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Creating Routes and Escalations

Setting up Siebel Universal Queuing primarily involves defining routes that are used to direct work items to the appropriate agent for handling. When defining routes, you need to take into consideration the type of work item (channel), the characteristics of the work item (for example, is this a high-priority customer), and the best person to handle the work item (employee, skill, and competency).

Routing a work item in Siebel Universal Queuing is a two-step process:

• First, the work item is matched to a route based on selection criteria.
• Second, an appropriate agent is located to handle the work item based on a skill set defined in the selected route's escalation steps.

You define the routing rules that contain the business logic to accomplish these two steps.

NOTE:  Escalation steps consider agent availability only for real-time work items.

Selection criteria are made up of simple to complex statements that Siebel Universal Queuing evaluates based on the properties of a work item. Generally, the more complex the statements, the better job Siebel Universal Queuing can do in assigning work items in accordance with your company's business rules.

For more information, see Defining Routes, Route Properties, and Escalation Rules.

Escalation steps determine how a work item is going to be routed based on a set of skill definitions and wait times. Skill definitions are used to match a work item with an employee who holds the same skill definitions. Each route typically contains a series of escalation steps; each step becoming more liberal in the skill requirements, so that the last escalation step will include the largest pool of available employees. For more information, see Defining a Route Escalation.

When a qualified employee for a work item is not available, the work item remains in the route until an employee becomes available. If the wait time for a route escalation is exceeded, the work item moves to the next escalation rule, usually with a more liberal set of employee skills. If the last escalation rule is reached, and the work item remains unassigned in the route longer than the wait time, an alarm is triggered and logged. For more information on alarms, see Viewing Alarms and Errors.

Each channel should have a catch-all route defined so that any poorly defined work items will find a matching route. Otherwise, a work item may go through the routing engine without being routed. In this case, an alarm is sent to Siebel Server but the work item will not be processed.