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

Creating Skill Definitions

An escalation rule consists of a set of skills that are required to handle this work item. A skill is defined by the skill name, a skill value, and a skill expertise level.

Skill names and values are defined by your Siebel administrator. These skill names and values are included as data properties for a work item. They are then used to match a work item with employees who have the same skill definition.

The skill names are defined as instances of the Skill:skill_name configuration parameter in the Configurations view in the UQ Administration screen. For more information, see Defining Configurations and Assigning Employee Skills.

In many cases, each employee has already been assigned a set of skill definitions. For details, refer to Applications Administration Guide. However, you can also assign skill definitions for an employee through the UQ Administration screen. For more information, see Assigning Employee Skills.

Skill values may be explicitly specified in the escalation step, or may be indirectly defined by specifying a work item data property name. If you substitute a skill value with a data property name enclosed in % characters, the value of that data property for a given work item will be used for the skill value. Enclosing the data property name in % characters triggers the data property substitution behavior.

For example, you could define a data property alternatively as Product = "Solaris" or as Product = "%system%", where the value of the Product data property is not fixed but takes on the value of system from the work item. Using data property substitution allows you to use the route and escalation more flexibly, such as, as in this example, for more than one operating system.

To simplify the routing of a work item to a particular agent, a virtual agent skill called AgentID is automatically added to an agent's skill profile when the agent logs on. The AgentID value is equal to the agent's user ID with an expertise value of expert. This virtual agent skill can be used just as any other skill when escalation rules are defined.

You use the virtual agent skill in the same way you specify a skill value using a data property name. The skill ID is always AgentID. The skill value data property name can be anything as long as the value contained in the work item equals the agent's user ID. For example, AgentID = "%cust_rep_ID%" would match a work item data property called cust_rep_ID where the value was the agent's user ID.

Skill expertise levels are defined by your Siebel administrator. Each employee has been assigned an expertise level for each of their skill definitions. You can assign an expertise level of Novice, Intermediate, or Expert. If no expertise level is assigned, Novice is used as a default.

NOTE:  Each sequential escalation step within a routing rule should relax the skill requirements, so that a larger number of agents will be eligible to handle the work item. The last escalation step of a routing rule should include as large a pool of agents as possible.


 Siebel Universal Queuing Administration Guide
 Published: 18 April 2003