Set up Workforce Management in Jira Service Management
This article walks space admins through enabling Workforce Management in a Jira Service Management space, connecting teams, configuring automatic team assignment, setting capacity thresholds, and preparing for shift scheduling and routing.
Some features like services, capacity, and schedules are only available on the Premium and Enterprise plans.
You need space admin permissions to set up Workforce Management. If you’re a service agent, ask your space admin to complete these steps.
Before you begin
Before you turn Workforce Management on, decide:
Which service space Workforce Management applies to. Workforce Management is configured per space, so you can use it for some teams and not others.
Who is on your team. Add a team in Atlassian Teams and then link it to the space, either through the Teams app or through space settings. Your agents need to already be agents in the service space.
How you categorise and distribute work. Automatic team routing in Workforce Management routes work to either a team or a field value (or service), depending on your configuration. When routing to teams, Workforce Management uses the work item’s details and the configured teams to directly assign a team. When routing to a field (or service), field values need to be configured with an owning team so Workforce Management can choose agents from the associated team. Workforce Management needs to know which field is used to categorise and distribute work on a work item, which can be affected services, an Assets object field, or a custom field you have created.
What "at capacity" means for your team. Workforce Management uses thresholds, for example a maximum number of open work items per agent, to flag when an agent is overloaded.
Step 1: Turn on Workforce Management
Go to your service space.
From the sidebar, select Space settings.
Go to Features, and toggle Workforce management on.
If you don’t see Workforce in Space settings, your space may be on a plan that doesn’t include Workforce Management. Contact your Atlassian admin.
Once Workforce Management is on, a Workforce entry appears in the space sidebar for admins and agents to use day to day.
To turn the feature off entirely, go to Space settings, then Features, and toggle Workforce Management off. Your configuration is preserved if you enable it again later.
Step 2: Connect your team
Workforce Management routes work at the team level. Every agent who can be routed to belongs to an Atlassian Team connected to your service space. You connect a team rather than adding individual agents.
You need an Atlassian Team set up first. If your team does not exist yet, you can create one during the connect teams process, or create one in the Teams app. Teams created elsewhere in Atlassian can be reused.
From the space sidebar, select Workforce.
Select Team.
Select Connect a team, then pick the Atlassian Team you want to route work to.
You can connect more teams, or change which teams are connected, at any time. Agents added to or removed from a team in the Teams app are reflected in Workforce Management views.
Step 3: Configure team assignment
Workforce Management has three assignment rules to choose from. For the first step, pick one option:
Auto-assign team with Rovo: Rovo identifies what a request is about and routes it to the appropriate team.
Auto-assign to a default team: Set a default team to ensure all requests are assigned.
Manually assign each work item: Each work item will be unassigned and team field will need to be updated manually.
If you choose Auto-assign team with Rovo:
Auto-assign team with Rovo allows for two different routing methods to determine how work is assigned to a team in this service space:
Team routing allows you to quickly configure your teams and describe what types of work each team does, so that Rovo can assign the requests.
Field (or service) routing uses the service on a work item to decide which team should handle it. Here, you tell Workforce Management where your services are recorded, then connect each service to the team that owns it. Rovo then uses this detailed information to assign a field value and then team to a work item.
To set up Auto-assign team with Rovo:
From the space settings, select Workforce.
Choose Auto-assign team with Rovo and your routing method.
For field routing, choose the field that identifies the service on your work items. This can be affected services, an Assets object field, or a custom field.
Press ‘Update context’.
For field routing, enable the field values that you’d like to have enabled in this space, and assign a team to each.
For each team or field value, add routing context to describe what it covers. For example, one service or team may issue new software licenses, while another may resolve VPN issues. The more specific the description, the more accurately work is matched. Enter these routing context details manually, or Generate with Rovo to scan your historical work items for patterns.
Press ‘done’ to close the context modal.
Optionally choose a default team, for cases where Rovo cannot confidently identify a team to route work items to.
Finally, press ‘save’ to complete your settings changes.
If you choose Auto-assign to a default team:
Auto-assign team with Rovo will always add your configured default team to all work items when it detects that there is no team added yet. Simply choose a default team and save.
From the space settings, select Workforce.
Choose Auto-assign to a default team.
Choose your Default team.
Save.
If you choose Manually assign each work item:
Manually assign each work item will never add teams for you.
From the space settings, select Workforce.
Choose Manually assign each work item.
Save.
Step 4: Set default availability and team capacity
Default availability is the status an agent has when they first use Workforce Management. Team capacity tells Workforce Management what counts as a full workload.
From the space settings, select Workforce.
Set the default availability for agents in your space.
Select Capacity.
Set how many open work items an agent can handle in each team.
Select Save.
The limits you set apply to every agent in the team within the space. You can change these settings later in space settings.
Step 5: Tell your team and plan next steps
Once Workforce Management is on and configured:
Set up routing. Decide whether to route work manually or automatically. See Route work to the right agent in Workforce Management.
Build your schedules. Plan when each agent is working so routing knows who is on shift. You can create schedules individually or import several at once. See Bulk import schedules using CSV.
Watch capacity for a week. Go to Capacity utilization, visible to admins only, to see whether your limits match how your team actually works. Adjust if needed. See See your team's capacity in Workforce Management.
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