Capacity rules are part of omnichannel routing that help you balance your team's workload by setting capacities on automatically assigned work. The standard omnichannel routing configuration assigns work to the agent with the highest spare capacity for the channel who has an eligible status. For example, you could specify that only 10 open email tickets can be assigned to an agent at a time. This can be a great way of ensuring that your less experienced agents are not assigned too much work while they ramp up.
However, you can also configure omnichannel routing to use round robin assignment. When using round robin assignment, omnichannel routing checks that agents have some amount of spare capacity, but assigns work based on time elapsed since last assignment for the channel rather than how much spare capacity agents have.
Omnichannel routing comes with a default capacity rule that you can use as-is or edit. Admins can also create your own capacity rules to suit your needs. Agents are always assigned to whichever capacity rule you set as the default initially, but you can change their assignment if needed. An agent can only be assigned to one capacity rule, so if you assign an agent to a new rule, they are automatically unassigned from their current one.
Adding capacity rules
Omnichannel routing comes with a built-in capacity rule to get you started, but you can add additional rules as required. You must be an admin to create and manage capacity rules.
To add a capacity rule
-
In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Omnichannel routing > Capacity rules.
- On the Capacity rules page, click Add capacity rule.
- On the Add capacity rule page, provide the following
information:
- Name: Enter a descriptive name for the capacity rule.
- Description: Optionally, enter a description that helps you to identify the capacity rule.
-
Set as default: New team members are automatically
assigned to the default capacity rule. Team members who are already
assigned to a capacity rule won’t change.Note: If you create a new capacity rule and assign a team member to it, they are removed from the default capacity rule. If you delete a capacity rule, all team members assigned to it are assigned back to the default rule.
- Assignees: Click Add assignee to specify the agents to whom this rule applies.
- Capacities > Email: Enter the number of open email tickets (including web form, side conversations, and API) that can be assigned to an agent at one time. This includes all open email tickets, regardless of how they were assigned to the agent. Tickets that are pending or on hold are not counted towards capacity. (Maximum 500)
-
Capacities > Messaging: Enter the number of
messaging tickets that can be assigned to an agent at one time. Inactive
messaging tickets are counted if messaging activity routing is
selected. Otherwise, only active messaging tickets are considered. This
capacity also applies to chats in some
circumstances. When applicable to live chats, an agent can be
assigned up to this number of live chats and this number of messaging
conversations at the same time. (Maximum
500)
See Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats.
- Capacities > Talk: Enter the number of call tickets that can be assigned to an agent at one time. Options are 0 or 1. If you choose 0, the agents cannot receive calls. Calls are no longer counted towards an agent's capacity after the wrap-up time ends, if configured, or after the agent hangs up.
- When you are finished, click Add capacity rule.
Your new capacity rule is displayed on the Capacity rules page and begins to work immediately.
Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats
- The value you specify for Messaging capacity applies to both messaging conversations and live chats separately. If you specify a messaging capacity of 3, agents could be assigned up to 3 messaging conversation tickets and 3 live chats simultaneously.
- In conversations, there is a concept of active and inactive tickets. Zendesk defines a messaging conversation as inactive when an end user hasn't sent a reply in the last 10 minutes. However, admins can use the capacity release settings to modify this value and change the status of inactive messaging tickets.
- The omnichannel routing configuration contains a messaging activity routing
setting.
Messaging activity routing is off by default. When off, omnichannel routing counts only active messaging tickets towards an agent's capacity. This means agents can have any number of inactive messaging conversations and live chats assigned to them in addition to the specified capacity of active conversations. Customizing your capacity release settings can help you fine-tune agent capacity in this scenario. When an inactive conversation becomes active again, agents can exceed the specified capacity. Omnichannel routing won't assign them any new tickets for that channel until they have spare capacity again.
When messaging activity routing is on, omnichannel routing counts all open active and inactive messaging tickets towards an agent's capacity. Omnichannel routing assigns new conversational tickets to agents only when their total number of assigned messaging and live chat tickets, respectively, are below the specified capacity.
52 comments
Lauren Benkov
We recently started using SunCo and I want to understand how that's considered in omnichannel routing and in capacity specifically. Under messaging capacity, I don't see any mention of SunCo or of the channel we're using (Apple Business Chat). Will it be considered as messaging?
0
Alice Vavasseur
Hi,
I have several questions concerning this topic:
1- Is it possible to avoid that the first agent who connects in the morning receives most of the new tickets? Let's say we set a capacity rule to 10, and in low season we have 18 tickets in the morning and 3 agents, the 1st agent has 10, the 2nd to connect has 8 and the 3rd has none, creating a unfair situation.
2- I have a situation in which my agents have less than the max capicity of open tickets, but there are still new tickets, of their group, with the tag omnichannel, that are not assigned to them automatically. How can this be?
Thanks
19
Sujitha Pasupuleti
Hi,
I have the same question. Is it possible to define a time for when to auto assign tickets for a group? If the Agents are logging in early or working late they are being assigned with all new tickets. The first agent that logs in the morning is getting all the tickets.
Is there a way to report on how many tickets are being assigned and view the Agent status?
Thanks,
Sujitha
7
Alexander Hughes
Is there a way for non-admins to configure capacity rules or is that for admins only?
0
Cheeny Aban
Yes, that is right. Only Admins are allowed to configure capacity rules for agents.
1
Lloyd Marcom
Couple of questions on this:
Let's assume I have a user who is set up for 10 emails, 3 messages and 1 Talk. Let's also assume that they have gotten 2 messages that they are actively working. Since the do have 1 Talk capacity, if a call comes in can they be assigned that call (essentially now working 2 messages AND a phone call? Is there any way to shut down other channels while a user is working either not at or at capacty in another channel?
Let's say in the above scenario this user has 5 open email tickets and is working 2 messages (with a capacity of 3). Is there any way to configure ZD so that any additional emails (up to the limit of 10) continue to get assigned and 1 additional active message might be assigned (to the limit of 3) but a call wouldn't get assigned because we don't want our resources working chats AND calls at the same time?
What happens to a chat or an email if all reps are are open capacity? I assume talk goes to Voicemail.
2
Sabra
Hey Lloyd! The behavior you are referring to is what we call Focus mode. This mode isn't currently supported with Omnichannel routing.
If all agents are at capacity when a new messaging conversation or email is created, these tickets will simply sit in the queue until an online agent has capacity again.
0
Jed Hollander
Any plans to improve upon this? Like setting a hard cap of tickets per day, or being able to assign out tickets based on other fields? This works great in testing but even with skills, this is a very rudimentary setup.
2
Janet Holyoak
Is it possible to have a single ticket count as 2 capacity based on the priority of the ticket? Ie. if set to Urgent, then the ticket counts as 2 for an agent's capacity?
2
Jed Hollander
Another thought. Can you confirm I have this right?
Your definition of "Capacity" means that if a user gets lets say 5 tickets as open (that's what my capacity is set to) and puts 2 of those tickets into either "Pending" or "On-Hold" the system will assign another 2 new / open tickets?
0
Janet Holyoak
Jed Hollander The example I have is that our team's capacity is set to 5 tickets. If a customer designates a ticket as urgent, I want that ticket to count as 2 tickets instead of 1 ticket so that I'm only assigned 4 tickets instead of 5. Typically urgent tickets require greater effort on behalf of our agents, so we want their capacity decreased when assigned an urgent ticket.
0
Jed Hollander
My apologies Janet Holyoak I was addressing Sabra from zendesk. Your scenario makes perfect sense and another reason why this feature was prematurely released. There's not enough settings in place to configure the tool without massive amounts of triggers and clunky rules.
0
Jed Hollander
Sabra a question for you. Could you explain if there's a way using Skill routing to tag the tickets based on assigning each priority to a skill then setting a cap for each of those skills? I've tried to come up with a way but it does not appear to be working. Possible I have the skills based routing setup incorrectly.
Thanks
0
Rob Tihanyi
Hi team,
We have a situation where messaging tickets that have built up whilst our agents are all offline all get allocated to the first agent who then goes online, ignoring the Capacity Rules:
Are we missing something in our set up? Is this a known bug? Or should we be adding in some sort of extra rule? The next agent that joins just sits their waiting for the next messaging ticket, whilst the first agent has maybe 10 of them at once.
Cheers.
0
Stephen
Hi,
Are there plans to allow for more fine-grained capacity rules that could use Ticket Status to help determine if an Agent is at capacity?
In our companies use case, we would ideally like an Agents capacity to be determined by the Status of an Email / Web Form ticket. For example, only tickets in an Open status category would count towards their capacity - anything On-Hold / Pending status category would mean the Agent's can accept more tickets.
0
Stephen
Hi,
I would like to correct my previous comment - I have since realised that only Open tickets are counted towards an Agent's capacity. This is good and the behaviour our team expected.
Are Daily Limits being considered for a future option in capacity rules?
There are also some interesting options being discussed in this thread towards weighting certain ticket types as a higher capacity for an Agent (such an Urgent ticket counting as double capacity). This would be really beneficial.
Finally, I think it would be great if there was a location on the Agent Workspace where an Agent could see if they are working at or below their available capacity.
4
Kelly Rave
We just migrated to Agent Workspace, but have not yet enabled Ominchannel Routing. Is there a way to set capacity rules for messaging only (the way we previously did in chat)?
0
Dane
If you are still experiencing such behavior, please contact us directly so that we can investigate further.
Hi Robert,
Those are great valid points. Would you mind posting your use case to our Feedback on Support topic? We have a template you can copy and use in your post. This is to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature. Thanks!
Hi Kelly,
If your agents will only handle Messaging tickets you can set the Capacity rules only for Messaging.
0
Barry Neary
Hi Kelly Rave
You can create a capacity rule that has '0' for email and talk and 'x' for messaging, which means that agents allocated to this capacity rule wont be assigned emails or calls but will be assigned up to x active messages
0
Michael Jagt
We have the V3 Aircall Integration and tickets coming through via Aircall goes to Zendesk as API (not incoming phone call)
Does that mean if I set a capacity of an agent to 1 Email/API/Web Ticket, that if this agent has 1 email, that a phone call via AirCall will not be connecting to the agent? If yes, that's a huge issue as almost all calls will be unreplied to then
0
Dane
I don't have direct experience with Aircall integration but I have also worked on similar behavior for Talk Partner Edition and CTI. These two have the same behavior where tickets are identified as API tickets, specifically
API Phone call inbound channel
. As of the moment, tickets generated via those channels are not routed/affected by OCR. This can also be the case on your integration. We are working on an improvement for such channels but we don't have definitive timeline or ETA at this stage we recommend following our feature announcements page so that you can continue to be notified all future product and feature announcements when made available.0
Brenda Piersak
Is there a workaround to set up rules so an agent is not assigned a call and a message at the same time? If our agents are on a call we do not want to assign a message/chat until after that call ends. If they are on a message/chat we do not want a call assigned until that conversation ends but we would want additional messages/chats assigned.
0
Barry Neary
Hi Brenda Piersak
We are working on this feature (aka focus mode) and this will be release likely in March or April
Barry
1
Luke Aleo
Is there an update available on Round Robin routing being built-in to Zendesk rather than via a third party app?
1
Barry Neary
Hi Luke, we are looking at adding a 'round robin' option to omnichannel routing (OCR). As you know, with OCR today, the routing engine:
1) First asks which agent has the highest spare capacity
2) If several have the same highest spare capacity, then the agent who hasnt been assigned a ticket in the longest time (aka round robin)
With this new round robin option, OCR would skip 1) and use 2).
Is this what you want?
5
Pascal Turmel
I am also surprised that Zendesk does not have a native Routing feature similar or more advanced than "Round Robin App routing". We simply need to automatically distribute tickets across 3 call centers WW (Different regions, different shift hours), to agents based on Skillset. The app needs to be clever enough not to ramp up an agent if they return from PTO based on a say weekly average so far etc...Please contact me as soon as a beta feature is in the planning as this is a basic need for us
0
Barry Neary
We have a native omnichannel routing solution which can use skills as a basis for routing (details here). It sounds like you need to define the max number of tickets an agent can be assignd based on maximum tickets per hour or per day rather than the max number of tickets that can be assigned at any one time, is that correct?
2
Moss
+1 for adding in a round robin and a ticket maximum per day feature to this.
1
Bobby Koch
Barry or Luke - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4776409839770/comments/6668201802522
What is the purpose or difference between round robin and what happens today? I don't really get it, just curious
0
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi Bobby Koch
Omnichannel would route the ticket who has ‘spare’ capacity. If several agents have the same highest capacity, only then it would look for the agent who has not been assigned the ticket the longest.
With the round-robin, it would skip checking the ‘spare’ capacity & route the tickets to the agent who was available the longest, or the agent who has not been assigned a ticket the longest.
So like what Barry mentioned, Omnichannel would do step 1 & step 2. Round Robin would only do step 2
1