task assignment in servicenow

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How to create a task in servicenow.

ServiceNow is a platform with many services to streamline and automate business processes. It allows users to assign and track tasks. Task creation is simple. Define the details, assign the task, set a due date and add instructions. This helps teams collaborate.

A cool feature is task dependencies . Certain tasks will start when prerequisite tasks are complete. This ensures tasks are done in the right order, making workflows more efficient.

Integration with other modules is possible. For instance, link tasks to incidents or change requests. See the whole process from start to finish.

Fun fact: Forbes named ServiceNow one of the world’s most innovative companies multiple times.

Understanding the task creation process in ServiceNow

When creating tasks in ServiceNow, provide clear and concise information. Here are some tips to help you further enhance the task creation process:

• Use descriptive task names – avoid generic titles, and be specific.
• Include relevant details in the task description.
• Set realistic priorities based on importance and urgency.
• Delegate tasks to individuals with the right skills and expertise .
• Maintain open communication throughout the task creation process.

Following these suggestions can help streamline the task creation process, resulting in improved project efficiency and productivity.

Step-by-step guide to creating a task in ServiceNow

• Access ServiceNow and sign in.
• Go to the “Tasks” module and click “New”.
• Fill out the info: task name, description, priority, assignment group, and due date. Plus, add any extra notes or attachments if required.

Providing all the needed details properly allows for smooth communication within your team. Make sure to check for updates or changes in assigned tasks too, to keep everyone informed. Monitoring and updating tasks regularly boosts productivity and helps monitor progress.

Bonus Tip: Take advantage of ServiceNow’s integration capabilities. Sync your tasks with external tools like Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar to streamline workflow and complete tasks on schedule.

Best practices for creating tasks in ServiceNow

Creating tasks in ServiceNow calls for following a set of best practices for efficient and effective task management. Utilize these practices to streamline workflow and boost collaboration among your team. Here’s a simple guide for creating tasks in ServiceNow:

• Define objectives: Before creating a task, clearly state the objectives and desired results. This way, you and the assignee know what needs to be done.
• Assign tasks wisely: Consider skills, availability, and workload of the assignee. Delegate tasks to people who have the necessary expertise and capacity to complete them.
• Provide instructions: To avoid confusion, give clear and detailed instructions for each task. Include any relevant info or resources that will assist the assignee in completing the task.
• Set realistic deadlines: When setting deadlines, take into account factors like complexity, priority, and dependencies. Be realistic and allow enough time for thorough completion without compromising quality.
• Take advantage of tracking features: ServiceNow has built-in features for tracking tasks, such as progress updates and status notifications. Use these features to stay informed about progress and promptly address any issues.
• Foster communication and collaboration: Encourage open communication and collaboration by providing channels for discussions, feedback sharing, and updates. This will help align towards shared goals.

In addition to these best practices, review and update tasks regularly. Keep an organized system of task management to ensure continuous improvement in team productivity. To further optimize your task creation process:

• Break down complex tasks: Break down complex tasks into smaller subtasks for better tracking of progress and easier assignment. This also enables parallelization of work, leading to increased efficiency.
• Prioritize tasks: Assign appropriate priorities to tasks to focus on critical activities and ensure timely completion. Use a structured approach, such as the Eisenhower Matrix, to categorize tasks.

Following these suggestions will improve your task creation process in ServiceNow, resulting in improved productivity, collaboration, and overall success in achieving organizational goals.

Troubleshooting common issues when creating tasks in ServiceNow

Errors while creating tasks? Check these common causes!

• Assign correctly: Double-check assigned user’s profile and permissions.
• Fill mandatory fields: Don’t forget required fields or errors may occur.
• Valid attachments: Make sure attached files meet platform requirements.
• Workflow problems: Analyzing workflows can help find & address bottlenecks.

Enhance productivity! Update your ServiceNow platform for new features & bug fixes.

Conclusion and final tips for effective task creation in ServiceNow

Creating tasks in ServiceNow needs careful thinking. Follow these tips for effective task creation and improved workflow experience.

• 1. Rank tasks according to urgency and importance. This will help you stay on track and finish important tasks fast.
• 2. Write clear and brief descriptions for each task. Include all necessary info, such as due dates, connections, and instructions.
• 3. Revisit and update your task list often. This helps you stay organized and complete tasks on time.

Also, assign resources wisely when making tasks in ServiceNow. Think about availability and skills of people assigned to each job for great results.

Also, break down big tasks into smaller chunks for easier management. This lets you track progress and completion more effectively.

Plus, communicate with team members by providing timely updates on statuses. This encourages cooperation and keeps everyone focused on goals.

Remember that creating tasks well is essential for productivity. By following these tips, you can make your workflow in ServiceNow smoother, leading to better efficiency and successful project outcomes.

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Handling Assignment Rules in ServiceNow

In ServiceNow, if one is looking for automatic assignments then he can rely on the instance’s ability to assign the tasks automatically to different users and groups depending on the specified conditions. In order to achieve this, ServiceNow has the following modules:

• Assignment Lookup Rules
• Assignment Rules

Assignment Lookup Rules:

This module appears under the ‘System Policy application’ menu. This table is basically generated out of the box as its definition is provided in the ‘Data Lookup Definition’ table in the instance, specifically for field assignments in the incident table. Assignment lookup rules mainly provide the functionality of changing any field value and not just the assignment fields.

Assignment Rules:

This module appears under the ‘System Policy application’ menu. It helps to automatically assign the tasks to a particular user or a particular group using the assigned_to and assignment_group fields respectively, depending on the specified set of conditions. One can define these assignment rules readily for their desired table.

Following are the steps for defining the assignment rule:

• Navigate to System Policy -> Assignment -> New

• From the above figure, one can see that the dot-walking can also be done in the condition builder field. Just select the ‘Show Related Fields’ option in the condition and then select the appropriate attribute.
• Further, in the ‘Assign To’ tab, select the appropriate user and group to whom the task is to be assigned.

If two assignment rules conflict, then the assignment rule with the lowest execution order runs first. The lower the execution order, the higher is the precedence.

Distinguishing Factors between the Data Lookup Rules and Assignment Rules:

Precedence among the assignment rule and business rule:

In certain circumstances, the business rules gain precedence over the assignment rules.

The business rules and assignments rules run in the following order:

• All the ‘before record insert’ business rules having order less than 1000.
• First and foremost, assignment rule with lowest execution order and matching condition.
• All the ‘before record insert’ business rules having order more than 1000.
• All the ‘after record insert’ business rules.

We are pretty sure that this blog must have given an overview of dealing with Assignment Rules in ServiceNow.

Any comments\suggestions are most welcome. We have posted further blogs as well on other topics and will frequently come back with something innovative.

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The Snowball

A ServiceNow Blog & Newsletter

How To Randomly Auto Assign Tasks in ServiceNow

Auto Assign Capabilities – What is Out Of Box? By default, when any record is assigned to a group, there’s no automatic behavior to update the “Assigned to” user. There is no round robin or …

Written by: Team Snowball

Published on: July 8, 2021

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Table of Contents

Auto Assign Capabilities – What is Out Of Box?

By default, when any record is assigned to a group, there’s no automatic behavior to update the “Assigned to” user.

There is no round robin or auto assignments for groups, out of box. There is on-call scheduling but this requires an extra license and needs to be implemented properly.

A lot of IT Managers like the idea of using platform automation to make decisions. This solution can ultimately save people a lot of time and removes a lot of manual intervention. But it’s not a “one size fits all” solution. 

Usually when any task is created, there is just a notification set up to inform all of the members of the group that the case has been created, and that someone needs to go in and take ownership of it. While this is definitely helpful, notifications decrease in impact over time as the system continues to push them out. Notifications from ServiceNow should be used only when necessary.

So what happens if you have certain groups that are repeatedly unwilling to assign cases out? This feature can be implemented and skip any need for a manual intervention when it comes to assigning cases.

We can also properly “load balance” users that come in, but that’s for another and more detailed post. This post just covers how to have ServiceNow randomly select a user from a group, whenever it is assigned to a group. It does not count nor assign to individuals completely evenly.

Why Would You Want To Automatically Assign A Case?

There are countless reasons a team might ask for this.

Common reasons are “use of automation” or “not wasting time reading and assigning cases”. The ServiceNow Platform can be enhanced to make decisions dynamically.

This could be helpful if there are teams that have trouble delegating. The system makes the decision for them. But this should also not be used as a crutch, if teams aren’t doing their work in ServiceNow, this is probably not the best solution to encourage them.

For organizations that are large enough, I have seen it be the full time job of people to manually come in and assign cases to people, on a case by base basis. This is a huge waste of resources and can be easily solved via automation efforts.

A good use case for automatically assigning a case to a user of a group when it comes in would be if all of the users of a group can equally solve the cases that come in. If there’s no large knowledge gap, then it makes sense to implement some sort of auto triaging solution.

You may be able to further expand upon the idea here. You can take the script and modify it to auto assign based on any other condition you can think of.

This solution does not count assignments and make decisions based on that. For example, if there is a group of 2 users – it could assign 4 cases to one and 6 cases to another.

Something To Also Keep in Mind – Related To SLA’s

There is a debate amonst ServiceNow professionals on when to have the “Response SLA” condition met. Some companies prefer to the Response SLA met when a case is “assigned”. Others prefer to have the Response SLA met when the case has a fulfiller add a comment. That’s for you and your organization to decide.

But if your company has your Response SLA conditions set up to be met when an incident has an “Assigned to” user populated – then continue reading here. If that is the case, then the Response SLA will be instantly met, and will become a metric that doesn’t provide a lot of value. If all your incidents are being assigned on insert, then 100% of the SLA’s measuring response will be met on insert, and won’t even be tracked. It will appear that you are meeting 100% of responses, every time.

So be aware of this if you decide to implement this functionality.

How To Automatically Assign A Case At Random?

The solution here is a rather straightforward business rule.

Condition : current.assignment_group.changes() && current.active == true && current.assigned_to == ”

Note : You will likely want to update this condition. This condition will auto assign cases for EVERY group that exists.

So if you only want to limit this to certain groups, make sure to define that in the condition.

Script : (function executeRule(current, previous /*null when async*/ ) { // Call the function random(); // Define the function function random() { var group = current.assignment_group.toString(); // Find the group members of the current group var grMembers = new GlideRecord(“sys_user_grmember”); grMembers.addQuery(“group”, group); grMembers.query(); var array = []; // Add them all to an array while (grMembers.next()) { var user = grMembers.user.toString(); array.push(user); } var arrayLen = array.length; // Randomly select the user from the elements in the array var randomUser = array[Math.floor(Math.random() * arrayLen)]; var userName = new GlideRecord(‘sys_user’); userName.get(randomUser); // This is optional, but could be helpful current.work_notes = “Auto assigning ” + current.number + ” to random user: ” + userName.first_name + ” ” + userName.last_name; // Set the randomly found user in the group current.assigned_to = randomUser; } })(current, previous);

How To Test The Auto Assignment Business Rule

Go to the table that you created the rule against. For my example, I am used the incident table and didn’t limit it to any group, just for the example.

Create an incident and assign it to any group. Make sure not to populate the “Assigned to” field.

At this point, once you save/update the record – it should auto assign to a user in that group.

Are there other ways to accomplish this feature? Is your IT Organization doing something differently to handle this?

Go ahead and take the code above and improve upon it. The above script is just an idea of what you can accomplish.

What Do You Think About This Article?

About Team Snowball

How To Call a Script Include from a Business Rule In ServiceNow

How to delete (and restore) records with a background script.

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Populate Assignment group based on service offering and location in servicenow

I want to update the assignment group to a particular assignment group when the condition fulfills on RITM ie. service offering is xyz and location is abc, then it should update.

For example, there is one catalog item that is being raised by GETit and RITM is generated with an assignment group. I want to update that value when the matching conditions are fulfilled.

I tried using assignment rules but again it doesnt work if the field has already a value and in my case assignment group already has a value, we just need to update it.

Can someone please help me here.

• What’s setting the assignment group in the first place already? If it’s a workflow, then change the logic in the workflow to match your criteria, if it’s an assignment rule, then give your new rule a lower order so it takes precedence –  Nick Parsons Commented Jun 12 at 13:16

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Custom interactive filter examples

As an administrator, you can create custom interactive filter widgets to provide\n advanced filtering options on dashboards.

This example details how to create a custom filter to filter reports on the Task table, or its\n child tables. The filter only shows records where the current user is the caller. The filter\n exposes two buttons to the user, one button to add the filter and one to remove the\n filter.

• DashboardMessageHandler
• Configure a content block

Create a custom interactive filter widget

Create custom interactive filter widgets to provide advanced filtering options on\n dashboards.

Role required: admin

• \n Open a dashboard that you want to add the custom interactive filter to. \n
• \n From the list of content blocks, select New Dynamic\n Content. \n

Define the filtering logic.

Create a custom date/time filter option

When the standard selection of date/time filter options doesn't meet your needs, you\n can create a custom option.

Follow these steps to create a custom Date/Time filter option that can then be\n included in any Date/Time-based interactive filter for use on a Dashboard. In this\n example, you create a filter option for the period of a two weeks, a fortnight.

Role required: admin.

• \n Navigate to All > System Definition > Business Rules . \n
• \n Open the business rule Get Date Filter Options for Date Filters. \n This rule populates the list of selectable options in forms for new or\n existing date type interactive filters. \n
• \n On the Advanced tab, modify the\n Script field to include the JavaScript needed to add\n the new option. \n Add the following line:\n answer.add('<Time_Period_Name>@javascript:<Beginning_Time_Period>@javascript:<Ending_Time_Period>', gs.getMessage('<Textual_Representation_Of_Time_Period>')); \n \n

• \n Select Update to save your changes to the business\n rule. \n
• \n Navigate to All > Reports > Administration > Interactive Filters . \n

Define filtering logic - example

After you create the interactive filter, add the filtering logic.

• \n In the dynamic content record, add the filtering logic to the Dynamic content\n XML block. \n
• \n The Only mine button publishes a filter on Task table\n reports using the encoded query\n caller_idDYNAMIC90d1921e5f510100a9ad2572f2b477fe . The\n All tasks button removes the filter. \n
• \n You can then add buttons or other interface elements to the dynamic content.\n In this example, the code for the clearFilter() \n function and the buttons in the filter are added below the\n publishFilter() function. \n \n <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>\n<j:jelly trim="false" xmlns:j="jelly:core" xmlns:g="glide" xmlns:j2="null" xmlns:g2="null">\n <script>\n var my_dashboardMessageHandler = new DashboardMessageHandler("my_unique_id");\n \n function publishFilter () {\n var filter_message = {};\n filter_message.id = "my_unique_id";\n filter_message.table = "task";\n \n <!-- Add your own filter query logic here -->\n filter_message.filter = "assigned_toDYNAMIC90d1921e5f510100a9ad2572f2b477fe";\n SNC.canvas.interactiveFilters.setDefaultValue({\n id: filter_message.id,\n filters: [filter_message]\n }, false);\n my_dashboardMessageHandler.publishFilter(filter_message.table, filter_message.filter);\n }\n \n function clearFilter() {\n var filter_message = {};\n filter_message.id = "my_unique_id";\n filter_message.table = "task";\n filter_message.filter = "";\n SNC.canvas.interactiveFilters.setDefaultValue({\n id: filter_message.id,\n filters: [filter_message]\n }, false);\n my_dashboardMessageHandler.removeFilter();\n }\n </script> \n \nExample of a filter that generates a static filter on 'task' table reports, or removes it <br/>\n <input id="allTasks" type="button" value="All tasks" onclick="clearFilter();" />\n <input id="onlyMine" type="button" value="Only mine" onclick="publishFilter();" />\n \n</j:jelly> \n \n
• \n Select Submit . \n

The custom interactive filter appears on the dashboard you added the dynamic content\n block to. It is also in the list of content blocks in the Add\n Widgets panel.

Custom interactive filter example - Multiple reports

You can use a custom interactive filter to filter multiple reports using different\n tables. There are two different APIs to publish an interactive filter for a single table or\n multiple tables. This example filters a report on the incident and problem tables by assignment\n group using a custom interactive filter.

About custom interactive filters on multiple tables

• Custom interactive filters that apply to only one table use the function\n DashboardMessageHandler.publishFilter() .
• Custom interactive filters that apply to multiple tables use the function\n DashboardMessageHandler.publishMessage() .
• Before you publish, an interactive filter call to the\n SNC.canvas.interactiveFilters.setDefaultValue() function is\n required.
• A call to either the\n SNC.canvas.interactiveFilters.removeDefaultValue() or the\n DashboardMessageHandler.removeFilter() function is required before\n you reset the filter.

A custom interactive filter that calls the\n publishFilter() method multiple times refreshes the associated report\n the same number of times. Repeated calls to this method can cause performance issues.

How to apply Custom Interactive Filter to multiple tables

The following example filters the report by assignment group on the Incident [incident] and\n Problem [problem] tables.

DashboardMessageHandler.publishMessage() accepts multiple filters as an\n array. Construct the filter array and then create a single instance of\n DashboardMessageHandler which calls\n DashboardMessageHandler.publishMessage([filters]) . This method\n refreshes the widget only once.