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Channels and Channel Types

A channel defines the communication media for a work item that is routed through Siebel Universal Queuing. A channel is typically based on one of the following channel types:

• Voice
• Email
• Service request
• Activity

The channel is one of the characteristics that defines a work item. The channels that will be available to your implementation of Siebel Universal Queuing are defined by your communications administrator. The channel can be anything as long as it can be passed to the routing engine along with the work item. For example, you can specify multiple channels based on the email channel type: Email-support, Email-service, Email-sales, and so on, according to your organization's needs.

Each channel also has channel properties, which are a superset of the values that the work items for the channel may contain. For example, an email channel might have a SenderAddress property. A subset of these properties is used to create the routing rules that will be matched to work item properties.

NOTE:  Service requests and activities are nonreal-time work items. Email messages may be configured as either realtime or nonreal-time work items. Routing nonreal-time work items refers to assigning ownership for such items. Agents are not notified directly, as they are with realtime work items that are sent to the agent's Siebel desktop through the communications toolbar.

For more information on channels and channel types, see Defining Channels.