| Announced on | EAP starts | EAP ends |
|---|---|---|
|
March 7, 2023 |
March 7, 2023 |
April 24, 2023 |
Zendesk is excited to announce an early access program for the Zendesk Agent Availability API.
What is changing?
Previously, agent statuses could only be managed via the UI and limited reporting was available. Talk APIs provided some of this functionality for calls, but didn't work with omnichannel routing or unified agent statuses. Now, the Agent Availability API enables Zendesk customers to view real-time agent availability information across Zendesk channels and update agents' unified agent statuses. When using the APIs, it's important to understand that an agent's availability is comprised of four parts:
- Agent's status per channel (online, away, transfer only, offline)
- Work items assigned to the agent
- (Omnichannel routing only) Standard and custom unified agent statuses. This is the name of the unified agent status that the agents set
- (Omnichannel routing only) Agent's maximum capacity for each channel
Why is Zendesk making this change?
We've heard from many customers that they need more visibility into real-time agent status and activity as well as the ability to adjust an agent's status when necessary. Until now, there wasn't an easy way to access this information across channels. The Agent Availability API enable better integrations and open up a variety of new use cases, such as the development of custom monitoring, reporting, and routing flows based on real-time agent availability.
What do I need to do?
During this EAP, Zendesk is seeking participants who are interested in collaborating with us to develop real-time, reliable, high-performing, and scalable Agent Availability APIs that meet your needs. We ask that participants:
- Use the API and provide feedback.
- Participate in customer interviews, if asked.
To learn more, see the Agent Availability API.
4 Comments
Great news! Been waiting to have this for a while 🙌
It's a must have for us to start using the new Omnichannel routing engine.
Hi Rafael, we hope you will benefit from the new APIs! Please feel free to share your feedback in the community once you've start experiencing them.
I have been testing the Agent availability API as soon as it was released. My main concern is the fairness of the ticket assignment system in omnichannel routing.
Clear predictions were needed on which agent would be assigned a ticket when Omni Channel tickets are automatically distributed among agents. All agents reasonably want to receive ticket assignments, but personal bias can always be a headache.
"Why did I get so many tickets right after solving one, while my next agent received one an hour ago?"
Anyone can have such complaints.
So I tested the Agent availability API to see if such predictions were possible, but some were successful and some were not.
I heard that tickets are first assigned to agents who have not been assigned a ticket for the longest time. So, I checked with the Agent availability API to find out which agent that would be.
If three agents have received tickets and currently have them as "work_items", I can predict who will take the next ticket by checking the "added_at" of the ticket they currently have and finding out who received the ticket last.
However, if all three agents have resolved all their tickets and have no work_items, their "added_at" is unknown. Therefore, no one can predict who the next ticket will be assigned to among the three agents.
I believe that this API should be able to predict who will be the owner of the next ticket, and it needs to be improved accordingly.
For example, if there is a value of "agent_last_assigned_at: 2023-04-28T04:00:41.938542002Z" in data.attributes, it would be sufficient.
This value is updated every time the agent receives a ticket assignment.
With this information, it would be possible to determine who the winner of the next ticket is simply by looking at this value.
I sincerely hope that this value will be added to the API as I suggest.
Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback, jihoon Lee. Could you please elaborate on the use cases you are trying to achieve?
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