Workforce Scheduling Service Objective: Skill Preference

Available in: Lightning Experience

Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

With the Match Skills work rule, you can match any skill within a skill type grouping. For example, if you have a set of skills that are related to language, you can set their skill type to Language. A work order or work order line item can have both English and Spanish skills of the type Language, but if you want to select a service resource who has at least one of these skills, you can use the At Least One Skill Matches (OR) setting in the Match Skills work rule.

You use the Skill Preference service objective if a preference exists for one of those skills. For example, if the customer can speak both English and Spanish but prefers to speak in Spanish. If two service resources are available, one with English skills and one with Spanish skills, even though both are eligible candidates, you can set a priority on the Spanish work order or work order line item skill requirement. And, use the Skill Preference service objective to prefer the service resource with Spanish skills.

Make sure the Skill Type Developer Name field is added to the Skill Preference service objective page layout. Also, add the Skill Priority field to the Skill Requirement object.

The Skill Priority values range from 1 to 10, where 1 is the highest preference and 10 is the lowest. If you enter a value that’s less than 1, the skill priority is set to 1. If you enter a value that’s greater than 10, the skill priority is set to 10. If you don’t enter a value, the skill priority is set to 10.

In the Skill Preference service objective, set the Skill Type Developer Name field to the Skill Type of the family of skills specified in the Match Skills work rule set with At Least One Skill Matches (OR). The Skill Preference isn’t relevant to the Match Skills work rules set with All Skills Match (AND), because all skills in that group need to match.

When you create a Skill Requirement on a Work Order or Work Order Line Item, you can set a Skill Priority for each Skill Requirement that has the same Skill Type to indicate which skills are preferred over others for that Work Order or Work Order Line Item.

If priorities are set on the Skill Requirement object, skills belonging to the same Skill Type families are evaluated together. The priority value represents the equivalent penalty points for that scheduling option. The penalty points are multiplied by the weight of the Skill Preference objective in the scheduling policy to determine the resulting score of the schedule for that appointment.