servicenow assignment rules script examples

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Setting the Assignment group with Assignment Rules

Assignment Rules are a simpler alternative to Data Lookup. While Data Lookup is very powerful, allowing you to set any field, it does involve a quite a bit of configuration, including creating a new table.

In contrast, an Assignment Rule uses the simpler condition builder to specify when it should run. If it matches, then it'll either populate the Assigned to and Assignment group fields with a hardcoded value, or you can use a script. We have got the group we want to use in a property, so this option is perfect. Follow these steps:

• Name : Assign to External Team
• Table : Maintenance [x_hotel_maintenance] ...

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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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Configure group types for assignment groups

Use the Type field to define categories of groups. Once defined,\n you can use these categories to filter assignment groups based on the group type using a\n reference qualifier.

For example, when selecting an assignment group from the Incident form,\n Type can be used to filter groups based on whether they are typically\n involved in the Incident management process. Groups such as Network or Help Desk are displayed\n as they are typically involved. Groups such as HR or New York are omitted.

The following items are provided in the base system.

• The types catalog , itil , and\n survey .
• The reference qualifier on [task.assignment_group] filters on [Type] [equals]\n [null] .
• A reference qualifier named GetGroupFilter is available to filter for\n group types using Create a dynamic filter option .

Add a new group type

You can add additional group types to filter assignment groups for tasks.

You may need to configure the form to display the Type \n field.

• \n Navigate to All > User Administration > Groups . \n
• \n Select a group record. \n
• \n Click the lock icon beside Type . \n
• \n Click the lookup icon beside the selection field. \n The Group Types dialog opens. \n
• \n Click New . \n
• \n Enter the group type name and description. \n For example, to define a type for a group as\n incident and problem ,\n enter: incident,problem . \n Click Submit . \n
• Optional: \n Add additional group types if needed. \n
• \n Click Update . \n

Assign a group type

You can assign group types to filter assignment groups for tasks.

• \n Navigate to All > User Administration > Groups and select the desired group. \n
• \n Click the lookup icon beside the selection field and select one or more group\n types. \n \n Note: Because the default behavior of\n task.assignment_group is to filter out groups with\n group types defined, adding a type to a group filters it out of the\n Assignment Group field on tasks. To change the\n behavior, set up the reference qualifier. \n\n \n

Advanced Reference Qualifier Using a Script Include

R eference qualifiers are a powerful tool that every ServiceNow administrator and consultant should have in their tool belt. They allow you to dynamically filter the available options from a reference field. The ServiceNow wiki has some good documentation on this topic so I won’t re-hash that here. What I do want to address is the topic of Advanced Reference Qualifiers…specifically how to leverage a Script Include instead of a global Business Rule to run your qualifier script.

Up until recently, the only way to get Advanced Reference Qualifiers to work was to create a global business rule to run the qualifier script. This works great, but it results in a global script that gets loaded all the time when it really isn’t necessary. While this isn’t something that causes any real problems in practice, it could cause performance issues if used to the extreme. The best practice guidance for advanced reference qualifiers should be to use a Script Include rather than a global Business Rule to run the qualifier script. Using a Script Include means that the script only gets loaded and used when you actually need to use it! In this article I’ll show you how this can be done using a common example of filtering the ‘Assignment group’ to display only groups for the ‘Assigned to’ value.

The first piece is the ‘Reference qual’ field value on the dictionary entry of the reference field (Assignment group in this case). The ‘javascript:’ prefix is the same, but you need to reference your Script Include function instead of the business rule function. In this case, I’m using a Script Include named ‘u_backfillAssignmentGroup’. Since these scripts can potentially interfere with each other, it’s best to prefix any of your custom scripts with ‘u_’ or something similar in order to distinguish them from any that ServiceNow may introduce in the future.

The other piece is obviously the Script Include. Since Script Includes now allow you to use On-Demand functions, your script is identical to the one you would use in a global business rule.

Mark Stanger

Date Posted:

June 21, 2011

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20 Comments

Script Includes can be a single function, too. That would reduce the complexity of this a bit. Tom Dilatush’s blog speaks to it. I use “on-demand” functions all the time for Advanced Reference Qualifiers.

http://community.service-now.com/blog/slightlyloo …

You’re right, that’s much easier! I’ve updated the article above accordingly.

Is it possible that i can dynimically change reference table on a field based on value in the another field? for example, if a table has two columns – A and B. A is of type string. B is of type reference. Can I change reference table on B based on value in A?

You would need to use a completely separate field to do that.

can you use script include in clientscripts?

Yes, there is a checkbox that enables client callable..

found it in the wiki,

Is there a way to use the same script include for client side and server side calls?

I had to make 2 different script inludes to cater each.

I am using a Script Include as a reference qualifier, but it is behaving rather strangely. When I click the magnifying glass, I get the filtered results, if I type ** in the reference field, I get the filtered results, but when I try to type in the value of what I want Firebug reports an error saying “response.responseXML is null”. The reference field filters Business Services related to the company of the caller, I created a m2m table with a related list on both Company as well as Business Services. Any idea why this is happening?

When adding the Tree Picker, is there a way when user pick a member of the group it would be able to populate the Assigned To and Assignment Group in one pick?

No way to do that currently.

Is it possible to put an condition in the attribute field? if the assign_to field is not empty then tree_picker=false.

I don’t believe so.

Can this be used on a Service Catalog variable?

made this a little bit more versatile. you can use it on Service Catalog variables as well. You can call it from any reference field’s advanced qualifier, as you can specify the reference field targettable

Tested it out and works…

Now reviewing setting the default value of the reference field to the first retrieved record, on change of the filtervaluefield

Any feedback is welcome ;-) (as I’m quite rusty in my scripting, and a newbie in Snow)

Thanks for the contribution! Please keep us up-to-date on any modifications or improvements you make.

Hey Mark, thanks for the article I’m trying to do this exact thing – create a Script Includes to use as a reference qualifier and I’m having issues, can you help?

Here is what I have so far:

But I’m still getting the following errors: WARNING at line 9: Missing semicolon.

ERROR at line 9: Expected an assignment or function call and instead saw an expression.

I’m assuming that after I get this script correct I’d just need to create a dynamic or advance reference qualifier on my assignment group field (ie javascript: u_INC_FilterAssignmentOnDisableTrigger)…… am I right?

Hey April. These types of questions are probably better suited to the ServiceNow community site. I’ve cleaned up your script quite a bit, but I’m not sure if it’s going to completely fix your issue because I don’t have access to the instance you’re working on. This script should eliminate the errors you’re seeing (and solve several other issues I noticed). If you have further questions please ask on the ServiceNow community site.

Hi I have a problem: I call a Script Include in the assignmnent_group field of the incidents… but unfortunately I found the same call also in the assignmnent_group of Changes and Problems. How can I fix this problem?

You must create a dictionary entry override for the incident table. In order to do that you need to do the following: Configure the dictionary of assignment_group Go to the Dictionary Overrides related list Click new and specify the table you want to override, in your case the Incident. Check the Override reference qualifier and populate the Reference qualifier field with your script include. Save the record.

Comments are closed.

Randall King says:

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