Fastpath:
Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Routing configuration
Attention:This article assumes omnichannel routing has been turned on for your account. SeeTurning on omnichannel routing.
Omnichannel routingis a highly-configurable routing solution that can route tickets from email, calls, messaging, web form, side conversations, and the API. Omnichannel routing provides the most sophisticated routing logic, which can increase agent efficiency and effectiveness. It works out of the box, but you'll get the most value if you take your time planning out and planning your routing configuration.
This article contains the following topics:
Planning your routing configuration
Omnichannel routing works out of the box. That means it can start routing calls and messaging conversations as soon as it's turned on, and email tickets as soon as the auto-routing tag is added to them. Therefore, when you turn on omnichannel routing or adjust your configuration routing, it's best to have a detailed plan ahead of time.
To plan out your omnichannel routing configuration
- (Optional) To make the most informed decisions about your routing configuration settings, you might want to consider the questions posed inBest practices: Planning your routing workflow.
- On all plan types, do the following:
- Email tickets (including web form, side conversations, and API) must have a unique routing tag. Decide what your routing tag will be.
- You probably already use triggers to assign tickets to groups. In that case, you just need to ensure one or more triggers have an action to add the routing tag to any email tickets you want routed by omnichannel routing. SeeRequirements for the routing triggers. Decide if you are going to modify existing triggers to function as routing triggers, or create new ones.
- Before you turn on omnichannel routing, you need todefine capacity rules to balance the assigned work between agents. There is a built-in capacity rule that is enabled by default, but you can define alternative rules that better meet your unique needs. Decide whatcapacity rulesyou will need. For each rule, decide what the capacities will be for each channel and which agents will be assigned to the rule.
- Review the standard unified agent statuses. When you turn on omnichannel routing,standard agent statusesare automatically available for agents to use across channels. The standard agent statuses can't be edited, but it's important to understand how they're configured.
- On Professional and Enterprise plans, you'll also need to decide the following:
- Whatunified agent statusesare you going to use? Just the standard agent statuses orcustom statuses, too? For each custom status, what will be the name of the status and what will be the per-channel statuses?
- Are you routing based on ticket priority? If so, what triggers are you going to use to add and manage priority on tickets?
- Are youusing skills? If so, what skills are you going to define and which agents have them? What routing rules or triggers are you going to use to add and manage skills on tickets? Do you want to fallback to the routing model if agents with the skills aren't available?
- How do you want to handle it when messaging conversations and calls are routed to agents but they don't accept it? Are you going to turn on messaging reassignment timing, where a messaging ticket is reassigned to a different team member if not addressed within the specified timing? (On Professional plans the reassignment time is 30 seconds; on Enterprise plans, it is customizable.) Are you going to turn oncall offering time limits, which acts as a reassignment time threshold for incoming calls?
Editing the routing configuration
你打开后omnichannel路由和设置routing tag, your final step is to configure how it distributes the messages. An initial routing configuration is supplied with omnichannel routing. You can edit this at any time to suit your needs.
To set up a routing configuration
- InAdmin Center, click
Objects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectOmnichannel routing > Routing configuration.
- On theRouting Configurationpage, clickEditnext to the Initial routing configuration.
- On theInitial routing configurationpage, you can see the name and description for the routing configuration.
- On Professional and Enterprise plans, you can also configure the following values:
- Turn on skills-based routing: This routes tickets to agents with matching skills who also have an eligible status and spare capacity. To use this feature you must havedefined skillsfor your account and a way toassign skills to tickets. SeeAbout using skills to route tickets.
- Turn on skills timeout: (Recommended) When selected, work may be assigned to agents without the matching skill if none of the agents with the skills are available at the time. If you don't turn on the skills timeout, email and messaging tickets with skills remain in the queue indefinitely until an agent with the matching skill becomes available; calls remain in the queue until the maximum queue wait time is reached and the call is sent to voicemail.Note:Before agents can be considered for assignment after a skills timeout occurs, one of the following events must occur: agent status changed, agent capacity changed, the agent's group assignment changed, or the agent's maximum capacity changed.
- Email: The skills timeout threshold for email tickets. The default is one hour.
- Messaging: The skills timeout threshold for messaging conversation. The default is 30 seconds.
- Talk: The skills timeout threshold for calls. The default is 30 seconds.
- Turn on skills timeout: (Recommended) When selected, work may be assigned to agents without the matching skill if none of the agents with the skills are available at the time. If you don't turn on the skills timeout, email and messaging tickets with skills remain in the queue indefinitely until an agent with the matching skill becomes available; calls remain in the queue until the maximum queue wait time is reached and the call is sent to voicemail.
- Turn on messaging activity routing: Counts all open active and inactive messaging tickets towards an agent'scapacity. Additionally, both active and inactive messaging tickets will be offered to agents via the Accept button. When not selected, only active messaging tickets are counted towards capacity and offered via the Accept button.
- Turn on messaging reassignment timing: This reassigns work to a different team member if it isn’t addressed in the time you specify.
- Messaging timing (seconds): If messaging reassignment timing is enabled, specifies the time in seconds before work is reassigned to another agent. The timing is 30 seconds on Professional plans, and customizable on Enterprise plans.Note:On Enterprise plans, you can also set a reassignment timing threshold for incoming calls with theCall offering time limitsetting on the Talk page in Admin Center. SeeManaging Talk line settings.
- Messaging timing (seconds): If messaging reassignment timing is enabled, specifies the time in seconds before work is reassigned to another agent. The timing is 30 seconds on Professional plans, and customizable on Enterprise plans.
- Turn on reassign reopended tickets: This reassigns email and messaging tickets if the assigned agent has a specified status when the ticket status changes from Solved, Pending, or On-hold back to Open. If you are usingcustom ticket statuses, this applies to all custom ticket statuses in the Solved, Pending, or On-hold status categories.
- Email: Select the agent statuses for which you want to reassign email tickets when the ticket status changes. This reassignment behavior applies to all email tickets with the routing tag, even if the ticket wasn't originally assigned via omnichannel routing.
- Messaging: Select the agent statuses for which you want to reassign messaging tickets when the ticket status changes. This applies to all messaging tickets.
- Turn on skills-based routing: This routes tickets to agents with matching skills who also have an eligible status and spare capacity. To use this feature you must havedefined skillsfor your account and a way toassign skills to tickets. SeeAbout using skills to route tickets.
- When you are finished, clickSave.
Configuring omnichannel routing to route tickets based on priority
On Professional and Enterprise plans, omnichannel routing automatically considers ticket priority if it's set. All you have to do is set a ticket's priority before it is assigned to an agent. We recommend using triggers to automatically set the ticket's priority when it enters the queue. This can be done with the same routing triggers you're already using to assign groups and the routing tag, or separate triggers.
To use triggers to set ticket priority
- Create a new triggeroreditan existing one.
- Add conditions to define the tickets you want to set the priority for.
- Add an actionTicket > Priorityand select the priority value you want to assign.
Evolving your routing configuration
The standard unified agent statuses and default values for omnichannel routing settings, such as capacity rules and reassignment timing thresholds, can provide a good starting point if you're unsure of the right values to configure for your organization. Whether you use the standard and default values or came up with your own based on your research, it's likely that after you use omnichannel routing for a while, you will find ways to start honing your configuration to improve how it works for your organization. These changes could be identified based on feedback and reporting data, or because something about your organization has changed and needs to be factored in. Either way, it's good to check in on your routing configuration periodically to ensure it's still optimized to meet your needs. For example, you might ask yourself:
- Are your reassignment timeouts correct? If your agents often have spare capacity, you could try reducing these thresholds. If they are typically at capacity with a large queue of work waiting for an available agent, reducing the threshold probably isn't a great idea.
- Is your ticket prioritization working for each channel? Are any adjustments needed?
- 你的统一代理统计吗uses still meeting your needs? Have you noticed any trends in agent productivity based on their status usage? If you aren't using custom agent statuses, would they be helpful to you?
- Has anything changed for you organizationally that should be reflected in our routing configuration, triggers, or other business rules?
When you need to adjust your routing configuration, seeEditing the routing configuration.
70 Comments
Is it possible to create different rules that target different brands? (We don't want agent cross over between the tickets we route)
Ever since turning on omnichannel routing our agents are no longer being offered messaging coversations with the accept button, and they must go assign them to themselves in the view we have for them. Any tips on get this configured properly?
Daniela Healy
Yes, you can create different rules to target different brands. You just need to add a trigger condition like "Brand-Is-*name of brand*" and associate it with the tag for your routing.
Landry Norman
Have you set up a trigger to automatically add a tag to your new tickets? That happened in my test account but when I created a trigger to add a tag for specific brand tickets, it routed successfully without needing to manually assign the ticket to me.
I would recommend checking your older tickets to see if there's a tag that's associated with the omnichannel routing. If the tag you set is not there, then that's most probably the reason.
I'm testing this out in my sandbox instance now and the tag, group and priority are correctly being set by the trigger but a ticket coming in via text is not getting assigned to an agent. It seems to be working fine for email and messaging but for some reason text isn't getting assigned out.
I'm a little confused by this. It seems you are tailoring this routing for specific tags related to specific customers, which isn't practical for many other customers.
What I need to understand is how to use this in a proper round-robin fashion.
If I set a trigger with my tag (let's call it "new ticket"), that trigger will only assign to one group; what about when that group meets its capacity? what about when I have agents in other groups available to take open tickets? How does this routing method work if you need to auto-assign between groups?
Hi, I can't try this function. I have no "Omnichannel routing" in my objects and rules-side bar. Please help.
HiEmma Löfström,
Is messaging enabled in your account? If not, kindly enable Messaging. To enable Messaging, you may check this article:Getting started with Messaging. Once Messaging is enabled, Omnichannel routing will already be available on your end.
I want to use omnichannel routing for a certain group in ZD instance. However, we have people in that group who need to be able to view tickets in that group, but I don't want them to be able to receive tickets as part of the routing - is there a way to achieve that?
For example I have a "Level 2" Group, say there are 5 agents in that group. 3 of them I want to receive tickets to serve, but the other 2 agents are only in the group so they can view those tickets if they need to. Those 2 agents can't have access to all ZD tickets though, hence they are in a group.
Hi, how come I do not see this option from our instance
HiRiah Lao,
In order to use Omnichannel, it is a must to switch On Agent Workspace and Messaging before the Omnichannel Routing option would appear on yr Admin options. I was facing a noobs moment too earlier.
Hope this help cheers!
Hello,
I am interested in using the omnichannel routing feature for capacity and agent status, but we have no intention to use messaging/talk in our agent workspace. I currently use the Classic Web widget to suggest help articles, but I don't want it to create chats for my agents to answer. If I turn on Messaging so I can use the Routing Feature, will I have to allow the web widget to create conversations that my agents have to action, or can I continue to use the Web Widget as we are currently?
thanks,
Is it possible to combine omnichannel routing with skill based routing?
I am also confused, what's the difference between using groups or using skills?
Skills are not currently considered by the omnichannel routing engine, but that's something we intend to add in the future. For more information on how omnichannel routing works, seeAbout omnichannel routing with unified agent status
Thank you@...I guess my question is, if I have skill based routing set up how would it interact with omnichannel routing? Would I be able to keep both or would I need to choose between one or the other?
I'm still learning about the different routing options. I still have the question about what's the difference between using groups or skills, is there a benefit for one or the other?
Hello, I'm really interested in this new feature.
I'd like to know if I'm going to be able to track status time for each agent.
We need to have KPI with number of calls and chats attended but also the time each agent has been in each status.
The link "Disabling Omnichannel" appears to be broken.
Hello, how can I see all my agent's status at once? As in, check to see how is Online Status and Away staus?
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/related/click?data=BAh7CjobZGVzdGluYXRpb25fYXJ0aWNsZV9pZGwrCBpcxJUCBDoYcmVmZXJyZXJfYXJ0aWNsZV9pZGwrCBq2J0pkBDoLbG9jYWxlSSIKZW4tdXMGOgZFVDoIdXJsSSJaL2hjL2VuLXVzL2FydGljbGVzLzQ0MDkxNDkxMTk1MTQtQWJvdXQtb21uaWNoYW5uZWwtcm91dGluZy13aXRoLXVuaWZpZWQtYWdlbnQtc3RhdHVzLQY7CFQ6CXJhbmtpBg%3D%3D--aff7e666d12e7a03bba6d56ffa6d6887bc7dad94
I'm attempting to turn on omnichannel routing. I have everything set up according to the guides:
- All brands are on messaging
- Agent workspace activated
- Trigger set up for email tickets
When I go to turn on omnichannel routing, I get a generic "invalid settings" error. I can't expand it to see any specific details. I've reached out to support and they said to clear my cache which did not help at all.
Anyone else experience this??
Thank you for raising this. Apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you. I'll work on your ticket and respond to you to help resolve the issue. Thank you for your patience.
I don't seeOmnichannel routingunderObjects and rulesas the article states- is there a reason for that?
Hi Stella,
we had the same issue when we changed the plan. Check if Agent Workspace and Messaging is activated.
ThanksVio H.
So this doesn't work if you only use Chat?
正确的。你的账户必须满足以下requirements to use omnichannel routing:
Hope this clarifies!
Thanks,
Christine
Amos C
When entering your auto routing tag, hit the enter key and then save
Hello, I just noticed a few days ago that my team is assigning manual tickets through views again after I enabled omnichannel routing. There has been no sound notification since then. I also believe I have followed all of the instructions; the trigger is active, and the tag is visible on the ticket; however, the ticket is not automatically assigned to the group I designated. I'm getting quite frustrated with this because my agent was previously quite happy with sound notifications so they could be more aware of new tickets.
Can anyone tell me what I did wrong and what I should do to get sound notifications for Instagram DMs and messaging again?
HiMika
Have you created a ticket with our support group?
Sounds like the issue is with the trigger, as the messsages arent getting assigned to the right group.......
are 3rd party telephony solutions usable?
Pleasesign into leave a comment.