Using skills-based routing (Enterprise)

Note: This article has been updated to reflect several improvements to skills-based views. We will start gradually rolling out these changes on September 30, 2020. If you don't see the changes in your account yet, please check again later.

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:

• Understanding skills-based routing
• Creating skill types
• Adding skills to skill types
• Assigning agents to skills
• Assigning skills to tickets (building routing rules)
• Understanding how skills are applied to follow-up tickets
• Creating skills-based views
• Working with skills

Related articles:

• Best practices: Setting up skills-based routing
• Creating views to manage ticket workflow

Understanding skills-based routing

This section includes these topics:

• About skills and skill types
• The skills-based routing workflow
• Skill metrics in Insights
• Skill metrics in Explore

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.

Skill metrics in Insights

For Insights users, there’s a pre-configured Skills dashboard that shows how skills are being used, and how they impact the tickets they’re applied to. You can build your own, custom reports using skill metrics as well.

For more information, see Analyzing skills-based reporting activity.

Skill metrics in Explore

While Explore doesn't currently have a pre-configured Skills dashboard, Explore Professional does 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
• Understanding the limitations of skills-based views
• Creating views with skills-based conditions
• Creating a skills-match view
• Converting an existing skills-match view

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 see only tickets with skills requirements that match their skills.

You can create this type of view by adding this skills-based condition 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.

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-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 this condition: Skills + Is + Current user skills.

4. Click Save.

   You can now start using the view.

   Keep in mind that the view looks the same as any other view when it’s in-use. 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
• Viewing skills in the ticket UI
• Adding and removing skills on a ticket

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.