an asset

• Click New in the Asset Contacts related list. This displays a new Asset Contact form. The Asset field displays the selected asset and is read-only.

Enable the asset contact relationship property

Enable the Restrict Assets based on Contacts assigned to the assets property.

Case Management

The customer service case is the primary entity of the customer service application.

An agent creates a new case to identify a customer’s question or issue and to track the activities related to resolving the issue.

An agent also uses a case to track all of the communication to and from the customer, including the communication channels being used.

Case activities include any action that is taken to resolve an issue.This can include phone calls or emails, knowledge base research, conversations with subject matter experts, and dispatch requests to field service agents, as well as other activities.

From the Case form, an agent can associate and store the related information, such as the customer’s name, phone number, and company,account information,product and asset information,service contract and entitlement details, and any associated service level agreements (SLAs).

Case Management Process:

•Configure the Case form

•Create rules to route and assign customer service cases

•Assignment workbench

•Special handling notes

•Case and account escalation

•Case action status

•Automatically close customer service cases

Case Routing

Matching rules and assignment rules helps to route the cases to customer service agents.

Matching rules specify conditions that a case must meet before it can be routed to an agent.Then an assignment rule is used to route those cases to agents based on product knowledge and availability.

Matching Rules

Matching rules are based on two defined sets of conditions:

Matching rules are created using the Matching Rule form.

In the resource tab we have Matching field.

Four options are there

1.Selection Criteria

If you selected “Selection Criteria” Then you can get option Select Criteria as below

Matching criteria

The assignment workbench uses configurable matching criteria to evaluate the agents in a selected group and provide an overall ranking.

Several matching criteria are provided with the assignment workbench:

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.

At first create matching criteria.

Create Matching Rule and go to Resource tab and select Matching drop down as Selection criteria and selecting the desired matching criteria.

Click on New button

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 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

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.

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.

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.

Assignment Rules

Assignment Rules helps to automatically assign task to users and groups based on 3 different criteria

Applies to and assign to can work together to determine how cases are distributed

Scripted: When the criteria needs to be more customized

Create service level agreements

A service level agreement (SLA) is a record that specifies the time within which service must be provided.

The Customer Service Management application uses the standard ServiceNow SLA with customer service cases. An SLA can be attached to a service contract, to a company, and to a product and can be configured to start, pause, and stop based on any customer service case attributes.

Define an SLA for a customer service case

• Navigate to Customer Service > Cases > All.
• Select the desired case from the Cases list.

• Fill in the fields on the Task SLA form.

5.Click Submit.

CSM integration with Service Management

We can integrate CSM module with ITSM modules like Incident , Problem , Change , and Request Management .

This integration helps us to create Incident, Change, Problem and Request from Case and vice versa .

The integration with ITSM provides the following functionality:

•We can also create case from incident, problem, change, and request records.

•Agents can associate existing incident, problem, change, and request records with cases or remove associated records from cases.

•Customers can submit requests from the Customer Service Portal. A case is created for each request.

•Updates to records associated with a case automatically update the case work notes. (We have OOTB business rules to update the worknotes)

•Updates to cases with associated records can be used for customer communication.

•Agents and managers can view cases with Service Management-related indicators on the Customer Service dashboards.

Required plugins for integration are as follows

•com.sn_cs_sm : For Incident, Problem and Change integration

Related Records

In the case form we have Related Records form section.This section includes the following fields:

•Change Request

•Caused by Change

When an incident, problem, or change record is created from a case, or an existing record is associated with a case, the record number is added to the corresponding field.

Related list

In related list section of Case form we can see Incident,Change,Problem and Request related lists.

Agent can create new incident,change,Problem,request records from cases or associate existing Incident,Change,Problem and Request to cases.

When we create an Incident,Change,Problem,Request recods from cases we may want to copy the details like description,priority to the newly created incident/problem.

To do this, we can create an Display business rule that copies the parent.<fields> into the incident/problem

Below is the code:

CSM integration with Event Management

We can integrate CSM module with ITOM module like Event Management .

This integration helps us to create cases proactively from alerts either manually or through automation and track the accounts and the corresponding install base items affected by the alert.

• Navigate to System Definition > Plugins.
• Search for the plugin com.snc.proactive_cs_ops.

• Click Activate.

Note: Proactive Customer Service Operations is only available for customers who are licensed for the Customer Service Management application.

To activate Proactive Customer Service Operations, activate the Proactive Customer Service Operations Management plugin (com.snc.proactive_cs_ops). This plugin is not active by default.

Activating this plugin also installs the Major Issue Management, Customer Service Install Base Management, Customer Service with Service Management, Customer Service Case Action Status, and Task-Outage Relationship plugins.

Activate an alert rule to automatically create a proactive case from an alert

• Navigate to Event Management > Rules > Alert Management.
• Click Create Proactive Case.
• Select the Active check box.
• Click Update

Phone channel

External customers can reach out to customer service agents by phone. The Customer Service Management application uses both Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and OpenFrame to provide phone support for customers.

CTI provides a way to integrate the Now Platform with telephony providers to support inbound and outbound calls.

With this integration, customer service agents can place and accept calls from customers, quickly identify customers and account information, and capture case-related information.

OpenFrame is a tool that enables CTI capability with telephony service providers. OpenFrame provides a communication frame that agents use to place and receive customer calls.

• Navigate to OpenFrame > Configurations to display the OpenFrame Configurations list.

• Fill in the fields, as appropriate

Notify provides support for SMS and voice channels on the ServiceNow platform for communicating internally with team members and externally with customers and contractors. The plug-in also provides APIs and workflow activities to achieve the above. Some customers directly make use of the APIs in their products others via products like Major Incident Management, On-Call and CTI Softphone.

Customer service chat channel

Customers can use the chat channel to communicate with a customer service agent. The chat communication channel uses the ServiceNow Connect Support feature to provide chat capability. You can also enable Virtual Agent to create or use predefined chatbot topics (conversations) for your users. The user always has the option of switching to a live agent.

The Customer Service Portal and Consumer Service Portal include a chat icon that customers can click to open a chat window and start a discussion with a customer service agent.

The chat request from the customer is either routed to a virtual agent or to an available agent with the required skill set. The agent can respond to the customer and, if necessary, create a new case or link the discussion to an existing case.

Agents must be added to the Customer Service chat support assignment group before they can receive chat requests. This assignment group is used by the Customer Service chat queue to route the chat requests.

Configure the customer service chat queue

https://www.learnnowlab.com/connect-support/

Activate Virtual Agent for CSM

Activate Virtual Agent for CSM to use the predefined Customer Service Virtual Agent topics (chatbot conversations) designed to help your customers complete common self-service tasks.

Activate the Customer Service Virtual Agent Conversations plugin (com.sn_csm.virtualagent) to access the predefined Customer Service topics.

Customer/Consumer Service Portal

The Customer / consumer Service Portal is a self-service web portal based on the ServiceNow Service Portal application.

The Customer Service Portal provides information and support for your customers.

Below is the Customer service portal home page

Agent Workspace for CSM

Agent Workspace for CSM supports the needs of agents handling customer inquiries, issues, and cases from multiple sources, including:

• Case agents, who handle cases created from the Customer or Consumer Service Portals or from inbound emails.

• Phone agents, who handle customer phone inquiries.

• Chat agents, who handle customer chat requests. Agent Workspace for CSM makes it easy for agents to efficiently manage multiple cases, accounts, customers, and consumers.

• The multi-tab interface improves agent productivity by enabling agents to easily navigate between records.

• The ribbon provides overview information in a way that quickly orients an agent to case details.

• The intuitive Case form layout minimizes scrolling by displaying case details side-by-side with the activity stream.

• Agent Assist enables agents to quickly search for information across multiple sources such as knowledge bases and community sites.

• Predictive Intelligence can provide agents with a list of similar cases and can also provide recommendations about major issues and major cases.

Agent Workspace for CSM landing pages

Landing pages provide customer service agents with an overview of their new, assigned, and high priority cases plus the cases assigned to their groups. Landing pages can also include analytics. Customer service agents can use these pages to quickly scan and access cases.

The CSM Landing Page is available for Agent Workspace for CSM. This landing page is included with the CSM Workspace plugin (com.snc.agent_workspace.csm). It includes components that display case information, plus visualizations that further break down the component data. Each visualization is connected to a data source. For example, the My High Priority Cases component includes visualizations for P1 and escalated cases. This landing page does not require a Performance Analytics license.

To add Performance Analytics information to the CSM Landing Page landing page, activate the Performance Analytics - Content Pack - Customer Service Management - Advanced plugin (com.snc.pa.customer_service_advanced). This plugin adds a section for My Organization’s Performance, which includes analytics for CSAT and New vs Closed Cases. Create landing pages for different agents and teams by cloning the CSM Landing Page and adding or modifying components and visualizations.

• Navigate to Agent Workspace > Landing Pages.

• Click the CSM Landing Page.

• Click Clone Page.

• Fill out the form.

• Configure permissions for users to access the landing page.

a. Click the UX Page Element Permissions related list.

b. Click New.

c. Select the role or group for the landing page to be visible.

d. Click Submit to save your permissions.

Configure a container: a. Click the UX Page Elements related list.

b. Click New Container or select an existing container. c. Fill out the form.

Configure a widget: a. Click New Visualization or select an existing widget.

b. Fill out the form.

Click Update to save changes to the landing page.

AWA for CSM overview

Use the ServiceNow®Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) for Customer Service Management feature to automatically assign work items to agents based on their availability, capacity, and skills. AWA for CSM 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.

Work Assignment

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.

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.

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.

Get started with Advanced Work Assignment

• Activate the Advanced Work Assignment plugin for your instance.

Activate related AWA plugins to enable base system service channels and the Performance Analytics Solution for AWA. For example, activate the Agent Chat plugin to enable the Chat service channel and Agent Chat in Agent Workspace.

Configure the service channels that you activated.

o Create or modify an inbox layout.

o Override agent capacity as needed.

Create agent groups to which work items are assigned.

Create work item queues for your service channels.

o Define the pools of agents eligible for assignment (eligibility assignment).

o Set the sort order for work items in the queue.

Configure the work assignment rules used to push work to the appropriate agents.

Set the controls that agents use to manage their availability states and assignments in Agent Workspace.

o Create or update the presence states that agents use to indicate their availability.

o Create or update the reasons that agents use to decline work assignments.

Assignment Workbench:

Assignment Workbench enables customer service managers to assign tasks to the best agent available.

The workbench uses configurable criteria, such as skills and availability, to evaluate agents in a selected group and provide an overall ranking.Managers can view these results and use the simple UI to assign a task.

Configure the Assignment workbench

The assignment workbench configuration is stored in a matching rule that is based on the Selection criteria matching type. The default configuration uses the Recommendation for Case Assignment matching rule, which includes three of the four default matching criteria:

• Availability Today • Matching Skills • Assigned Cases

Based on these matching criteria, the workbench calculates and displays an overall rank for each agent in the group. You can modify or create matching criteria and the Recommendation for Case Assignment matching rule as needed or you can create your own configuration following these steps:

• Create one or more matching criteria.
• Create a matching rule with the Selection criteria matching type.
• Open the matching rule and add the desired matching criteria.

If you are using mandatory skills, you must replace the Matching Skills criterion in this matching rule with the Matching Skills - Mandatory Skills Support criterion to match agents with mandatory skills required for a case.

Open any case and click on find agent ion the Assigned to Field

Select the agent

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With 9+ years of ITSM development experience,Chandrima likes to deep dive ServiceNow modules.She have extensively worked on PA,Service Portal,Event management.

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Agent Workspace

Agent workspace step by step implementation from scratch

I will recommend you to watch Agent Workspace Series first to get live implementation experience. Please click on below link for live demonstration.

Activate “ com.agent_workspace ” to enable workspace.

ServiceNow also provides preconfigured workspace for other application by enabling plugins.

• CMDB ( com.cmdb-workspace ): This plugin help agent to access essentials cmdb configuration item, drill-down to related item such as incident, change etc..
• Customer Service Management (CSM) ( com.snc.agent_workspace.csm ): This plugin help agent to manage csm module like Case, Accounts, Consumers and Customers.
• IT Service Management ( com.snc.agent_workspace.itsm ): This plugins help agent to manage ITSM module like Incident, change and problem.
• Operational Intelligence ( com.oi-scoped-app ) : This plugin help agent to view the health of CI associated with an alert.

Additional plugins:

• Advanced Work Assignment  (com.glide.awa): Route work items to agents so that they can access their work item assignments from their Agent Workspace inboxes
• Agent Chat  (com.glide.interaction.awa): This plugin Activate quick actions, response templates, Agent Chat, and the Chat service channel in Advanced Work Assignment
• Openframe  (com.sn_openframe): Openframe and CTI enable third-party phone integrations for phone use

When we activate Agent Workspace, the addition of four new roles will also take place. These roles provide different levels of access to the application (modules) and UI.

• template_editor
• ui_action_admin
• personalize_form
• interaction_admin
• workspace_list_admin
• Workspace List Administrator: The  workspace_list_admin  role provides the ability to create list categories and filtered lists in Agent Workspace. This role contains “agent_workspace_user”.

Note:  This is an elevated role.

• Workspace Agent: The  agent_workspace_user  role provides access to Agent Workspace UI. The itil (ITSM) and sn_esm_agent (CSM) roles contain this role
• Workspace User: The  workspace_user  role provides access to workspace_core. This role is for internal use only

Workspace Setup:

Our job is to make the work our agents do as easy as possible. When configuring Workspace, we set up all the tools that agents need to complete their work and eliminate anything extraneous.

Get started with setting up workspace

A) Create Workspace:

If you do not want to leverage existing workspaces, ServiceNow allows you to create your own workspace to simplify the workflow of custom tasks in your organization.

Steps to create workspace

• Open the Guided Application Creator by navigating to System Applications > My Company Applications.
• Click on “Create New”
• Enter a name of your application and click “Create”
• Add the agent_workspace_user role or any additional role if required and hit Continue.
• Select Workspace and hit Continue.
• Add table if any, you can add it later on as well.
• Application got created now it’s time to design workspace. To start click on Start button.
• The Application Creator will allow you to review the properties for your application before continuing. If you need to make additional changes, you can do it here. To move ahead click Continue.
• System will ask to choose navigation option between tabbed and single page. Choose tabbed one and go.
• Next is Utility selection, you can select which settings users can enable/disable to personalize their workspace experience, enable notifications, and enable global search (along with selecting search sources).
• Select the module which you want to display in navigation bar.

B) Brand Workspace:

Navigate to Work Experience > Administration > All Workspaces and click a workspace which you want to edit.

Brand color 1  specifies the color of the branding bar above the Workspace.  Brand color 2  appears in the heading of the Settings menu and in the left, side pane that contains the icons for home and list.

C) Configure Landing Page:

The landing page is the first thing agents will see in Agent Workspace. It displays a set of preconfigured reports and PA widgets that are specific to the agent’s work responsibilities.

• Navigate to All Workspace and open which you want to configure, Now click on ui action “Open in UI Builder”
• Create a new page or copy any existing page.
• Go to add component, using drag and drop add your desired component.

We have 6 OOB component:

• Container: We can use this to have group of component.
• Report/PA Widget: We can use this component to have Performance analytics and Reporting visualization.
• Image: We can use this component to have to add image on workspace.
• Rich Text: We can use this component to have String anywhere on landing page.
• Data Visualization: We can use this component to have New, existing Report and widgets.
• Heading: We can use this component to have the title of the page.
• List: We can use this component to have list of record from single table

4. Click Save and Activate the Workspace.

D) Add List:

The list view displays filtered lists of records, such as All tasks, Open tasks, and My tasks. By setting up list categories and filtered lists

What we can configure in List view

• Create Category: Create categories for lists, such as All Incident, Problem, and Change. You must create a list category before you can create a list filter.

Ex. Go to all workspace > Open your workspace > go to related list “Workspace category list” > create new.

Note: If related list not available by default then add related list on the form.

• Create List: Create a subset of all the records in the database, such as All incident, My Incident, and Open incident. Filtered list names are clickable.

Ex. Go to all workspace > Open your workspace > go to related list “Workspace List”.

• Conditions  – The condition builder where you can set the conditions for your highlighted value to display.
• Status  – The status to display for your highlighted value.
• Show Icon  – The option that you can select to display an icon with the status.
• Value Override  – The text that you can specify to render in the highlighted value (i.e., override “1- Critical” with “Escalated”).

E) Add Form:

A workspace form contains many components. many of the components can be configured. in addition, you can add custom components as well..

Let’s talk about each component

• 1. Header: Navigate to Workspace Experience > Form > Form Header.

Create new and design field the way you want.

• 2. Ribbons: Form ribbons contain at-a-glance information about the record, such as timeline, the user or customer summary, and SLAs.

To create or modify form ribbons, navigate to  Workspace Experience > Forms > Ribbon Settings.

Types of Ribbon Component:

• Active SLA: The Active SLA ribbon displays an indicator of active SLAs, including time remaining, SLA state, and SLA breaches.
• CMDB Health: CMDB Health ribbon displays critical incidents, change requests, and health scores (incomplete attributes, non-compliant relationships, stale relationships) of a configuration item.
• CMDB Relationship: CMDB Relationships ribbon displays level 1 relationships of a configuration item.
• CMDB Timeline: The CMDB Timeline displays record changes, change requests, and incidents on the timeline for a configuration item. By default, the timeline shows the past 14 days.
• Customer360: Using this component we can display customer information.
• Timeline: The Timeline ribbon displays a summary of record activities, including state changes and interactions between the agent and the customer. It also shows how much time the agent and customer, or requester spent on the record. The timeline ribbon component uses the resolution shaper configuration for the selected entity table.

You have to addition setting to use timeline: navigate to table “ sys_resolutionshaper_config ” and create new record for selected table.

• 3. Lookup and Verify: On interaction records, agents can quickly identify consumer or customer information using the Lookup and Verify functionality.

With this functionality, you can control the type-ahead search and the information displayed in the search results list and verification card.

You can modify this functionality by navigating to  Workspace Experience > Lookup and Verify > Configuration.

• Configuring the form layout for Agent Workspace is the same as modifying the form layout in the platform UI.
• Not all field types are supported in Agent Workspace. Here is a list of field types that are supported for Agent Workspace

• 5. Workspace View Rule: You can use Workspace View Rules to control which form view renders for agents using roles and conditions. Also, you can use view rules to control focus and order. 

To create or edit existing view rules, navigate to  Workspace Experience > Forms > Workspace View Rules.

F) UI Actions:

Creating UI actions in Agent Workspace follows a similar process for creating UI actions in the platform. Define the type of action, limit access using conditions and roles, and defining the action that occurs once an agent clicks it.

Creating or modifying UI actions requires the  workspace_admin  role. To create UI actions in Agent Workspace, navigate to  System Definition > UI Actions .

G) New Record Menu:

Use the New Record Menu Item form to specify the type of records agents can create, the order in which the record types appear in the menu, and if the record type should be selectable from the menu. To add additional tables to this list, navigate to  Workspace Experience > Administration > All Workspaces , open the desired workspace, and click the New button on the New Record menu Items related list.

Agents must have Create permissions for each table in the New Record Menu to be able to create a record from the menu.

H) Workspace Notifications:

On-screen notifications allow the system to alert agents about new or updated records. Workspace notifications add context to new or revised records and enable agents to link directly to the record. When a record (that the agent is not currently working on) changes, an indicator appears on any open record so that it is visible to an agent.

You will need to determine the conditions when a notification appears for your agents in Agent Workspace, such as when a record update or is assigned to a user.

Configuring notifications requires the  workspace_admin  or  notification_provider_admin role . Navigate to  Workspace Experience >Administration > Notification Triggers  to configure notifications.

Workspace notifications can be sent to a maximum of five users. They are intended to direct an individual agent or small group of agents to a record rather than notify a broad distribution list.

I) Search Sources:

Search sources define which tables can be queried in the global search. These results can be filtered, allowing your agents to only see the information that is relevant to their investigation.

• Search Context Configuration: The Search Context Configuration form specifies how many search results and suggestions to return in the global search. Also, you can define which search sources the workspace uses. To configure the search context, you will need the  workspace_admin  role. To get to this record, navigate to  WorkspaceExperience > Administration > All Workspaces  and open the record stored in the Global Search Data Config field

Note: You can view, create, and modify search sources by navigating to Workspace Experience > Administration > Search Sources.

• Global Search: Change the default settings on the Workspace Global Search Configuration page to amend the number of search results that display for agents.

To change the settings, you will need the  workspace_admin  role. Navigate to  Workspace Experience > Administration > All Workspaces  and open the record in the Global Search View Config field.

Note: If any access control lists (ACLs) are configured to prevent users from accessing certain information, the search results show a message to the agent about security constraints.

J) Add Side Panel/ Agent Assist:

Agent Workspace comes preconfigured with components in the Contextual Side panel but you can add more. Each component can appear for all tables or you can set up a component to display only when an agent opens records from specific tables.

Steps to add side panel

• Navigate to Workspace Experience > Actions & Components > Contextual Side panel Items and click New
• Fill the details and save the form.
• Create Table Configuration: navigate to  Contextual Search > Table Configuration .
• Copy table configuration record sys_id and open side panel record, go to advanced view and paste it in “Component Attribute”.

Add Agent Assist:

• Contextual Search Form Settings: You can set up Agent Assist for every table your agents can access. You can even set up more than one Agent Assist for each table. Each of those Agent Assists would search a different repository of information.

To enable or modify the contextual search for a specific table, you will need the  workspace_admin  role. To configure contextual search, navigate to  Contextual Search > Table Configuration

• Search Filed: A list of fields a search is conducted on.
• Filter Configuration:  Define the filter configuration to map fields from the form to provide a more target search result.
• Email Configuration: Define email configuration to allow the system to include search results with email notification.
• Search Action Configuration: Modify or disable search actions to restrict the action that a user can perform on a separate result.
• Filter Condition: You can create conditions that statically or dynamically change the search results that appear in Agent Assist. For example, if the Category field on the record is Software, Agent Assist can show similar records where the Category field is also Software. To add a filter condition, click New on the Filter Configuration related list.

To write a script that selectively hides Agent Assist search results, select the Scripted filter check box and enter a script in the Script field.

• Search Action:

Define the search UI action labels for Agent Assist so that agents know what to do with the search results.

K) Agent Chat and Work Assignment:

Workspace Agent Chat to enable live agent chat with customers. Through Agent Chat, agents interact with customers, create incident or case records, or transfer chats to another agent or queue.

Agent Workspace uses the  Advanced Work Assignment   (AWA)  feature to automatically assign work items to your agents based on their availability, capacity, and skills. AWA pushes work to qualified agents using work item queues, routing conditions, and assignment criteria that you define.

Steps to configure Agent chat

• Install Plugins: com.glide.interaction.awa
• Create and Configure: Chat setup
• Create and Configure: Service portal agent chat record

Create and Configure Steps:

• Chat Set Up:

The Chat Setup form specifies which interface agents are using and which queues to assign work.

Navigate to  Collaborate > Chat Setup to create new. To route chat interactions or work in Agent Workspace, change the fulfiller fields to “Agent Workspace.”

2. Service Channel: A service channel is a way of defining what type of work you want to route. For chat interactions, the  Chat  service channel used to route and assign chat interactions is added when the Agent Chat plugin is installed. To view or modify this record, navigate to  Advanced Work Assignment > Settings > Service Channels .

3. Work Item Queue: A work item queue defines where to route the work. A few different queues are provided out of the box. To create your own work item queues, navigate to  Advanced Work Assignment >  Settings > Queues .

4. Role Assignment: Installing the Advanced Work Assignment plugin adds a new role  awa_agent . Agents working in Agent Workspace need this role to see the Inbox icon in Agent Workspace. Navigate to the  Advanced Work Assignment > Management > Groups  module and add the awa_agent role to all the groups working on work items or chat interactions.

Create and Configure ( Service portal agent chat record )

Navigate to  Service Portal > Agent Chat

Create new record and fill the details.

Note: You can also do some additional setting like configuring quick actions, quick response templates .

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Barcode or qr codes generation in servicenow, how to become a certified system administrator (csa), servicenow versions / release, 14 comments.

what are the disadvantages of agent workspace

As per my knowledge there is no disadvantage of agent workspace.

great work .. much appreciate your efforts. thanks for sharing

Thanks for your feedback!!

How agent workspace helps in tnpm

Workspace option is not available when creating a new application in Quebec version. How can we proceed further with your tutorial?

Servicenow has changes the way of workspace creation. You can navigate to App Engine Studio and add experience. You will get an option to add workspace.

Thank you for your response.

If i want to get URL of ay record or list of the records ,how can we get it ? like if i open any service catalog need a URL path in Agent Workspace ?

Every record in servicenow have unique 32 character sys id. you will get directly from url or open your for which you want sys id and then right click on header. you will get an option to copy sys id.

From where i can get Agent Workspace document file. Please help me out with this.

All content are shared here only via post.

how i add expert-oncall icon and group details on contextual panel.

1. Navigate to All > Now Experience Framework > UI Builder. 2. From the My experiences list, select Service Operations Workspace. 3. From the Page list, select Record. 4. Under Variants, select Record SNC. 5. From the Body level of the Content tree to the left of the main page area of UI Builder, select Contextual sidebar.

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Configure the Walk-up Experience portal

Create engaging walk-up center service portals featuring your logo, portal theme,\n desired catalog, links to a knowledge base and social community, and more.

Walk-up Experience includes a complete base-system Walk-up\n Portal with theme. The Walk-up Portal pages\n are meant to be used as built. You can create custom portal pages to meet your needs\n by copying the portal pages and associated widgets and making changes to the copies.\n You can configure both an online check-in portal and a physical check-in portal for\n your walk-up locations.

• Service Portal application: Modular user interface\n framework for quick and easy building and customization of application\n portals.
• Service Portal Walk-up form: Requires CSS and HTML experience.
• \n To configure the Walk-up service portal using the Service\n Portal application, navigate to All > Service Portal > Service Portal Configuration . \n
• \n To customize the base-system walk-up portal with your unique branding, title,\n logo, theme colors, layout, properties, widgets, and more, or to create a new\n walk-up portal, refer to \n Service Portal \n for detailed information. \n
• \n Alternatively, to configure the Walk-up service portal using the Service Portal\n Walk-up form, navigate to All > Walk-up Experience > Administration > Portal Configurations . \n
• \n In the Service Portals list, select Walk-up . \n

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