Managing your omnichannel routing configuration

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Quick Look: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Routing configuration

This article assumes omnichannel routing has been turned on for your account. See Turning on and setting up omnichannel routing.

Omnichannel routing is a highly configurable routing solution that can route new and open tickets from email (including web form, side conversations, and API), calls, and messaging. Omnichannel routing provides the most sophisticated routing logic, which can increase agent efficiency and effectiveness. It works out of the box, but you'll get the most value if you take your time planning your routing configuration. Your routing configuration applies to all omnichannel routing queues.

This article contains the following topics:

• Planning your routing configuration
• Editing the routing configuration
• Configuring omnichannel routing to route tickets based on priority
• Evolving your routing configuration

Planning your routing configuration

Omnichannel routing works out of the box. As long as you already have a mechanism in place to assign incoming tickets to groups, such as triggers, omnichannel routing can start routing calls and messaging conversations as soon as it's turned on and email tickets as soon as the auto-routing tag is added to them. Therefore, when you set up omnichannel routing or adjust your routing configuration, it's best to have a detailed plan ahead of time.

To plan out your omnichannel routing configuration

1. (Optional) To make the most informed decisions about your routing configuration settings, you might want to consider the questions posed in Best practices: Planning your routing workflow.
2. On all plan types, do the following:
   • Email (including web form, side conversations, and API) must have a unique routing tag to be routed through the standard omnichannel routing queue. However, the auto-routing tag isn't needed to route email tickets through custom routing queues, unless they don't match any custom queues and you want them to get picked up by the standard omnichannel routing queue. You can use the default auto-routing tag (auto-routing) or specify a different one.
   • You probably already use triggers to assign tickets to groups. If you're using the standard omnichannel routing queue, you need to ensure one or more triggers have an action to add the routing tag to any email tickets you want routed by omnichannel routing. The group assignment and auto-routing tag aren't required for tickets routed through custom queues. See Requirements for the routing triggers. Decide if you are going to modify existing triggers to function as routing triggers, or create new ones.
   • Omnichannel routing uses capacity rules to control how much work is assigned to each agent at a given time. There is a built-in capacity rule that is used by default, but you can define alternative rules that better meet your unique needs. Decide what capacity rules you will need. For each rule, decide what the capacities will be for each channel and which agents will be assigned to the rule.
   • Decide whether you want to assign work to agents based on who has the most spare capacity for the channel (the standard configuration) or based on who hasn't been routed work from the channel in the longest time (round robin)
   • Review the standard unified agent statuses. When omnichannel routing is on, standard agent statuses are automatically available for agents to use across channels. The standard agent statuses can't be edited, but it's important to understand how they're configured.
   • Decide how you want to handle the situation when messaging conversations and calls are routed to agents but not accepted by them. Are you going to turn on messaging reassignment timing, where a messaging ticket is reassigned to a different team member if not addressed within the specified timing? Would you prefer to auto-accept messaging tickets for agents?
   • How do you want agents to see the email tickets assigned to them by omnichannel routing? Should they use a view to see their assigned tickets, or should the email tickets open in a new tab automatically, similar to messaging conversations?
3. On Professional and Enterprise plans, you'll also need to decide the following:
   • When you turn on omnichannel routing, it's configured to use the standard omnichannel routing queue that routes work from all channels to the ticket's assigned group. However, we recommend creating custom queues to route tickets that meet specific conditions to multiple primary and secondary (fallback) groups. Decide if you need additional queues, what their conditions will be, and which groups will be primary and secondary. See Understanding how omnichannel routing uses queues to route work to agents.
     Note: Creating additional queues might require adjustments to your triggers so they continue working correctly to help you route work into the appropriate queues.
   • What unified agent statuses are you going to use? Just the standard agent statuses or custom statuses, too? For each custom status, what will be the name of the status and what will be the per-channel statuses?
   • Are you routing based on ticket priority? If so, what triggers will you use to add and manage priority on tickets?
   • Are you using skills? If so, what skills will you define and which agents have them? What routing rules or triggers will you use to add and manage skills on tickets? Do you want to fall back to routing without regard to skills if agents with the skills aren't available? If so, how long should it take for optional skills to time out? Which skills are always required and which are optional?
   • (Enterprise plans only) Are you going to turn on call offering time limits, which acts as a reassignment time threshold for incoming calls?
   • How do you want to handle reopened email and messaging tickets if the agent has certain statuses? For which statuses would you want to reassign email tickets? For which statuses would you want to reassign messaging tickets?
   • How do you want to handle reassigning tickets? Do you want new tickets to be prioritized over them and therefore rely on the standard queue for reassignment, or would you like them to be prioritized equally against new work and reassigned through custom queues?

Editing the routing configuration

After you set up omnichannel routing, you can use the default configuration or review and modify how omnichannel routing distributes the messages. You can edit your routing configuration at any time.

Warning: Don't refresh your browser while viewing or editing your routing configuration. Doing so causes all settings to be lost, regardless of whether they were saved.

To set up a routing configuration

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Omnichannel routing > Routing configuration.

   

2. On the Routing Configuration page, click Edit next to the Initial routing configuration.
3. On the Initial routing configuration page, you can see the name and description for the routing configuration.
4. Configure the following Global routing options, which apply to tickets from emails, messaging conversations, and calls across all omnichannel routing queues:
   • Ticket sorting: (Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, Talk, and Chat) Determines whether tickets are ordered in the queues and assigned by priority and date created or by nearest SLA breach.
   • Assignment method: Determines whether omnichannel routing assigns work to agents with the highest spare capacity or agents who have gone the longest without being assigned work for the channel. Regardless of the method you select, agents must have an eligible status and spare capacity for the channel to be routed work.
   • Turn on skills-based routing: (Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, Talk, and Chat) Routes tickets to agents with matching skills who also have an eligible status and spare capacity. When using skills to route tickets, we recommend configuring a skills timeout.
   • Turn on focus mode: Assigns an agent work from one real-time channel at a time. Email tickets aren't included in this restriction.
   • Reassign reopened tickets: (Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, and Chat) Reassigns email and messaging tickets if the assigned agent has a specified status when the ticket status changes from Solved, Pending, or On-hold back to Open.
   • Auto-reassign open tickets: Reassigns up to the 50 most-recently updated open email and messaging tickets of specified priorities when the assigned agent's status changes to a status configured for reassignment.
   • Reassign tickets through queues: (Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, and Chat) Uses custom queues to reassign tickets that have been assigned to an agent and are then assigned back to a group. When not selected, tickets are reassigned through the standard queue.
5. Under Email routing, configure whether to Automatically open email tickets. This determines whether newly assigned email tickets are opened in a new tab for the agent. Regardless of this setting, agents receive a notification that a new ticket has been assigned to them.
6. Configure the following Messaging routing options:
   • Choose whether to Wait until the agent accepts offered tickets or auto-accept for the agent. Determines whether messaging tickets are offered to agents or automatically assigned to them by omnichannel routing.
   • Reassign if agent doesn't accept within time limit: (Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, and Chat) Reassigns work to a different team member if it isn’t addressed in the time you specify.
   • Count inactive conversations towards an agent's capacity: Determines whether inactive messaging tickets are counted toward agent capacity and how inactive tickets are routed to agents.
   • Route all agent-ended messaging sessions as email: Determines whether tickets associated with messaging conversations are routed as email tickets after an agent ends the messaging session.
7. When you are finished, click Save.

Global routing options

Global routing configuration settings affect all channels.

Ticket sorting

The standard omnichannel routing logic assigns work to agents in order of priority and routing eligibility timestamp (commonly when the ticket is created). However, in some cases, it's preferable to assign work in order of least time until an service level agreement (SLA) breach. Sorting tickets by SLA is available on Professional plans and above for Zendesk Suite, Support, Talk, and Chat.

If you decide to order work by SLA breach times, tickets are ordered by nearness to SLA breach, beginning with those that have already breached and followed by tickets with upcoming breach times. All tickets with an SLA are prioritized over those without; tickets that aren't subject to an SLA are sorted behind all SLA-related tickets based on their priority and routing eligibility timestamp.

Note: The ticketing sorting method you choose applies to the tickets in all omnichannel routing queues.

To prioritize tickets with SLA agreements

• Under Ticket sorting, select Prioritize tickets with a service level agreement (SLA).

Assignment method

The standard omnichannel routing configuration uses a combination of agent statuses and capacity to predict which agent is most available to handle each ticket. However, the complex interactions of how capacity is counted, having multiple capacity rules for different agents, and custom statuses, means it can sometimes be challenging for Zendesk admins and team leads to understand why tickets are being routed the way they are. If you want all the other benefits of omnichannel routing, but would like to increase the predictability of which agent will receive work, you can configure omnichannel routing to use the round robin method.

When you configure round robin assignment, omnichannel routing identifies all agents with spare capacity and eligible statuses to receive work for the channel. Then, it assigns the work to the agent who has gone the longest period of time since last receiving work for that channel. Omnichannel routing considers any ticket assignment, whether manual or by omnichannel routing, as an assignment event. Additionally, omnichannel routing counts offering a call or messaging conversation to an agent as well as the reopening of a ticket as assignment events.

To configure the assignment method

• Under Assignment method, either leave Highest spare capacity selected to use the standard configuration or select Round robin.

See Using round robin routing for email, messaging conversations, and call tickets.

Skills-based routing

On Professional plans and above, you can route tickets to agents with matching skills who also have an eligible status and spare capacity. To use this feature you must have defined skills for your account and a way to assign skills to tickets. When using ticket triggers to assign skills to tickets, you can specify whether each skill is required or optional. Skills marked as required can't time out and are always part of the criteria for routing the ticket to an agent, but optional skills stop being considered for routing purposes when a skills timeout occurs.

If you turn on skills-based routing, we recommend configuring a skills timeout. When you configure a timeout, work may be assigned to agents without the optional skills if none of the agents with all of the skills are available. For email tickets, which are always assigned to agents by omnichannel routing, a skills timeout occurs when a ticket reaches the front of the queue and no agent with all of the matching skills is available for a specified duration. However, for messaging and calls, a skills timeout can occur only if no agents with the matching skills are available (online, with spare capacity) for the timeout duration. If any agent with matching skills is available, omnichannel routing will continuously offer the ticket to them until either they accept it or all agents with matching skills become unavailable for the specified timeout duration.

If you don't turn on the skills timeout, email and messaging tickets with skills remain in the queue indefinitely until an agent with all of the matching skills becomes available, and calls remain in the queue until the maximum queue wait time is reached and the call is sent to voicemail.

See About using skills to route tickets.

To turn on and configure skills-based routing within your routing configuration

1. Select Turn on skills-based routing.
2. (Recommended) Select Turn on skills timeout and configure your timeout thresholds per channel.
   • Email: The skills timeout threshold for email tickets. The default is one hour.
   • Messaging: The skills timeout threshold for messaging conversations. The default is 30 seconds. This also applies to chats in some circumstances.
   • Talk: The skills timeout threshold for calls. The default is 30 seconds.

Focus mode

On Team plans and above, you can configure omnichannel routing to help agents focus when handling tickets from real-time channels (calls, messaging conversations, and live chats). When you turn on focus mode, omnichannel routing only routes an agent work from one real-time channel at a time. Ticket priority is compared across channels to ensure the highest priority real-time ticket is assigned first. For more information, see About focus mode.

Email tickets aren't included in this restriction and can still be assigned while agents address more time-sensitive tickets from other channels.

To turn on focus mode within your routing configuration

• Select Turn on focus mode.

Note: Changing your messaging activity routing settings while focus mode is on can cause messaging tickets to consume an agent's capacity, regardless of the ticket's status, for up to 24 hours after the ticket is closed.

Reassign reopened tickets

On Professional plans and above, you can reassign email and messaging tickets if the assigned agent has a specified status when a ticket's status changes from Solved, Pending, or On-hold back to Open. If you are using custom ticket statuses, this applies to all custom ticket statuses in the Solved, Pending, or On-hold status categories. Depending on your other routing configuration settings, ticket reassignment can be to another agent in the ticket's assigned group or through custom queues.

Note: To configure reassignment of reopened tickets, your account must allow agents to assign tickets back to their groups.

To turn on and configure reassignment of reopened tickets within your routing configuration

1. Select Turn on reassignment for reopened tickets.
2. Select the agent statuses for which you want to reassign reopened Email tickets.

   If reassigment through queues is also on, all reopened email tickets are reassigned regardless of the routing tag. Otherwise this reassignment behavior applies to email tickets with the routing tag only, even if the ticket wasn't originally assigned by omnichannel routing.

3. Select the agent statuses for which you want to reassign reopened Messaging tickets. This also applies to chats in some circumstances.

Reassign open email and messaging tickets

You can choose whether open email and messaging tickets are re-assigned when the currently-assigned agent changes status to a specified status. When on, the 50 most-recently updated open email and messaging tickets of specified priority that are assigned to the agent are reassigned when their status changes to a specified status. When an agent's status changes, there is a 1-minute delay prior to the open tickets being reassigned.

To reassign open email and messaging tickets

1. Select Auto-reassign open tickets.
2. Select the channels you want to apply this setting to: Email or Messaging.
3. For each channel, specify the following:
   • Agent status: The agent statuses that should cause an agent's open tickets to be reassigned.
     Note: If you want to avoid the reassignment of work when agents are disconnected because of inactivity, ensure you configure different agent statuses for the idle timeout and this feature.
   • Ticket priority: Which of the possible ticket priorities should be reassigned in these circumstances.

Reassign email and messaging tickets through custom queues

On Professional plans and above, if you use custom queues, you can choose how omnichannel routing handles email and messaging tickets that get reassigned back to a group after being assigned to an agent. When you turn on this setting, tickets that are reassigned back to a group are inserted into the first custom queue they match. If they don't match a custom queue, they're inserted into the standard queue. Likewise, if you don't select to reassign tickets through queues, all tickets that are reassigned back to a group are routed through the standard queue.

Note: Tickets routed through custom queues are prioritized over all tickets in the standard queue.

To turn on reassignment of tickets through queues within your routing configuration

• Select Reassign tickets through queues.

Email routing options

The following setting applies only to how omnichannel routing assigns email tickets to agents.

Automatically opening email tickets

You can choose whether a newly assigned email ticket opens automatically in a new tab for the assigned agent, similar to messaging conversations. Regardless of this setting, the agent receives a notification of the assignment. If you choose not to automatically open email tickets, it's a good idea to have agents use views to monitor the tickets assigned to them.

To automatically open email tickets

• Select Automatically open assigned email tickets.

Messaging routing options

The following settings apply only to how omnichannel routing offers and assigns messaging conversations to agents.

Auto-accept messaging tickets for the agent

Typically, messaging conversations are offered to agents rather than automatically assigned. On Team plans and above, you can configure omnichannel routing to automatically assign messaging tickets to agents instead of offering them. This also applies to chats in some circumstances.

This feature can't be used at the same time as messaging reassignment timing.

To decide how agents receive messaging tickets through omnichannel routing

• Select either Wait until the agent accepts (the standard configuration) or Auto-accept for the agent.

Messaging reassignment timing

On Professional plans and above, you can configure omnichannel routing to reassign messaging tickets to a different team member if the assigned agent hasn't addressed it in the time you specify. When messaging reassignment timing is enabled, a specified time, in seconds, can elapse before work is reassigned to another agent. Depending on your other routing configuration settings, ticket reassignment can be to another agent in the ticket's assigned group or through custom queues. The timing is 30 seconds on Professional plans, and customizable on Enterprise plans. This also applies to chats in some circumstances.

This feature can't be used at the same time as auto-accept for messaging.

To turn on and configure messaging reassignment timing within your routing configuration

1. Select Reassign if agent doesn't accept within the time limit.

   The timing is 30 seconds on Professional plans.

2. (Enterprise plans only) Enter the Messaging timing in seconds.

Note: On Enterprise plans, you can also set a reassignment timing threshold for incoming calls with the Call offering time limit. See Managing phone line settings.

Count inactive conversations towards agent capacity

On Team plans and above, you can choose whether to count all open active and inactive messaging tickets towards an agent's capacity or only active messaging tickets. This setting was previously referred to as messaging activity routing.

When selected, active and inactive messaging tickets are counted and offered to agents through the Accept button.

When not selected, only active messaging tickets are counted towards capacity and offered to agents through the Accept button. Inactive messages are automatically assigned to a previously-offered agent or other available agent. See Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats.

To count inactive conversations towards agent capacity

• Select Count inactive conversations towards an agent's capacity.

Note: Changing your messaging activity routing settings while focus mode is on can cause messaging tickets to consume an agent's capacity, regardless of the ticket's status, for up to 24 hours after the ticket is closed.

Route agent-ended messaging sessions as email tickets

When your account is configured to allow agents to end messaging sessions, this setting is used to determine how omnichannel routing treats the tickets associated with those messaging conversations. When selected, omnichannel routing treats all tickets associated with messaging conversations for which the agent has ended the session as email tickets. This means they are counted towards their email capacity. However, they still appear as messaging tickets in the Agent Workspace and the ticket’s via type doesn’t change. The only indication that this setting has been applied to a ticket is in the ticket event history.

When messaging tickets are treated as email tickets for routing, they are automatically assigned to the agent who ended the session. That agent can reassign it to a group to have it re-routed by omnichannel routing. However, these tickets must have the auto-routing tag to be routed by omnichannel routing.

When this setting isn't selected, tickets associated with ended messaging sessions can't be routed by omnichannel routing.

This setting applies to all messaging tickets for the account.

To route messaging tickets as email tickets after the messaging session ends

• Select Route agent-ended messaging sessions as email tickets.

Configuring omnichannel routing to route tickets based on priority

On Professional and Enterprise plans, omnichannel routing automatically considers ticket priority if it's set. All you have to do is set a ticket's priority before it is assigned to an agent. We recommend using triggers to automatically set the ticket's priority when it enters the queue. This can be done with the same routing triggers you're already using to assign groups and the routing tag, or separate triggers.

To use triggers to set ticket priority

1. Create a new trigger or edit an existing one.
2. Add conditions to define the tickets you want to set the priority for.
3. Add an action Ticket > Priority and select the priority value you want to assign.

Evolving your routing configuration

The standard unified agent statuses and default values for omnichannel routing settings, such as capacity rules and reassignment timing thresholds, can provide a good starting point if you're unsure of the right values to configure for your organization. Whether you use the standard and default values or came up with your own based on your research, it's likely that after you use omnichannel routing for a while, you will find ways to start honing your configuration to improve how it works for your organization. These changes could be identified based on feedback and reporting data, or because something about your organization has changed and needs to be factored in. Either way, it's good to check in on your routing configuration periodically to ensure it's still optimized to meet your needs. For example, you might ask yourself:

• Are your reassignment timeouts correct? If your agents often have spare capacity, you could try reducing these thresholds. If they are typically at capacity with a large queue of work waiting for an available agent, reducing the threshold probably isn't a great idea.
• Is your ticket prioritization working for each channel? Are any adjustments needed?
• Are your unified agent statuses still meeting your needs? Have you noticed any trends in agent productivity based on their status usage? If you aren't using custom agent statuses, would they be helpful to you?
• Has anything changed for you organizationally that should be reflected in our routing configuration, triggers, or other business rules?

When you need to adjust your routing configuration, see Editing the routing configuration.