Smart assignments overview
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For information about the current release schedule, see Second Quarter 2024 release overview.
When managing task and issues assignments, you can use smart assignments to identify who the best resource is to complete the work. Smart assignments are suggestions that Adobe Workfront presents to you when you assign work items to resources based on an algorithm that determines the most appropriate resource for the job. Smart assignments can be users, job roles, or teams.
This article contains general information about smart assignments. For information about using smart assignments to assign tasks and issues to users, see Make smart assignments.
Smart assignments overview
Consider the following when working with smart assignments:
- The algorithm works independently for tasks and issues. This means that the list of suggested users for issues might differ from the list of suggested users for a task because Workfront builds the lists according to criteria pertaining to issues and tasks separately.
- Smart assignments do not recommend job roles or teams. Instead, they are suggestions of users who are best fit to complete a task or an issue.
- The suggested assignments are always active users.
- The user listed first should be the best match for the task.
Locate smart assignment suggestions
You can view smart assignments in the following areas where you can assign tasks or issues:
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An issue list or report in the Assignments column
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A task list or report in the Assignments column
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A task header in the Assignments field
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An issue header in the Assignments field
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The task or issue Summary panel in the Assignments area
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The Assignments field in the New Task box, when adding a task to a project
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The Assignments field for an item listed in the Home area, when you open a task or issue
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Workload Balancer in the Assigned this to area when you assign a task or issue
Smart assignments criteria
Smart assignments work differently for tasks than for issues.
Smart assignments criteria for tasks
The task smart assignments calculation works in two phases which use two different algorithms.
Depending on which algorithm finds the smart assignment, the assignments are listed under two separate sections in the Assignments field. For information, see Make smart assignments.
First phase of smart assignment calculation for tasks
In the first phase of calculating smart assignments, Workfront calculates a similarity score for every assignment.
- Bulk Assignments in the Workload Balancer.
- Connected cards on boards.
The calculation for the similarity score and the order in which the assignments are listed take into account the following:
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A score of 100% is given to an existing assignment where the task, project, and portfolio names are identical to the task you’re trying to assign. The project and portfolio names of the task of an existing assignment must also match the project and portfolio of the task you are trying to assign.
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If only some of this information from other assignments matches on the existing tasks, the score might be lower than 100%.
For example, if you are assigning a task called “My second task” on a project called “My project” in a portfolio called “My portfolio” and you have an existing task called “My task” in another project called “My project” in a portfolio called “My portfolio”, the user assigned to “My task” might get a score of 95% because the name of the existing task and the task you’re trying to assign now are similar, but not identical.
note tip TIP Workfront looks for matches only in the Name fields of tasks, projects, and portfolios and not in any other fields. -
An assignment could get a higher score when they are assigned to a lot of tasks in the system that have similar names. For example, if a team called “Development” is assigned to 50% of the tasks in the system containing “AI” in the name and you are now assigning another task with “AI” in the name, the score of the “Development” team is higher. In this case, the names of projects and portfolios are not as important.
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Taking into account this scoring system, the first 7 suggestions are listed as smart assignments, in the descending order of their scores. Assignments with scores lower than 40% do not display.
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If several assignments have identical scores, they display in order of the date on which the assignments were made, starting from the most recent date.
For example, if Rick was assigned to a similar task earlier today and Jennifer was assigned to a similar task two days ago, Rick displays first.
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Assignments identified in this phase are listed in theSuggested assignmentssection of the Assignments field.
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If there are no matches using this calculation, the second phase of smart assignments starts which is calculated using a different algorithm.
Second phase of smart assignment calculation for tasks
If the first step of task smart assignments has found no matches, Workfront calculates smart assignments for tasks in the same way that it calculates them for issues.
For more information, see the section Smart assignments criteria for tasks and issuesin this article.
Assignments identified in this phase are listed in theOther assignmentssection of the Assignments field for tasks.
Smart assignments criteria for tasks and issues
Users are recommended in the smart assignments drop-down list based on a combination of the following criteria (listed in order from most important to least important):
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Users assigned to other work items in the past 30 days by the user making the assignment. The first 50 users that match this criteria display. The user that is most often assigned displays first.
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If the work item is assigned to a team or a role, the list of suggested users is filtered further taking into account the existing assignments below. In this case, only the following users display in the list of suggestions:
- Users whose Home Team is the team assigned to the work item.
- Users whose Primary Role is the role assigned to the work item.
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If there is no role or team assigned on the task or issue, Workfront displays all the users assigned for the last 30 days, up to 50 users.
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If you have not made any assignments in the past 30 days, only users that belong to either the assigned team or have the role assigned to the work item display in the smart assignments list.