About the 'Channel group' column in AWA's Service Channel Issue <!-- /*NS Branding Styles*/ --> .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } ProblemThe customer requested information about the 'Channel group' column in AWA's Service Channel, including its feature overview, configuration examples, advantages and disadvantages of creating new channels, and implications of setting 'Default' for future Service Channel growth. Release<!-- /*NS Branding Styles*/ --> .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } Yokohama+ Resolution<!-- /*NS Branding Styles*/ --> .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } What are Service Channel Groups? Are they for “load balancing”?Short answer: SCGs are an opt‑in scalability/partitioning control for AWA’s routing and assignment workers. They let you split routing work for different service channels across nodes/threads, and scope configuration caches—so the platform scales cleanly at high volume. That feels like “load balancing,” but specifically for the AWAs assigner workload, not for customer traffic in a CCaaS sense.Supporting detail (architecture):The ServiceChannelGroup entity is cached with other AWA configuration. Assigners use the group to limit queries to just the channels in that group, reducing contention when there are many service channels.It’s opt‑in: if you don’t configure groups beyond the out‑of‑box default, AWA workers function as before. No behavior change.If I set up an SCG, do I create multiple records identical to the “default” group?No. You generally create a small number of groups, each containing a subset of service channels that share characteristics (e.g., live channels vs. task channels; heavy‑traffic regions; different tables). You don’t clone identical copies of the “default” group; you assign each Service Channel (e.g., chat, case, incident, messaging) to the most appropriate one group to partition the AWA workload. (Our enablement materials describe SCGs as a control so “routing and assignment phases can run for different service channels on different nodes.”)We’re only implementing our first Service Channel now and won’t add more for months. Should we still set up a group?Recommendation: Not necessary right now. With a single service channel, the default behavior is perfectly fine, and introducing a separate SCG won’t deliver a measurable benefit. SCGs start paying off as the number of channels grows (dozens/hundreds) or when routing volume and diversity create assigner contention.What’s the difference between:one Service Channel with the SCG field blank, vs.1,000 Service Channel records?Two clarifications to help the customer:“Blank” SCG field → the channel stays in the default out‑of‑box group; AWA treats it like the classic setup.“1,000 Service Channel records” is an extreme configuration and not typical. At that scale, not using groups can cause the assigner to touch a very large configuration set on each routing cycle. Creating a few well‑chosen SCGs narrows query scope and cache usage, improving throughput and predictability. In short, SCGs help at scale; they don’t change functional outcomes with just one channel.If there are many Service Channels and no SCGs, will allocation be delayed? Will anything beyond AWA be affected?Allocation latency: Potentially yes, at large scale. Without SCGs, more assigner threads may compete over a bigger service‑channel set, which can increase routing/assignment cycle times under high load. SCGs let you split work across nodes and reduce cross‑channel contention.Other platform functions: SCGs are an AWA internal scalability feature. They do not impact non‑AWA features (Agent Workspace UI, VA dialogs, case creation, etc.) themselves. They’re designed to keep AWA’s routing and capacity engine efficient; other modules aren’t functionally altered by whether you define SCGs.With just one service channel there's no need to use groups yet. The use case usually make most sense when there are both "high volume / low urgency" service channel(s) and "high urgency" service channel(s) on the same instance. 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