Rule-based ticket routing

Understanding rules

Round Robin enables you to assign tickets according to rules sets. You have two options for defining a rule: based on tags or/and based on queues.

Examples: you can create a rule that tickets with the "Software" tag should be assigned to agents 1,2 and 3 and that the tickets with "Hardware" should be assigned to agents 2,3 and 4.

You can also establish the rule that the tickets from the queue "Level1" should be assigned to agents 2 and 3 and that the tickets from the queue "Level2" should be assigned to agents 1 and 4.

Tags

Round Robin takes tags into account when it assigns tickets. Any tags you want to use need to be listed in the Tags table with the "Selected in rules" option set.

1. Click Tags

2. Create the required number of tags, set the Active field for the tag to "Yes", and Assign to agents field to "Selected in rules".

Important! Tag names must match their spelling in Zendesk exactly.

3. Click Save 

If you want to suspend using one or more tags, set the Active field to "No" for these tags.

Queues

To use a queue in rules you need to set the "Selected in rules" option for the queue.

1. Click Queues

2. Set the Assign to agents field to "Selected in rules".

3. Click Save 

Rules

Specify ticket assignment rules in the Rules table.

1. Click Rules

2. If you have set either tags or queues to "Selected in rules", you will see row headers in the table, which will contain active agent names. Column headers contain queue names and tag names for which "Selected in rules" is set. Non-zero values in the table cells indicate that the agent can receive tickets with the tag or from the queue.

3. Click Save 

Look at the example above. Agents 2 and 3 can receive tickets from the queue "Level 1"; Agent 2 can receive tickets with tag "TagA", and Agent 3 can receive tickets with tag "TagB".

Agents 4 and 5 can receive tickets from the queue "Level 2"; Agent 4 can receive tickets with tag "TagA", and Agent 5 can receive tickets with tag "TagB".

To make your work with the list of rules more comfortable you can filter agents by agent name, group or tag separately. Just type n:<agent name>, g:<group name> or t:<tag name>. To update the data in these columns please reimport agents. 

Alternate agents

The "Alternate agent" functionality enables you to configure effective agent reservation and ticket escalation schemes. You can determine how tickets are assigned by using sequence values in the Rules table cells. The math of rules is determined by Min() function for all agent's columns.

For example, consider Agent1 who should receive the tickets from Level1 queue with the tag "TagA" first:

1) set 10 for the queue "Level1"

2) set 1 for the tag "TagA"

The Min() function will be Min(10,1)=1.

Then consider Agent2:

1) set 10 for the queue "Level1"

2) set 2 for the tag "TagA"

The Min() function will be Min(10,2)=2

Note: the min() function doesn't indicate the number of assigned tickets. It just takes into account the escalation values for the grouping of agents who should receive tickets first.

As a result, the app will assign the tickets to Agent1 first until it reaches its limit or become unavailable. Another conclusion: the queues and tags are functionally identical and equal in priority (you may adjust a focus to one of two tags or queues).

You can create as many tiers as you need to for this. You could even have your CEO assigned the highest number so your customers will never be without attention.