Auto Assignment

When a new ticket (Request, Problem, Change, and Release) comes, it is an open ticket, and not assigned to any technician. To prevent a pile of unattended tickets, you can automatically assign them to the desired technicians. The system filters a set of technicians before applying the logic.

The conditions to filter the technicians are:

• Based on the Technician Group: If the technician group is selected, the system will consider all the technicians in that group for Auto Assignment.
• Based on the Technician Assigned: If the assignee is not defined, then only Auto Assignment will evaluate the ticket.
• Based on Roles and Permissions: If no group or assignee is defined, the system will consider all the technicians who can access the ticket (even a small edit privilege is enough).
• Based on Excluded List: The system will not consider the technicians listed in the excluded list.

Configurations

To configure the Auto Assignment settings,

Navigate to Admin > Automation > Auto Assignment and the page appears.

Here, you can set the below options for Request, Problem, Change, and Release modules:

• Manual: The system will not do anything when a new ticket comes. Technicians have to manually investigate the tickets and assign to fellow technicians.
• Round Robin: The system will assign the ticket to all the technicians one by one in a round robin fashion. For example: If there are 5 technicians, the system will assign 5 tickets one by one to each technician. For the 6th ticket, again the system will start assigning to the first technician.
• Smart Balance: The Smart Balance Auto Assignment option ensures fair and efficient distribution of tickets among technicians by considering ticket priority and technician workload. It prevents overburdening individual technicians while optimizing resource allocation.

Automated Ticket Assignment Logic:

• The system automatically assigns Request, Problem, Change, and Release tickets based on the technician's existing workload and ticket priority.
• The algorithm considers the number of tickets assigned per priority and balances assignments accordingly.

The system will assign the ticket based on the following criteria:

• Technician Group is assigned.
• The group members have the default Support Level set as Tier 1 (Only for Request tickets).
• Priority of already assigned tickets.
• Number of tickets assigned with equal or higher priority compared to the new ticket.
• If two or more technicians have the same number of tickets with equal or higher priority, the system assigns the ticket to the technician with the least total load.

For example, there are three technicians (T1, T2, T3) with assigned tickets as follows:

Priority	Priority Value (P)	T1		T2		T3
		No. of Tickets (N1)	Load (P*N)	No. of Tickets (N2)	Load (P*N)	No. of Tickets (N3)	Load (P*N)
Low	3	3	9	1	3	2	6
Medium	7	2	14	1	7	1	7
High	11	2	22	1	11	0	0
Urgent	15	1	15	0	0	1	15
Total Load		60		21		28

• T1: Low (3), Medium (2), High (2), Urgent (1); Total Load: 60
• T2: Low (1), Medium (1), High (1), Urgent (0); Total Load: 21
• T3: Low (2), Medium (1), High (0), Urgent (1); Total Load: 28

When a new High priority ticket is created:

Higher priority tickets count:

• T1 - 3
• T2 - 1
• T3 - 1

Since T2 and T3 have the same number of higher-priority tickets, but T2 has the lowest total load, the new ticket will be assigned to T2.

note

When a ticket is created or assigned, or when a technician is added or deleted, the load will be recalculated for that technician. Additionally, if the load of other affected technicians has not been updated in the last 10 minutes, it will be recalculated for them as well. However, if their load has already been updated within the last 10 minutes, no recalculation will be performed.

Module-Specific Load Calculation:

• The Smart Balance algorithm applies to the Request, Problem, Change, and Release modules.
• Assignments are based only on actively assigned tickets.

note

• By default, Tier 1 Support Level is assigned to all the newly created tickets. You can also change the default Support Level from the Request Preference section. Other tier numbers have to be manually assigned to the tickets and are not considered for auto-assignment.
• For Request module, the Smart Balance will function only if the Support Level is assigned to a technician from Technicians page.

• Excluded Technicians: You can select the Technicians you wish to exclude from getting the tickets assigned automatically.
• Consider only Logged in Technicians: Enable this flag if you wish to consider only those technicians who are Logged In for the Auto Assignment.

Once done, click Update, and the settings will get applied to the module (request, problem, change, or release) for which auto assignment is configured.

note

• The Auto Assignment works only on the new requests. It does not assign technicians to the existing open tickets.
• The Auto Assignment should be a one time job and set while configuring the system. Doing it at a later stage can leave a huge pile of requests unattended.
• The option set over here will be overridden if a Workflow or Scenario related to Auto Assignment (Round Robin or Smart Balance) is configured. If the "Manual" option is selected here, and in the Workflow/Scenario "Auto Assignment" is set, then the auto-assignment feature will not work.
• In case of MSP mode, the auto assignment feature will check for the requester’s company and behave in the following way:
  • If the requester’s company is blank, the ticket will be assigned to only those technicians whose company is blank.
  • If a single company is assigned to a requester, the ticket will be assigned to only those technicians who has the same assigned company.
  • If multiple companies are assigned, then based on the “Company” field the behavior will be as below.
    • If the field is set to Any Company, the ticket will be assigned to only those technicians who has the same assigned company.
    • If the field is set as blank, then Round Robin or Smart Balance logic will be applied to all the assigned companies.