Siebel Universal Queuing Administration Guide > Using Siebel Universal Queuing > Creating Routes and Escalations >

Defining Routes, Route Properties, and Escalation Rules

Work items are handled according to business logic expressed as routing rules. A routing rule has these components:

• Route record
• Route properties, described in Adding Route Properties
• Route escalations and escalation rules, described in Defining a Route Escalation

A route is specific to a particular channel. However, a channel can have many routes. For example, an email channel could have a route for email messages directed to a technical support email address as well as a route for general email messages. However, each of these routes can only apply to a channel type of email.

When creating routes, follow these guidelines:

• Always include a general route for each channel type with the lowest priority setting. This general route will catch work items for the channel that do not match any other route for the channel.
• Always define the last escalation step for a route to include the entire pool of possible agents and define the wait time as zero. This will make sure that work items will always be assigned to an agent at some point in the route escalation.

Each route depends on the selection criteria defined in its route properties to evaluate work items for routing.

A route property is a set of key-value pair criteria, which are compared to the work item's data property key-value pairs. When a new work item is sent to Siebel Universal Queuing, the routes and route properties for the applicable channel type are searched to find a route whose properties match the work item. The first route for which selection criteria key-value pairs match the key-value pairs of the work item becomes the selected route for that work item.

Routes are selected only once—when the work item is introduced into the system. Every work item is associated with just one selected route.

Each route has a Priority field. Routes are searched for a matching selection rule in priority order, from highest to lowest integer value. The priority determines the order in which routes are matched to work items, and the order in which work items are assigned to agents. If work items in two or more routes match an agent's skill profile, the work item with the highest priority is routed to the agent first.

In the example above, where you have one email route for technical support and one email route for other inbound email messages, you might assign a priority of "10" to the technical support route and a priority of "2" to the general email route. An email addressed to support@yourcompany.com would actually match both routes. However, by setting the technical support route to a higher priority, this route will be matched to the email message first. The message will be routed to an agent who can handle technical support questions.

To create a route

1. From the application-level menu, choose View > Site Map > UQ Administration > Routes.

   The Routes view appears.

2. Type the name for this route in the Name field.
3. Choose the channel type from the Channel Type drop-down list.
4. Select a priority for this route from the Priority drop-down list.

   NOTE:  The higher the priority number, the higher the priority.

5. Type the maximum number of work items you would like to see waiting in this route in the Capacity field.

   The capacity for a route is an arbitrary number that you will use to gauge the activity level of a route. When the number of work items in a route at any given time exceeds the capacity you have set, an alarm is triggered and logged. If you frequently exceed the capacity of a route, you may want to evaluate the design of the routing rule logic to make sure it is meeting your needs.

6. Click the Active check box to make this route active.
7. Click the Non Real-Time check box to have work items for this route assigned to an employee regardless of the employee's availability.

   Nonreal-time work items are assigned to an employee whether or not the employee is ready to accept work items. The work item will be placed into the appropriate queue for the employee, such as My Service Requests, My Activities, or My Communications.

   CAUTION:  Do not change the setting of the Non Real-Time check box in real-time.

8. Type the amount of time (in minutes) in the Service Level (mins) field.

   The service level is the amount of time in which work items in this route are expected to be handled. This number is not used in the routing process but sets a target for monitoring performance. You can use decimals for values less than a minute—for example, 1.5 minutes equals one minute and thirty seconds.

9. Type the service level percentage in the Service Level Percentage field.

   This is the percentage of work items that you want to have handled within the Service Level time.

10. Step off the record to save the new route.