Adding and managing skills on tickets

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Quick Look: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Skills

To use skills for routing purposes, they must be assigned to tickets. We recommend that you use triggers to automatically evaluate new or updated tickets and add skills, but you can also use routing rules to apply skills at ticket creation or manually add or remove skills at any time.

This article contains the following topics:

• Assigning skills to tickets
• Removing skills from a ticket
• Understanding how skills are applied to follow-up tickets

For information about who can see the skills field on tickets, see Viewing a ticket's skills.

Assigning skills to tickets

A ticket must have at least one skill assigned to it if you want it to be routed to an agent based on skills. The best way to do this is using triggers or routing rules, so that skills are automatically added to tickets meeting the specified criteria, but they can also be added or adjusted manually.

Even when skills are added automatically, it's important to make sure tickets without skills are also assigned to agents. Omnichannel routing handles this seamlessly, by considering skills if they are present, but otherwise assigning tickets based on priority and agent availability. For standalone skills-based routing, you may want to define a view specifically for tickets without skills. You should also consider if there is a missing skill or skill condition that would have resulted in a skill being assigned to a ticket.

Note: All agents are considered matches to tickets that have no skills assigned.

There are three ways you can add skills to tickets:

• Using triggers to add skills to tickets (recommended)
• Using routing rules to add skills to tickets
• Manually adding skills to tickets

Using triggers to add skills to tickets (recommended)

When omnichannel routing is turned on, you can use triggers to assign skills to tickets because they can add skills when tickets are updated as well as when they're created. Additionally, the skills actions for ticket triggers also allow you to specify the priority of the skills for routing purposes. 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 in order of priority, from low to high, when a skills timeout occurs. To see which skills were ultimately used to route the ticket, you can check the offered to ticket events.

Trigger actions related to skills are available when you have created at least one skill. For more information, see the Triggers conditions and actions reference.

Omnichannel routing only recognizes skills added to tickets for calls when the ticket is created and the first time triggers fire on the ticket. Any updates made to the ticket's skills after that initial creation process aren't considered by the routing logic, but can be used by other business rules.

Note: If you were previously using skills and had defined routing rules, we recommend that you delete them and recreate the logic with triggers. If you don't delete them, they will run before triggers and other business rules when a ticket is created, but can't be used to add or update skills after the initial creation.

To configure a trigger to add skills to tickets

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Create or edit a trigger.
3. Under Conditions, specify the conditions under which you want the skills to be added.
4. Under Actions, select Add skills and then select the individual skills to be added. See Building trigger action statements.
5. For each skill you select, specify a priority:
   • Required: Skills that never expire. Agents must have all required skills to be assigned the ticket by omnichannel routing.

     Any skill that isn't required is subject to the skill timeout defined in the omnichannel routing configuration. When skills timeouts occur, omnichannel routing ignores optional skills in order of priority (low to high) when looking for available agents.

   • Optional (High priority): The last skills to expire when a timeout occurs.
   • Optional (Medium priority): The next skills to expire when a timeout occurs.
   • Optional (Low priority): The first skills to expire when a timeout occurs.

   

   Note: Each skill that expires increases the number of agents eligible to receive the ticket and, in turn, increases the likelihood of it being assigned.
6. Click Save.

Using routing rules to add skills to tickets

If you choose not to use omnichannel routing and triggers to assign skills to tickets, you'll need to define conditions for each skill that 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. Routing rules are applied only 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.

To create a routing rule

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Skills.
2. Click the skill you want to add a routing rule for.
3. Under Tickets > All of the following conditions or Any of the following conditions, click Add condition.
4. Select a condition, a field operator, and a value.

   

5. (Optional) Repeat these steps until you've added all of the conditions for the skill.
6. Click Save.

To edit a routing rule

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Skills.
2. Click the skill you want to modify the routing rules for.
3. Under Tickets, click the delete icon (x) next to each skill you want to remove.
4. Click Save.

Manually adding skills to tickets

In addition to automatically adding skills to tickets using triggers and routing rules, admins and agents with permission can also manually add or update skills on tickets at any time.

To manually add skills to a ticket

1. In Support, open the ticket.
2. Under the Skills field, use the dropdown so select the skills you want to add.
3. Click Submit.

Removing skills from a ticket

You can use triggers to remove skills from tickets when they are created or updated. You can also remove skills from tickets manually at any time.

For call and messaging tickets, omnichannel routing only recognizes skills on a ticket as they exist immediately after the ticket is created and the triggers fire initially. The routing logic won't consider skills that are changed or removed after that point.

To use triggers to remove a skill from a ticket

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Create or edit a trigger.
3. Under Conditions, specify the conditions under which you want the skill to be removed.
4. Under Actions, select Remove skills and then select the individual skills to be removed. See Building trigger action statements.
5. Click Save.

To manually remove skills from a ticket

1. In Support, open the ticket.
2. Under the Skills field, click the x icon next to the name of the skill you want to remove.
3. Click Submit.

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 triggers or routing rules when the follow-up ticket is created.