---
key: set-up-automatic-ticket-assignment
title: Set up skills and workload limits for ticket assignment
audience: staff
section: settings/communications
routes: ["/settings/communications/ticketing/assignment"]
permissions: ["communications.ticket.assignment.skill.manage"]
features: ["communications.ticketing"]
since: 0.0.1
updated: 0.0.1
status: published
summary: Create the skills your support team has, set each person's availability, ticket limits and skills, and watch which queues are short of people before tickets pile up.
keywords: [auto assign tickets, agent skills, workload limit, capacity, availability, away, staffing, who gets tickets]
related: [set-up-ticket-queues, triage-a-ticket, set-ticket-response-and-resolution-targets]
---

In the sidebar, open **Settings**, then choose **Ticketing** under **Communications**, then choose **Assignment** in the ticketing menu. The page address is `/settings/communications/ticketing/assignment`. It has two cards: **Assignment Operations**, a live view of your support team, and **Assignment Skills & Capacity**, where you set what each person handles.

## Before you start

- Automatic assignment is switched on per queue, with **Assignment mode** and **Auto-assignment active**; see [[set-up-ticket-queues]]. This page gives it the facts it works from.
- Your role needs permission to see assignment settings. Creating skills needs permission to manage skills. Saving a person needs permission to manage both workload limits and availability.

## Steps

To create a skill:

1. Under **Skill catalog**, press **New skill**.
2. Type a **Skill key** (a short name with no spaces), a **Skill label** such as Heat pumps, and a **Category** if you group skills.
3. Keep **Skill active** ticked and press **Create skill**. It appears under **Current skills**. To change one, pick it under **Existing skill** and press **Update skill**.

To set up a person:

1. Under **Agent assignment profile**, choose the person under **Agent**. Everyone in your organization is listed.
2. Set **Presence status**: **Available**, **Away**, **Busy** or **Unavailable**. Add a **Presence reason** or **Presence note** if it helps.
3. Set **Max open assigned tickets** and **Max active drafts**. Leave a box empty for no limit.
4. Under **Skill assignments**, tick the skills the person handles. **Proficiency** (3 to start) and **Weight** (100 to start) put stronger people first.
5. Leave the two boxes for channel and provider limits as they are unless you need per-channel limits.
6. Press **Save assignment profile**. The button reads **Saved** for a moment.

## What you see

- Three cards sum up the person: **Open assigned** and **Active drafts** with the slots left, and **Auto-assignment**, which reads **Eligible** or **Held back**.
- **Queue memberships** lists the queues the person belongs to. It cannot be changed here.
- **Assignment Operations** counts **Auto-assignable agents**, **Overloaded agents**, **Weak staffing queues**, **Auto success rate**, **Recent fallbacks** and **Manual assignments**.
- Below the counts, **Queues needing staffing attention** rates each queue **High risk**, **Watch closely** or **Stable**. **Recent auto-assignment decisions** shows each ticket as **Assigned** or **Manual review**. **Agent availability and load** and **Skill coverage watchlist** show who is free and which skills are thin.

## If something looks different

- A person reads **Held back**: their status is not **Available**, or they are over one of their limits.
- **Save assignment profile** is greyed out: your role can manage only one of workload limits and availability. Both are needed.
- A card says this operator cannot view it: your role lacks permission to see assignment settings.
- **This agent is not a member of any active ticket queues.**: the person is in no queue yet, so queue-based assignment passes them by.
- The save fails with a message about unexpected text: one of the two limit boxes is not in the right shape. Put back the empty pair of braces it started with.
- You land on Email Accounts or a no-access page instead: ticketing is not part of your plan, or your role cannot see ticketing settings.

[[route:/settings/communications/ticketing/assignment|Open Assignment]]