How Assignment Rules Work
When a ticket is escalated from Serval AI to a human agent, the assignment process follows this order:- Assignment rules — Serval evaluates the ticket against your configured rules in order. The first matching rule (top of the list) determines the assignee. Drag rules to reorder them and change which one wins when multiple rules match.
- Default assignment — If no assignment rules match, the ticket is assigned to your default group (if configured).
- Skills — Natural language instructions for how Serval should handle assignment.
- Unassigned — If nothing above applies, the ticket remains unassigned until manually claimed.
Conditions
Each assignment rule has one or more conditions that determine when it applies. All conditions on a rule must match for the rule to trigger.
Each condition can match on is or is not, so you can route on the absence of a value, such as Priority is not Low or escalations that land outside a business-hours schedule.
Actions
When an assignment rule’s conditions match, Serval assigns the ticket based on your configured users and groups.Assign to users or groups
Directly assign the ticket to specific users, or to one assignment group.- Users — When multiple users are selected, they form a single pool and Serval picks one assignee.
- Group — The ticket’s owning group is set to that group. How (or whether) an individual member is chosen depends on the team’s Group member assignment setting (Round-robin or Human triage).
Requester exclusion
When evaluating candidates from assignment rules or default assignment, Serval automatically excludes the ticket’s requester from the pool. This prevents a ticket from being auto-assigned back to the person who submitted it after escalation. If every candidate in the pool is the requester (for example, a default assignment group with only one member who is also the requester), the ticket is left unassigned.You can always manually assign a ticket to its requester if needed. Requester exclusion only applies to automatic assignment.
Default Assignment
Every team has a default assignment setting that acts as a fallback when no assignment rules match:- Unassigned: Tickets remain unassigned until someone manually claims them.
- Default group: Tickets are automatically assigned to a specific group.
- Single user: Tickets are automatically assigned to one specific user.
Creating an Assignment Rule
1
Open assignment settings
Go to Team Settings → Assignment.
2
Add a rule
Click Add Rule to open the rule builder.
3
Define conditions
Add one or more conditions. Choose the condition type (category, priority, status, or schedule) and select the matching value. All conditions must be true for the rule to trigger.
4
Choose an action
Select Assign to users/groups, then choose the users or groups that should receive matching tickets.
5
Save the rule
Click Save to activate the rule.
Managing Rules
Editing a Rule
Click the edit button on any rule card to modify its conditions or actions.Reordering Rules
Hover over a rule card and grab the handle on its left edge to drag it up or down. Rules are evaluated top to bottom, so the rule closest to the top wins when more than one rule matches a ticket. Use this to set precedence when rules overlap, for example a “during business hours” rule above an “outside business hours” rule when their schedules touch.Deleting a Rule
Click the delete button on a rule card. You’ll see a confirmation prompt before the rule and all its conditions and actions are removed.Simulate assignment
Use Simulate on Team Settings → Assignment to preview which rule would match a ticket — without changing any real tickets or assignees. The Assignment Simulation panel walks the same rule order as live escalation: first match wins, otherwise the ticket falls through to default assignment.1
Open the simulator
Go to Team Settings → Assignment and click Simulate.
2
Choose an input
Pick one mode:
3
Set overrides (request message only)
For a free-text request, set:
- Date and time plus timezone — used to evaluate schedule conditions (business hours vs after hours).
- Optional Status, Priority, and Type — when set, the simulator uses those values instead of inferring them. Leave status on Default and priority/type unset to let Serval infer what it can from the message.
Category is always inferred from the ticket content. You cannot override it in the simulator.
4
Run the simulation
Click Simulate. Results include:
- Auto-set properties — the category Serval inferred from the message.
- Rule Evaluation — each rule in order, with which conditions matched or missed, and which rule (if any) won.
- Assignment Result — the users or assignment group the matched rule would assign to, plus any workflows that rule would trigger. If nothing matched, the result shows fallthrough to your default assignment.
Simulation is a dry run. It does not escalate, assign, notify, or modify tickets.
Related
Assignment groups
Own tickets by org group and choose round-robin or human triage
Categories
Define ticket categories used as assignment rule conditions
Schedules
Configure business hours schedules used in assignment rule conditions
Team Routing & Assignment
How tickets get to the right team and person