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Using skills-based routing

Aimee Spanier
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

Suite Enterprise and Enterprise Plusenterprisee

With skills-based routing, you can set up "skills" and associate each one with individual agents. For each skill, you also define a set of ticket conditions. Then you configure a view that identifies which tickets match the skills of whomever's looking at it.

Before getting started, you may want to check out Best practices: Setting up skills-based routing for suggestions about how to best approach this process.

This article includes these sections:

Related articles:

Understanding skills-based routing

This section includes these topics:

About skills and skill types

There are two elements that skills-based routing is built on: Skill types and skills.

  • Skill types are simply categories for skills. For example, "Languages" is a skill type, and "French" is an individual skill. "Country" is a skill type, and "Belgium" is a skill.
  • Skills are any attributes of an agent that determine their suitability to work a ticket that requires them. A skill can be something the agent is able to do, like speak French. But a skill can be any other fact about the agent, like being located in the Brussels office.

    While a skill can technically exist with just a name, a skill is fully defined by:

    • A name
    • A set of conditions that determine when a ticket requires the skill (called routing rules)
    • A set of agents who have that skill

The skills-based routing workflow

Currently, skills-based routing uses the existing paradigm where agents pull tickets from views. You can configure a view that filters tickets by skill to organize tickets so agents possessing certain skills can quickly find those tickets they are qualified to address.

The following is an overview of the steps you'll take to route tickets into useful views.

  1. Create skill types, to organize your skills into categories.
  2. Add skills to the skill types, based on your customers' needs and the skills or qualities your agents have (language, time zones, and the like).
  3. Identify agents' skills, and assign them to as many skills as you like.
  4. Build routing rules for each skill, so skills can be applied to the right tickets.
  5. Create a view to filter tickets based on skills, so the agent can focus on the ones they are best qualified to answer.

About skill metrics for reporting in Explore

While Explore doesn't currently have a pre-configured Skills dashboard, Explore Professional and Enterprise do include metrics and attributes that you can use to build your own reports.

For more information, see Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

Creating skill types

You'll need to create at least one skill type before you can set up specific skills. You can create up to 10 skill types.

To create a skill type

  1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Routing.
  2. On the Routing admin page, click the New skill type button.
  3. Enter a unique name for the skill type. Names cannot exceed 96 characters.

  4. Hit Enter. The skill type is created and added to the Routing page:

Repeat these steps for each skill type you want to create.

Adding skills to skill types

After you've created one or more skill types, you can add your specific skills. Once you've added a skill to a skill type, a new Skills ticket field appears on tickets viewed by administrators. Visibility options can be modified by Configuring the skills field viewing options.

Skills can be viewed, edited, or deleted after they've been created, and skills can be manually added or changed by an administrator on a ticket-by-ticket basis. For information on this, see Working with skills.

Each skill type can include up to 30 skills.

To add a skill to a skill type

  1. On the Routing admin page, locate the skill type you want to update, and click the New skill button.
  2. Enter a name for the new skill. Names cannot exceed 96 characters.
    Note: Each skill within a skill type must have a unique name. However, skills in separate skill types can use the same name.
  3. Hit Enter. The skill is added to the skill type.
  4. Repeat until you've added all your skills to the skill type:

Assigning agents to skills

For each skill, you need to designate agents who have that skill.

There are two ways you can connect agents to skills:

  • Adding agents to specific skills, via the Routing admin page. This is particularly useful when assigning multiple agents to a skill at once.

  • Adding skills to specific agents, via the agent’s profile page. This option is good when onboarding new agents who need multiple skills assigned to them.

To assign an agent to a skills via the Routing admin page

  1. On the Routing admin page, click the skill type you want to open, then click the skill you want to update.
  2. In the Agents section, click the Manage button to display a list of all agents, and the groups they belong to:

  3. Locate the agents you want to assign to the skill. You can find agents in a number of ways:
    • Scroll through the list of agents
    • Enter an agent's name in the search box
    • Filter the list of agents by group, by clicking the options icon () and selecting the group name.
  4. Select agents by clicking the check box to the left of their name. Once selected, agents appear in the Agents with skill list.
    Note: You can add or remove up to 50 agents at a time. If you have more that 50 agents to add or remove, you'll need to make multiple updates
  5. When done, click the Save button.

To remove an agent from a skill via the Routing admin page

  1. Open the skill.
  2. In the Agents with skill list, locate the agent you want to remove, then click the x next to their name.
  3. Click the Save button.

To assign a skill to an agent via the agent's profile

  1. In Support, open the agent’s profile. You can do this by clicking their profile picture and selecting View profile, or clicking their name on the Manage > People admin page.
  2. Scroll down the profile to the Skills field in the left sidebar.

  3. Click in the box to open the skills picker.
  4. Click the skill type, then the skill, you want to assign to the agent, and repeat as needed. The skill appears in the agent’s skills list, and the agent appears as an assignee on the Skills admin page.

To remove a skill from an agent via the agent’s profile

  1. On the agent’s profile page, scroll down to the Skills field in the left sidebar.
  2. Click the x on the skill you want to remove. The skill is removed from the agent’s skills list, and the agent is removed as an assignee on the Skills admin page.

Assigning skills to tickets (building routing rules)

Each skill needs conditions defined to determine which tickets they're applied to. These sets of conditions are called routing rules. When a ticket is created that meets the conditions defined in a skill's routing rule, that skill is attached to the ticket. You can create views based on those skills to direct agents to tickets they are qualified to address.

Routing rules are applied upon ticket creation, which means:

  • If a ticket is created before a routing rule is set up, it won't have that skill attached to it.
  • If a ticket is updated so that it no longer meets a skill's conditions, the ticket will still require that skill until you manually remove it from the ticket.
  • If a ticket is updated so that it meets the conditions for a new skill, the ticket will not start to require that new skill until you manually add it to the ticket.
However, if a skill is renamed, the skill name is updated on the ticket.

To create a routing rule

  1. On the Routing admin page, click the skill type you want to open, then click the skill you want to create a routing rule for.
  2. In the Tickets section, click the Add condition button under Meet All of the following conditions and/or Meet Any of the following conditions.
    • If you add conditions under Meet All of the following conditions, all of the conditions must be true for the skill to be applied.
    • If you add conditions under Meet Any of the following conditions, one or more of the conditions must be true for the skill to be applied.
  3. Select a condition, a field operator, and a value for each entry.

  4. When all conditions are added, click the Save button.

When a skill is applied to a ticket, it appears in that ticket's sidebar.

For information on modifying these skills, see Working with skills.

Understanding how skills are applied to follow-up tickets

When a follow-up ticket is created for a closed ticket, you may notice that skills on the follow-up ticket don't always match the skills on the original ticket. Generally, when a follow-up ticket is created, it inherits data from the original ticket (see Creating a follow-up for a closed ticket). Skills are an exception to this rule.

Follow-up tickets don't inherit skills. Instead, skills are applied to the follow-up ticket based on your routing rules when the follow-up ticket is created.

Creating skills-based views

This section explains what skills-based views are, what types exist in Support, and how to create and use them.

This section includes these topics:

About the types of skills-based views

A skills-based view is a view that displays only tickets with skill requirements that match the skills of the agent using the view. There are currently two types of skills-based views in Support:

  • Views with a skills-based condition
  • Skills-match views

Views with a skills-based condition (recommended)

You can create a skills-based view by adding a skills-based condition to a view. You can do this to as many views as you want. Tickets without skills are excluded from these views. For more information, see Creating views with skills-based conditions.

We recommend using this type of skills-based view because it offers several advantages compared to skills-match views. For example:

  • You can filter all views by skills instead of just one.
  • There’s no limit on the number of tickets assessed.
  • There’s no limit on the number of tickets displayed in the view.
  • The results of the view are paginated.

Skills-match views

You can create a skills-match view by applying a skills filter to a view. However, you can only have one skills-match view in Support, not multiple. Tickets without skills are included in this view. For more information, see Creating a skills-match view.

Understanding the limitations of skills-based views

This section explains the limitations of different types of skills-based views. The limitations are different depending on the type of skills-based view you are using (see About the types of skills-based views).

Limitations for both types of skills-based views

These limitations apply to both types of skills-based views (views with a skills-based condition and skills match).

  • Skills application: Skills are applied only when tickets are created. This impacts skills-based views in two ways:
    • If a ticket is updated so it no longer meets a skill’s conditions, that ticket will continue to appear in the view for the former skill match. To remove a ticket from a view when it no longer meets the skill’s conditions, you need to manually delete the skill from the ticket.
    • If a skill is added to an existing ticket, it will not be added to views based on that new skill. To include that ticket in the skill-based view, you would need to re-create the ticket.
  • Language skill application: Language skills are applied to a ticket based on the requester’s language, rather than the ticket language.

Limitations for only views with skills-based conditions

These limitations apply only to views with skills-based conditions. They do not apply to skills-match views.
  • Closed tickets: Closed tickets are not included in views with skills-based conditions.
  • Tickets with no skills: Tickets with no skills are excluded from the view.

Limitations for only skills-match views

These limitations apply only to skills-match views. They do not apply to views with a skills-based condition.

  • Number of tickets assessed: If the ticket count in a skills-match view includes more than 3,000 tickets, or a processing timeout occurs, all tickets will have the skills correctly applied, but some tickets may not appear in the view.
  • Ticket display: Only the first 30 tickets in a skills-match view are displayed, based on how your tickets are sorted. You can change the displayed tickets by changing the view’s sorting criteria.
  • Tickets with no skills: Tickets with no skills are included in the view.

Creating views with skills-based conditions

A view with a skills-based condition is one of the types of skills-based views that are available in Support. When an agent uses this type of view, they can see either:

  • Tickets with skills requirements that match their skills, or
  • Tickets that have no associated skills

You can create these types of views by adding skills-based conditions to the view:

Skills + Is + Current user skills

You can add the condition to as many different views as you want. Tickets without skills will be excluded from views with a skills-based condition. For information about how views with skills conditions differ from other views, see Understanding the limitations of skills-based views.

Skills + Is + No skills

You can also add this condition to as many different views as you want, but it cannot be combined with the Skill+Is+Current user skills condition. Only tickets without skills will be included in a view with this skills-based condition.

Note: Don’t add a skills filter and a skills-based condition to a single view (the view’s performance will be negatively affected). The no skills condition will look slightly different than a normal view:
  • There is no count of tickets on the view
  • The browsing back in forward in the view looks different from a normal view

To create a skills-based view using conditions

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.
  2. Open one of your views for editing.

    Find the view. Click the options icon (), and then click Edit.

  3. In the Conditions section, under Tickets must meet all of these conditions to appear in the view, click Add Condition.

    Add the required condition: Skills + Is + Current user skills or Skills + Is + No skills

  4. Click Save.

    You can now start using the view.

    Keep in mind that there’s nothing in the user interface (UI) that indicates to the agent that the view is a skills-based view, and that only tickets that match their skills are appearing in the results.

    If you are an admin and you are looking at the Views admin page, there is also nothing on this page that indicates that the view is a skills-based view (such as a filter icon).

  5. If you are an admin and the view is a shared view, let the appropriate agents know that the view is a skills-based view.

    You can make shared views visible to all agents or to a group of agents.

Creating a skills-match view

You can create a skills-match view by adding a skills filter to a view. However, you can only have one skills-match view in Support, not multiple. Tickets without skills are included in this view. For information about how skills-match views differ from other views, see Understanding the limitations of skills-based views.

A skills-match view is one of the types of skills-based views that are available in Support. When an agent uses a skills-based view, they see only tickets with skills requirements that match their skills.

Note: If you need a skills-based view that includes tickets without skills, apply a skills filter to the view instead of a skills-based condition. Don’t add a skills filter and a skills-based condition to a single view (the view’s performance will be negatively affected).

To create a skills-match view

  1. Open the Views admin page by clicking the Admin icon (), then going to Manage > Views.
  2. Create a view, or clone an existing view, that covers common support requests (see Using views to manage ticket workflow).
  3. Optional: On the view's edit page, scroll to the Table columns section, and drag Skill match into the Columns included in table list. All tickets in the view should have a checkmark in this column; if they don’t, go back and check your view conditions. You can also use the column on its own, on any view, in lieu of the filter. This will tell the agent which tickets match their skills without actually hiding the ones that don’t.
  4. Update the rest of the view as needed, and click Submit.

After you’ve created the view, you can then apply the filter, so agents looking at the view will only see tickets that match their skills.

To apply a skills filter to a view

  1. Go to the Routing admin page.
  2. In the Skills match view section, use the drop-down menu to select the view you want to filter by skill.

    Note: Only certain views are compatible with filtering. Incompatible views appear in the drop-down menu, but are grayed out and cannot be selected.
  3. Click Apply skills filter.

When a skills filter is applied to a view:

  • On the Views admin page, the view appears with a filter icon:

  • When an agent opens the view, they’ll only see those tickets for which they match all required skills.
  • When an agent uses Play mode with the view, only skills-matched tickets are displayed.

Converting an existing skills-match view

If you have an existing skills-match view, you can convert it into a view with a skills-based condition by cloning it and then adding a skills-based condition.

To convert a skills-match view into a view with a skills-based condition

  1. (Optional) Deactivate your skills-match view.

    Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views. Find the view you want to deactivate, click the options icon (), and then choose Deactivate.

  2. Clone your skills-match view.

    Find the skills-match view, click the options icon (), and then choose Clone.

  3. Follow the steps in To create a skills-based view using conditions to add this skills-based condition:

    Skills + Is + Current user skills

    Note: When you clone a view, it becomes an active view as soon as you click Save, regardless of whether the parent view was active or inactive.

Working with skills on tickets

This section discusses the following topics related to skills that have been applied to tickets:

Configuring the skills field viewing options

As soon as you add a skill to a skill type, the Skills field appears on the left side of a ticket, along with other system and custom ticket fields:

By default, only administrators can see and update the skills field. You can configure the visibility and permissions for the skills field, so agents can view or update it as well.

Note: The settings chosen here are applied to all admins and agents, and to all skills. However, light agents cannot edit skills, regardless of the selected settings.

To configure the skills field visibility options

  1. On the Routing admin page, click the Configuration icon next to the New skill type button.

  2. On the Manage skills on tickets modal, use the drop-down menu to select the visibility configuration you want to apply to the skills field:
    • Administrators only (view and update): Administrators can view and update skills in the ticket UI. Agents cannot view or update skills.
    • Administrators (view and update) and agents (view only): Administrators can view and update skills in the ticket UI. Agents can view skills in the ticket UI, but not update them.
    • Administrators (view and update) and agents (view and update): Administrators and agents can view and update skills in the ticket UI.
    • No one (disabled): The Skills field does not appear in the ticket UI.
  3. Click Save.

Viewing skills in the ticket UI

If skills are configured to appear on your ticket UI, they are displayed in the Skills field, in the ticket sidebar.

To view the skills applied to a ticket

  1. Locate the ticket in your ticket views.
  2. Click the ticket subject to open it in the main window.
  3. In the ticket's sidebar, locate the Skills field. The skills applied to that ticket appear here.

Adding and removing skills on a ticket

If skills are configured to be editable through your ticket UI, admins (and agents, if allowed) can update the skills applied to a specific ticket from within the ticket UI.

To add a skill to a ticket

  1. In the ticket's sidebar, locate the Skills field.
  2. Click the skills drop-down icon () to display the available skill types:

  3. Click the skill type containing the skill, then click the skill you want to add to the ticket.
  4. Repeat as needed, then submit the ticket.

To remove a skill from a ticket

  1. In the ticket's sidebar, locate the Skills field.
  2. Click the x on the skill you want to delete from the ticket.
  3. Submit the ticket. The skill is removed from the ticket.
    Note: If you remove all skills from a ticket, it can be viewed by agents regardless of their assigned skills.
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72 Comments

  • Wouter van Gessel

    I'm missing some explanation in the articles, what will happen if a ticket matches a Skill. The article doesn't say if the ticket is then assigned to an agent, a group of agents, or what business rules can be attached. 

    What if we create a business rule that all French tickets should go to our two French colleagues: How will this show up in their Zendesk views? What happens if both colleagues are on leave, can other agents still see tickets? I'm missing an example of a business rule in the explanation. Hope you can help! :)

    4
  • Matt Savage

    Piggybacking on Wouter's comment ^ as it seems we're going in a similar direction.  I also don't understand the specifics of where/how the routing occurs here and how it meshes with existing triggers/automations.  

    I'd also like to see (either manually or via machine learning) some way of estimating capacity in the routing, via some method similar to agile story points.  In the above scenario, if there are 2 French agents, it'd be incredibly helpful if the system could attempt to route a ticket to whichever one is a) available, b) has the most free capacity, and/or c) failover to some other location (i.e. a group) if neither agent can presently handle it.

    Can you provide more info on why skills aren't reevaluated on update like trigger conditions?  The scenario I foresee is: customer fills out a contact form, selecting the wrong product/value --> Skill A is set.  Agent w/ Skill A updates the ticket w/ correct product/value, which would then match Skill B instead (which they may not have).  What's the utility of keeping Skill A set when the ticket has now been identified as needing Skill B?  I understand this may be a limitation set for the early version of this feature to keep it simple but it seems like it'll be problematic in more complex routing scenarios, especially for internal transfers between teams (e.g. Support <--> Billing).

    4
  • Andrew Checkley

    Same as others above, I have tried playing with it in sandbox and although setup as described no routing occurs ?

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Thank you so much for the feedback! We're working on augmenting this documentation with some additional info. In the meantime, hopefully this will help.

    This is the first iteration of this feature, and it doesn't yet cover all the use cases we plan to support over the coming months.

    For now, we retain the "pull" paradigm of agents taking tickets from views. To show agents which tickets match their skills, add a "Skill match" column to the view. If the agent looking at the view has all the skills required by a ticket, that ticket will have a checkmark next to it.

    The next release will offer a filtered experience that will work with Play mode. Therefore, for many customers, this version of Skills-based routing is best suited to the time-consuming task of setting up and testing new routing flows. We've published some best practices to guide you.

    In addition to seeing how tickets are matched to an agent, you can see which skills were applied to a specific ticket, and update them if needed. Only admins can do this right now. This will help you QA and troubleshoot your new routing rules.

    Routing rules run before triggers, and for now on ticket creation only. Manually updating skills on the ticket is the only way to change them. We do not currently re-run routing rules on ticket update to ensure ticket update performance isn't compromised, but that use case (essentially, "re-routing") is one of the things we're working on for a future release.

    Additionally, we're working on a "push" paradigm of routing tickets directly to agents, which would likely entail a way to ensure that they're going to agents who are available and not overloaded. 

    There's some more information about our plans for Routing in the launch announcement. This is just the first step in a long journey!

    1
  • Justin

    I have a use case that may not have been considered. 

    Can a ticket have multiple skills assigned to it?

    For example lets say that I have the "Mandarin" language skill, and the "Refund" skill. Both are different skill types but may be present on a ticket.

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Hi @justin -- a ticket can absolutely have multiple skills assigned to it! That's what makes skills-based routing especially powerful. An agent will be considered a match for a ticket if they have all the skills that ticket requires. So in the example you gave, an agent that only has "Mandarin" and not "Refund" would not be considered a match (in the future we will be looking at partial match logic). 

    1
  • Aimee Spanier
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Hi, all. The article has been updated to (hopefully) clarify some key points, and better reflect the current functionality. Leave comments if you have any other questions or clarifications. Thanks!

    0
  • Andrew Checkley

    Looks good, but needs automatic intelligent routing. i.e. assigning to the appropriate person at point of raise. if multiple matches then assign to the agent with the least amount requests taking into account current state of assigned tickets and SLA 

    1
  • Will Ginsberg
    • Edited

    @kristen mirenda -- there needs to be an ability to show the skill match column as checked if the agent has ANY of the skills on the ticket (not ALL) of the skills. It's also really frustrating that if a given ticket doesn't have any skills applied that the ticket is shown as checked in the skill match column. 

    As of right now I don't see a clear way to:

    a) Assign a specific skill to an agent for a specific ticket topic

    b) Without assigning skills to all tickets (so that all tickets don't appear as checked, because ticket MUST have a skill in order to appear unchecked in "Skill match" otherwise they're shown as checked)

    Because of (b) I need to assign a skill to all tickets we receive that has no agents assigned, BUT because agents must have ALL skills assigned and I can't assign agents to the "mass skill" that I applied that means that the "Skill match" column never appears checked. 

    Just to simplify in case it helps...

    Let's assume you have two skills. Skill one applies to every ticket received (so that they don't all appear as skill matched because they lack a skill), skill two applies to tickets with specific criteria. Skill one has no agents assigned and skill two has one agent assigned. 

    Because of the fact that agents must have ALL of the skills and the agent assigned skill two but isn't assigned skill one, they never see skill match. 

    Super frustrating! If every ticket without a skill wasn't checked as skill matched you'd solve a lot of headache and this product would work. 

    1
  • Kristen Mirenda
    • Edited

    Hi @andrew and @will -- I could not agree more! Both direct routing (assigning) to agents and partial skill match are part of the vision for the future. We're building this out one layer at a time. We know this version isn't optimal for all use cases, but we wanted to release it as soon as we had an end-to-end solution, rather than hold back completely until the feature is "done" (there's no such thing anyway). This approach allows us to provide something useful and lets us gather real usage data to inform our next iteration.

    1
  • Will Ginsberg

    @kristen mirenda

     

    I 100% get that there are a myriad of use cases but I don't understand how this product works properly.

    If a ticket doesn't have a skill it appears as skill matched. This means that in order to even think about "disqualifying" tickets from skill matching you need to assign the ticket a skill. 

    So, seriously, this sounds snarky but it's not intended that way...how is this product supposed to work? What's a use case where this works as intended? Having a specific view for a skill? What's the point of skills then? I'm probably totally missing the mark but trying to figure out an example of where skill matching works. 

    0
  • Tom

    If we're more and more going to use Views for agents to see what they need to be working on, rather than the home 'Tickets requiring your attention', it would be useful if we could replace 'Tickets requiring your attention' with a (custom) View, that is shown to the Agent in place of the default 'Tickets requiring your attention'.

    2
  • Paul Lawrence

    Is the new Routing feature an easier interface to design triggers or is it a replacement for triggers?

    In my zendesk account an agent can be in multiple content specific groups. I have triggers setup to route tickets to the correct content group by string searches so agents can solve tickets based curent priority of their content.

    It would be nice if routing gave a choice to assign to an agent or a group under skills.

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    It's all good @will -- this is part of the learning.

    We conceived of a "skill match" as answering the question, "does the agent have all the skills needed to take this ticket?" -- that's why a ticket with no skills will match everyone.

    If you want to disqualify tickets from skills matching, could you work with the conditions on the view where you put the column? Would you also mind talking a little about the use case for disqualifying tickets to help us understand what you’re trying to do?

    --

    @tom -- That's similar to the direction we're heading. We found that not a lot of customers made use of 'Tickets requiring your attention' however -- how are you using it?

    --

    @paul -- We envision this as a replacement for some (actually, a lot of) triggers. We also envision it as a replacement for some groups that exist solely to segregate the tickets a particular agent can work on. We are working towards direct agent assignment as part of automated routing, but you will always be able to use triggers in concert with routing rules if you so choose.

    1
  • Kristen Mirenda

    There's been such great feedback in the comments sections of a few different articles relating to the current release of Skills-Based Routing. 

    We'd love to have most of that happening in one place, and we think the release announcement makes the most sense.

    So if you'd like to provide input, please do it there! It'll be easier for us to respond, and you'll be able to see and engage with others' ideas as well. 

    Thank you -- we're so grateful for your feedback. It's one of the main reasons we're taking an iterative approach, which gives us the chance to take it into consideration while we're still designing and planning. Keep it coming! (Just, over there.) 

    0
  • Massimo DiDio

    if the ticket does not get automatically assigned to agents yet, how do agents know which skills we have set for them unless we specifically tell them? 

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Just a note that @Massimo's question has been answered in the comments of the release announcement, where we're currently funneling the discussion.

    1
  • Amber Barnes

    When configuring skill conditions, we are missing ticket fields in the drop down options. Why is this? Are some excluded for a reason?

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Hi @amber, it depends on which ticket field you're looking for. Not all of them were included -- generally we included ones that were available or relevant on ticket creation. Custom fields should be supported as well. If you're looking for a newish custom field you might try a hard refresh on the admin UI. 

    0
  • Sean Starwind

    It seems as though, at the moment, we can only set 1 view for skills match on the routing settings page?

    Are there any plans to allow this to be set on more than one view?

    1
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Hi @Sean! That's in the plan, but first we want to make sure it's solid with the one view limit under real-world usage. I can't give you timing yet, we're gathering performance data and the more folks use it the sooner we'll know!

    0
  • Alex Aguilar

    Can agent skills be updated/changed via api?

    2
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Hi @Alex! Not yet, but that's high priority in our backlog.

    0
  • Martijn Snels - pluscloud.nl

    Hi Kristen, this goes together with the options to admins to update the skills of a ticket via the API I assume? Surprised the feature is first released before the API, normally this is the other way around.

    0
  • Kristen Mirenda

    Hi @Martjun -- ideally, but we don't have a delivery plan yet as it's still just in the backlog.

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  • Brandon Kreines

    Hello! Are there any plans for us to be able to grant non-admin roles the ability to change what agents are assigned to which skills? We'd love to be able to have our agent supervisors change those at their discretion.

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  • Kristen Mirenda

    HI @Brandon -- it's on the backlog, but I can't give you a timeframe yet. But thank you for describing the use case, that's really helpful!

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  • Wes Shank

    @Kristen - I promise I have read through this before asking and it sort of looks like you were just asked this but I think the question was about changing the Agent skills. My question is, it looks like the document was updated that the agent could now change the skills on the ticket, where initially only an Admin could. Am I seeing that correctly? Our agents have to clean up so much for our clients it really makes it a deal-breaker for us if we can't clean up the skills.

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  • Kristen Mirenda
    • Edited

    Hi @Wes! Good spot -- I think perhaps you saw a premature update that was briefly/mistakenly live. So I might as well tell you what's coming!

    As mentioned in the announcement a few weeks ago, we're working on a setting to configure whether the skills box does or doesn't show up on the ticket form for admins. The use case here is when the admin has tried out SBR but decided not to roll it out. This will provide a way to make that box go away if you're not using it.

    In the course of implementing that, we realized that we could probably use this setting to cover view/update options for both admins and agents. So we went for it, even though it's solving a different problem. We will test it out in beta first.

    However, we've decided to hold back just for now on the update option for agents. Because we're also working on the ability to re-run routing rules on a ticket, and we want to think about automatic and manual updates together. 

    So when we do release this configurable setting in the coming month(ish), initially the options will be:

    1. Admins see an editable skills box, agents see a view-only version. 
    2. Admins see an editable skills box, agents see nothing.
    3. Nobody sees anything.

    We didn't want to pile too many use cases on this one enhancement. But soon we'll take the next step and test a solution to the additional need that you described.

    At this stage in our evolution, Zendesk workflow has reached a level of complexity where we want to be careful introducing changes, especially to agents. Doing it incrementally gives us room to test use cases separately and more easily unwind if we need to.

    TL;DR: we well are on our way to allowing agents to update skills on tickets, via incremental steps to allow us to get it right.

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  • Davide Spiezio

    @kristen, is there any news about the feature to let also Agents can modify Skills on the ticket? 

    It would be really useful for us in our organization. It is also either good to have the Skills to be dynamic. 
    Example we have 2 fields that will be implemented in Skills route (Product Area and Category). In my tests in Sandbox, once a skill is assigned at ticket opening (Based on Product and Category), skill will not change if an Agent manually modify Product Area and/or Category. 

    So our needs as of now are:

    1. Agents can modify manually Skills on opened tickets.

    OR

    2. Skills are modified dynamically if the Fields set in the Skills route are changed. 

    Option 1 would be good as well, if you can have also option 2 is even better (And still having view-only permission for Agents).

    Do you think we can also set Custom triggers for option 2?

    1

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