Automatic Assignment

Assignment rules hand unassigned issues to members of a Group without anyone triaging them. Each rule says which groups, issue type and statuses it covers, how many issues one person can hold at a time, and whether people must be online or ready for work to receive one. When an issue matches, Planner gives it to the eligible member with the fewest active issues.

Create an assignment rule

1. Open the Planner app and go to its Setup tab
2. Expand Automation Rules, then Automatic Issue Assignment
3. Click Add an Assignment Rule
4. Fill in the settings below and click Save

As soon as you save, Planner checks every unassigned issue the rule covers and starts assigning them, so you don't have to wait for new issues to arrive.

Setting	Description
This rule applies to the following groups	Required. Issues in these groups are assigned, and only members of an issue's own group can receive it.
This rule must not assign to the following people	Members of the selected groups who should never receive issues from this rule, such as team leads.
Target issues by	Choose Issue type.
Issue type	Required. The issue type this rule assigns.
Statuses	Required. The statuses of that issue type the rule covers. Unassigned issues in these statuses are assigned, and assigned issues in these statuses count towards each person's load.
Assign issues in the following order	The order in which waiting issues are handed out. Leave it empty to assign the oldest issue first. See Choose which issue goes first.
Maximum Active Assignments	Required, greater than 0. How many issues covered by this rule one person can hold at once. Defaults to 5.
Notify the following people if auto-assignment fails	People who get an email when an issue can't be assigned. Each must have an email address.
Only assign to people who are online?	Skip anyone whose status isn't Online. People who are Away, Busy, Invisible or Offline are skipped.
Only assign to people who are ready for work?	Skip anyone who hasn't turned on Ready for Work in their status menu.

Include in-progress statuses in the rule

Load is counted only over issues in the statuses the rule covers. If a rule covers only a New status, an issue stops counting against its assignee the moment they move it to In Progress, and they receive another one right away. To cap the number of open issues a person is working on, select every status where the issue is still being worked on, such as both New and In Progress.

How Planner picks an assignee

Each time a rule is evaluated for an issue, Planner:

1. Finds the people who can take work. It starts with the members of the rule's groups, removes the excluded people, and then, if the rule asks for it, removes anyone who isn't ready for work or isn't online.
2. Counts each person's load. A person's load is the number of issues assigned to them that are in any of the rule's groups and in one of the rule's statuses. Test issues don't count. Anyone already at Maximum Active Assignments is removed.
3. Picks the next issue to hand out. This is the first unassigned issue in the group, in the rule's order. By default that is the oldest one, so a new issue never jumps ahead of issues that have been waiting longer. The issue that triggered the check is assigned once the issues ahead of it are.
4. Gives it to the least-loaded member of that issue's group. When several people have the same load, Planner breaks the tie in a fixed order. If the first choice can't take it, because they just went offline, turned off Ready for Work or reached their limit, Planner tries the next person.

If the issue's group has nobody available, Planner moves on to the rule's other groups so their queues keep moving. Before it assigns an issue, Planner checks again that the issue is still unassigned and still matches the rule, and that the person is still available and under their limit. Two issues arriving at the same moment can't push someone past their limit.

Planner records each assignment in the issue's activity as a change made by the system, and subscribes the assignee to the issue's updates.

When assignment runs

Planner doesn't poll for work. It checks for issues to assign whenever something happens that could make an assignment possible:

Event	What Planner does
An issue is created	Assigns waiting issues in its group, after any trigger rules have run. If a trigger rule sets an assignee, that assignee is kept.
An unassigned issue is updated while it's in a group and status a rule covers, for example moved into that group or status, or its assignee cleared	Assigns waiting issues in its group.
Someone's issue moves to a status the rule doesn't cover, such as Resolved, or is reassigned to someone else	That person has room again, so Planner assigns waiting issues in their groups.
Someone comes online or turns on Ready for Work	Assigns waiting issues in their groups.
An assignment rule is saved	Checks every unassigned issue the workspace's rules cover.

Planner never auto-assigns an issue that:

• has no group
• is locked
• is a test issue
• already has an assignee. Planner never reassigns an issue someone has assigned, whether by hand, through a trigger rule or through a creation rule's Default Assignee.

Choose which issue goes first

By default, waiting issues are assigned oldest first. To change that, add one or more entries under Assign issues in the following order. The first entry is the main sort and each later one breaks ties, like ORDER BY in SQL. Issues that are still tied are assigned oldest first.

You can sort by:

• Priority. Descending hands out Urgent issues first, then High, Medium, Low and no priority. New entries default to descending.
• A custom field of the issue type. Number, date, time, timestamp, boolean and text fields sort by value. Dropdown, radio and segmented-control fields sort in the order their options are arranged, not alphabetically. Fields that hold more than one value can't be used.

Each field, and Priority, can appear only once in a rule. If a field in the order is later deleted from the issue type, Planner skips that entry and keeps using the rest.

When an issue can't be assigned

The issue stays unassigned and in its group's queue. Planner tries again the next time someone has room, as described in When assignment runs, so you don't need to re-save the rule or touch the issue.

If you've chosen people to notify, they get an email titled Issue #123 could not be auto-assigned, with a link to the issue, its issue type and group, and one of these reasons. An email is sent each time an attempt fails, so a queue that stays full can send several.

Reason	What it means
No team members found in the selected groups after applying exclusions.	The groups are empty, or every member is excluded.
Team members exist in the selected group but none are currently available (offline, not ready for work, or at capacity).	The issue's group has members, but every one of them was filtered out.
No team members marked as 'Ready for Work' are available.	The rule requires Ready for Work and nobody has it on.
No team members are currently online.	The rule requires people to be online and nobody is.
All team members are at maximum capacity.	Everyone available already holds Maximum Active Assignments issues.

Use more than one rule

Rules from every Planner space in the workspace are checked together, and a space's rules are checked in the order they're listed. A rule applies to an issue when the issue is of the rule's issue type, is in one of the rule's groups, and has one of the rule's statuses, whichever space the rule was saved in. If the first matching rule can't assign the issue, Planner tries the next matching rule. To keep the outcome predictable, avoid saving rules in different spaces that cover the same group and statuses. Notifications are sent only when no rule could assign the issue, to the people chosen on the last matching rule.

Because each rule counts load separately, one person can hold up to the limit of each rule that covers them.

Examples

Balance a support queue

Your Support group has three agents working on Support Request issues, which move from New to In Progress to Resolved. You want each agent to work on at most three conversations at a time, and only while they're signed in and taking work.

Setting	Value
Groups	Support
Target issues by	Issue type
Issue type	Support Request
Statuses	New, In Progress
Maximum Active Assignments	3
Notify if auto-assignment fails	Support lead
Only assign to people who are online?	On
Only assign to people who are ready for work?	On

A new WhatsApp conversation creates an issue in Support. At that moment:

Agent	Status	Active issues	Result
Asha	Online, Ready for Work	2	Eligible
Ben	Online, Ready for Work	1	Eligible, lowest load
Chen	Away	0	Skipped, not online

The issue goes to Ben, who now has 2. If Asha and Ben had both been at 3, the issue would wait and the support lead would get an email saying all team members are at maximum capacity. As soon as Asha moves an issue to Resolved, she has room again and receives the oldest waiting issue.

Handle urgent issues first

Your Billing group works on a Refund Request issue type with a Refund Amount number field. You want urgent requests handed out first, and the largest refunds first among issues with the same priority.

Setting	Value
Groups	Billing
Target issues by	Issue type
Issue type	Refund Request
Statuses	Open, In Review
Assign issues in the following order	Priority, Descending; then Refund Amount, Descending
Maximum Active Assignments	5

When a billing agent has room, they receive the waiting Urgent request with the largest refund amount. Requests with the same priority and amount are assigned oldest first.

Keep leads out of the rotation

Your Escalations group includes two team leads who review escalations but shouldn't be assigned new ones. Add the leads under This rule must not assign to the following people, and add them under Notify the following people if auto-assignment fails instead. Assignments then go only to the rest of the group, and the leads hear about it when nobody is available.