Understanding Supervisor Desktop
These topics discuss:
Supervisor Desktop functionality.
Application dispatcher.
Supervisor Desktop setup considerations.
Programmatic Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) agent data retrieval.
Supervisor Desktop provides a single and consolidated environment where support center supervisors perform their daily tasks and maintenance activities, such as:
Monitoring real-time information about agents and queues.
Running performance reports.
Reviewing outbound email that are pending approval.
Reviewing and administering timeout entries.
Configuring agents for voice, multichannel, and email tasks.
Initiating agent-to-agent chat sessions with an agent being monitored.
See Monitoring Real-Time Information.
Real-time Monitoring
Supervisor Desktop provides real-time statistical data on agents and the voice and multichannel queues on to which they logged. Information is pushed and refreshed on the desktop on a regular basis. Users can select the type of statistics they want to monitor (agent or queue) and the appropriate filter for the data to be presented. Typically, they define a team of agents, a list of queues, or both as filters for the real-time monitor.
Agent statistics provide information that pertains to individual agents who are being monitored, such as agent status on each logged on queue, the time duration in that status, the total time that the agent remains available and unavailable, the average time used to complete a task (email, chat, and generic), and so on. As for queue statistics, the data that appears focuses specifically on queues. Users see data such as the number of agents that are logged on currently (with or without assignment), the number of tasks that are abandoned and are queued, the average wait time before a task is assigned and finished, and so on. The data available while monitoring (either by agent or by queue) varies based on the channel (voice or multichannel) being monitored. In the case where data is not appropriate for the channel, the data will be presented by a hyphen (-).
Supervisor Desktop keeps information at two levels, summary and detailed. The summary view provides a high-level view of how the selected queues and group of agents are doing; users who prefer a closer look at some of the areas can drill down the agent or queue to access additional statistics. Chat capability is available on the desktop. Users can initiate chat sessions with online agents when necessary.
Reporting
From Supervisor Desktop, users can execute Multichannel Communications performance reports that are defined at the system level.
Email Approval
Supervisor Desktop supports the setup of email approval in the consolidated agent configuration feature. Users can specify the email approval frequency for agents and specify the approver to whom agents' outgoing email are routed for approval.
At runtime within Supervisor Desktop, users who are email approvers can see a list of email pending their approval. They can review and either approve or reject email on the list.
Timeout Entry Management
Supervisor Desktop displays a list of timeout tasks (email, chat, and generic) that are pending on the queue list. Through the list, users can review and take actions deemed appropriate, such as requeuing tasks to the same queue, reassigning tasks (email and generic) to a queue, a group, or an individual, closing tasks, and so on.
Important! It is strongly recommended that administrators leverage the Supervisor Desktop timeout administration feature so that proper ERMS operations are performed with email tasks.
Agent Configuration
PeopleSoft PeopleTools develops a set of component interfaces that enables Supervisor Desktop to provide a central, unified place to define voice, multichannel, and email configuration for agents.
Note: It is highly recommended that administrators leverage Supervisor Desktop to configure agents.
PeopleSoft CRM builds the application dispatcher to interface with the PeopleSoft Multichannel Framework using the PeopleTools client-side API, JSMCAPI. In Supervisor Desktop, the application dispatcher is responsible for managing data in real-time monitoring and initiating internal agent-to-agent chat.
The Unified Agent Desktop (which implements the Multichannel Toolbar) also uses the application dispatcher to manage agent states and data consistency among Multichannel Toolbar browser instances.
Here is a list of considerations for setting up an operational Supervisor Desktop:
Supervisors must be configured as agents for the type of queues (multichannel or voice) that they want to monitor on the desktop.
You need to conform to the one-to-one mapping of logical to physical queues when configuring universal (multichannel) queues.
The system only allows one active instance of Supervisor Desktop in a single user session.
Application Dispatcher, which appears as a small browser window that supervisors must not be closed; it controls access to all real-time data through JSMCAPI (a PeopleTools client-side API).
The PeopleTools user profiles of Supervisor Desktop users must be configured with the appropriate PeopleTools role in order to have access to Supervisor Desktop and its functionality.
PeopleTools JSMCAPI restricts connections to only one CTI server, one multichannel cluster, or one of each at any given time.
Therefore, supervisors cannot monitor queues from any servers that they are not logged on to. To monitor a queue on a different server, the user must log on to that server through the Multichannel Toolbar to view real-time information of its queue. Supervisor Desktop does not pull away server connections from the Multichannel Toolbar.
Important! Before running Supervisor Desktop, be sure to set up respective systems for voice (CTI) tasks, multichannel tasks, or both that agents support. These systems should be configured in order for agents to have complete access to all of the Supervisor Desktop functionality. If systems are not set up or agents are not configured properly to support voice tasks, multichannel tasks, or both, Supervisor Desktop runs in restrictive mode, which means that agents have access to two features — email approval and the execution of performance reports.
See the following topics within the product documentation for PeopleTools: PeopleSoft MultiChannel Framework:
“Configuring PeopleSoft CTI”
“Configuring REN Servers”
“Configuring PeopleSoft MCF Servers and Clusters”
“Configuring PeopleSoft MCF Queues and Tasks”
PeopleSoft CRM delivers a component interface (CI) that allows third-party CTI systems to gather agent data. To retrieve agent information, the CTI system connects to the PeopleSoft system using the RB_CTIAGENTS_INFO CI and sends its CTI configuration ID to fetch the user ID, agent ID, password, and queue ID of all agents that are linked to that configuration ID. The data returned by the PeopleSoft system is in the form of CI properties. If an agent has multiple effective-dated voice configuration records, the third-party system gets the most recent one in relation to the date the information was requested.
Note: To fetch CTI agent details successfully, the PeopleSoft user ID that is used to access the CI must have the permission to perform the appropriate operations within the CI for data retrieval.