Workforce - Automatically assigning technicians

Overview

gaiia’s Auto-Assign logic automatically assigns technicians to new work orders based on calendar availability, travel time, and technician qualifications. In this article, we’ll walk through how the assignment works, how technicians are selected, and how to configure your setup for the best results.

Understanding how technicians are assigned

Once a customer selects their preferred time window during the checkout, Auto-Assign starts checking for a valid technician at 15-minute increments within that window.

• If a valid technician is found, they are assigned immediately.
• If multiple technicians qualify, the one with the lowest total travel time (to and from the appointment) is chosen.
• If no technician is valid for that increment, the system checks the next 15-minute slot.
• If no valid technician is found across the full window, Auto-Assign fails, and the order goes into the Order Queue on the Schedule page marked with a “Failed to Auto Assign” icon.

For example: A customer selects 8:00–12:00. John is available at 8:00 and gets the assignment, even though another technician becomes available at 8:15 with a shorter drive. Currently, Auto-Assign does not wait for better options further into the time window.

Determining the validity of a technician

To be considered valid, a technician must pass all of the following checks:

• Availability: Technician must have open calendar space to accommodate the work order and surrounding travel time.
• Travel Time:
  • To Work Order: Uses the previous work order’s address, or the technician’s base location if it’s the first job of the day.
  • From Work Order: Uses the next work order’s address, or the technician’s base location if it’s the last job of the day.
  • Maximum Travel Time: Either the trip to or from the job must fall within the allowed maximum travel time. This is a tenant-level setting located under Settings > Appointments.
  • Return to Base Location: The drive back to the base location after the last work order must also fall within the maximum travel time.
  • Travel time can extend beyond the preferred time slot, but cannot overlap with another work order. Whether the drive from and back to the base location can fall outside the technician’s shift depends on your travel time settings.
• Qualifications: Technician must have the required Work Type assigned to their profile.
• Coverage Area: Technician must have the coverage area in which the work order is located on their profile.

If any of these checks fail, the work order will still be created, but it will appear in the Order Queue with a Failed to Auto Assign status.

Configuring your instance for Auto-Assign

To configure Auto-Assign, go to Settings > Appointments. From the Appointment Settings page, you can enable Auto-Assign independently for each context: Checkout, Client Portal, and Workforce.

Enabling Auto-Assign for one context does not enable it for the other contexts. Select the contexts where you want Auto-Assign to be active based on your workflow.

For Client Portal, choose when Auto-Assign applies: Schedule for new appointments, Reschedule for existing appointments that customers move. With Reschedule checked, customers who reschedule are booked with a technician right away. Unchecked, they submit a request and your team assigns it. See Rescheduling appointments in the client portal.

If you’ve enabled “Only display time slots with technician availability,” customers will only see time options that pass the calendar and Work Type qualification checks. Travel time is still evaluated only after submission.

Counting travel time at the start and end of a shift

Auto-Assign counts two drives at the edges of a technician’s day: the drive from their base location to the first work order, and the drive back to their base location after the last work order. Two settings decide whether those drives count toward shift hours or can happen before and after the shift.

To set them:

1. Go to Settings > Appointments.

2. In the Travel time section, under Travel time to first work order, select Stay inside shift hours or Extend outside shift hours.

3. Under Return travel time, select Stay inside shift hours or Extend outside shift hours.

   The diagram next to each setting shows where the shift boundary falls for the option you select.

4. Save your changes.

Here is how each option affects scheduling:

Stay inside shift hours keeps all driving inside scheduled hours, which helps avoid unplanned overtime on long rural drives. Extend outside shift hours suits teams whose technicians prefer to work full shifts and drive on their own time.

1. Both settings default to Stay inside shift hours.

2. The maximum travel time still applies to every drive, including the drive back to the base location. With Extend outside shift hours at the start of a shift, a technician can be scheduled to leave as early as the maximum travel time allows. For example, with a 60-minute maximum and an 8:00 shift, that is 7:00.

Improving assignment accuracy

One of the best ways to help Auto-Assign succeed is by configuring technician Base Locations. These are used to calculate travel time for the first appointment of a technician’s day.

• If a technician has no base location set, Auto-Assign assumes 0 minutes of travel time to the first work order.
• This can lead to inaccurate scheduling, especially for early-morning appointments.
• Base Locations are also used to calculate the drive back after the last appointment of the day.

Notifying customers when Auto-Assign fails

When Auto-Assign fails on an appointment a customer booked themselves, gaiia can automatically email that customer to invite them to rebook. This notification is not active by default, and enabling the communication template on its own will not send it.

Two pieces are required: the Work order auto assignation failed communication template must be enabled, and a workflow must be created and published from the Workforce auto-assignation failure communication workflow template. 

Publishing the workflow

Once the communication template is enabled, create the workflow that sends it:

1. Navigate to Workflows.
2. Click on the Create New Workflow button, then select From Template.
3. Select the Workforce auto-assignation failure communication template.

4. Publish the workflow.

   Until a workflow is published from the template, no emails are sent, even if the communication template appears enabled in your settings.

Once published, the communication fires automatically whenever a work order fails auto-assignation and meets the notification criteria.

Understanding when the notification fires

The communication is sent when both of the following are true:

• The work order's assignment attempt ended in a "Failure" state.
• The appointment was booked by the customer, so an account is attached to the assignment attempt.

Assignment failures that originate from an internal action, such as the assign modal on the Schedule page, do not trigger this communication. Those work orders still land in the Order Queue with the Failed to Auto Assign status.

Following best practices

• Set technician Base Locations for accurate first-job assignments.
• Keep technician shift calendars and locations up to date.
• Make sure Work Types are correctly assigned to technician profiles.
• Test different scenarios to better understand how your configuration affects assignments.
• Review your Travel time settings in Settings > Appointments so the drives at the start and end of a shift match how your technicians work.

When technician data is missing or incomplete (like no Work Type or invalid location), Auto-Assign may silently fail, pushing the work order to the queue instead.