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Work Items

Siebel Universal Queuing queues and routes work items. A work item represents a real-time or a nonreal-time workflow task. A real-time work item, such as a voice call, has an associated live session. A nonreal-time work item is a passive request for an action, such as an email asking for more information, a fax requesting a magazine subscription, or a service request that needs to be addressed. Email, service requests, activities, or other items may be defined either as real-time or as nonreal-time work items.

Each work item has a set of associated properties. For example, an email work item has an email message ID, sender's email address, receiver's email address, subject, and so on.

A work item is delivered to the Siebel Universal Queuing routing engine through the Siebel communications infrastructure. The Siebel Universal Queuing routing engine uses the work item's data properties to find a matching route. After the work item is matched to a route, the routing engine uses the skill requirement in each of the matching route's escalations steps to locate a qualified agent. When the routing engine finds a suitable, available agent to handle the work item, the work item is passed back to Siebel Communications Server to be handled by the agent.

Work Item Delivery Models

An agent has the capability of handling more than one concurrent work item for a given channel. The Siebel Universal Queuing administrator determines how many simultaneous sessions each agent can handle for each channel.

An agent can receive work items in one of the following ways:

• Siebel Universal Queuing working with Siebel Communications Server assigns and pushes real-time work items to an agent as soon as the agent becomes available to receive a new work item.

  The agent must be logged on and in a ready state to receive a new real-time work item. The Accept Work Item button on the communications toolbar blinks when the work item is received and the agent must explicitly accept the work item. The work item is returned to the queue and rerouted if not accepted by the agent within a specified period of time, and the agent state is changed to not ready.

• The agent can select a work item from a list of available work items for which the agent is qualified. The work items are managed by Siebel Universal Queuing. This model is also known as cherry picking.

  The agent must be logged on and in a ready state to select a work item from the list. For more information, see Selecting Work Items from My Qualified Work Items View.

• Siebel Universal Queuing, working with Siebel Communications Server, assigns nonreal-time work items to an agent, regardless of the agent's ready or not ready state.

  The agent must be logged on to receive a new nonreal-time work item. The agent also must periodically check the appropriate view, such as the My Service Requests view of the Service screen or the My Communications view of the Communications screen, to determine if new nonreal-time work items have been received. The buttons on the communications toolbar do not blink for new, nonreal-time work items.