The Workforce Scheduling Skill Preference service objective prefers a resource whose
skill is marked as higher-priority on the work order or work order line item within the same skill
type. Use Skill Preference when the appointment lists more than one acceptable skill and one is
preferred. For example, a language preference: the customer accepts English or Spanish but prefers
Spanish. This objective is relevant for field scheduling only.
Required Editions
| 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.
