Configuring Auto Assignment › How to Begin Implementing Auto Assignment › Auto Assignment by Workshift

Auto Assignment by Workshift

You can constrain auto assignment by relating an area or category to a workshift. The workshift determines the timeframe within which tickets are eligible for auto assignment. Tickets opened outside the hours of the workshift are assigned to the default group and analyst or left for manual assignment.

You can also use workshifts to control group and analyst eligibility for assignment:

• If you assign a work schedule to a group, analysts in that group are eligible for auto assignment only to tickets opened during their work schedule.

  Note: A group’s workshift is specified in the Work Schedule field of the Group Detail page.

• If you assign a work schedule to an individual analyst, the analyst is eligible for auto assignment only to tickets opened during that work schedule.

  Note: An analyst’s workshift is specified in the Work Schedule field of the Analyst Detail page.

During ticket creation, the auto assignment logic attempts to identify the analyst with the fewest active tickets in a group that meets the assignment eligibility criteria. If an appropriate analyst is not identified, the ticket is assigned to the default group and assignee. If these defaults are not defined, the ticket is left for manual assignment.

For workflow tasks associated with change orders or issues, auto assignment uses a simpler selection strategy. Assignees are selected from groups associated with workflow templates. Workflow task assignees can be of any contact type except group. When a task changes to pending status, auto assignment selects the contact that has the fewest change order or issue workflow tasks assigned. To prevent unwanted results, if the parent change order category or issue category is not enabled for auto assignment, tasks are not auto assigned. Because workflow tasks could potentially encompass individuals external to the service desk organization, relying on them to reflect their availability with the available flag could be problematic.

Note: Auto assignment of workflow tasks does not evaluate the Available flag, and is not available for categories configured to use CA Workflow processing.

You can use the area or category detail pages to relate a workshift to an area or category, or you can use the following controls on the Workshift Detail page:

• Update Request Areas
• Update Change Categories
• Update Issue Categories

Examples: Use Workshifts in Auto Assignment Configuration

The following are examples of how you can use workshifts in your auto assignment configuration:

• Auto assign tickets to the shift on duty—If your service desk operates 24 hours per day, you may want to configure auto assignment such that network outage problems are assigned to the shift on duty when the ticket is opened.
• Allow auto assignment only during a specified shift—You may want to further restrict auto assignment of tickets in some areas or categories. For example, if a site's application analysts are on duty only during day shift, you may want to auto assign application problems only during the day shift.