Channel switching in agent interaction UI

An upcoming Genesys Cloud release will contain an agent interaction UI enhancement that enables agents to easily switch from one conversation channel (voice, email, web chat, messaging) to another while engaging with a customer. The new channel appears grouped with the other channels that the agent is currently handling with that customer. This enhancement brings changes to the current behavior of the agent interaction UI. For more information, see Effortless Channel Switching FAQ in Community. Customers may wish to review the Community post to learn more about the feature and prepare for the changes. This feature requires one of the following subscriptions: Genesys Cloud User 2, Genesys Cloud User 3, Genesys Cloud User 1 Digital Upgrade I, Genesys Cloud User 1 Digital Upgrade II, or Genesys Cloud User 2 Digital Upgrade I.

The document provided in the FAQ indicates this is coming around mid-August with some changes to the UX including:

- 'Interactions' pane/section will be re-labelled as 'Conversations'
- the interaction/conversation cards will have the '+' icon to channel switch
- the vertical split/separator between Voice/Chat at the top, and Email, SMS and Messaging at the bottom will be removed

I thought I'd start a community post (as I couldn't find one) with my questions so far:

1. Will toggling between channels within an interaction/conversation card still put the other conversation segment on hold?
2. Does channel switching require the customer to have been profile matched/added into External Contacts before a channel switch can occur?
3. Under the new interaction/conversation card plus (+) button - does the 'Create new' work the same as 'start a new interaction', or is this 'Create new' External Contact?
4. What control is there over the channel switching availability (i.e. can it be turned off on queues that only handle 1 media type, can it be defined which media types are available to channel switch to per queue?)
5. With the re-labelling of 'Interactions' to 'Conversations' - will this be changed further across the UI (e.g. will it show 'No active conversations' and 'Go On Queue to begin accepting new conversations')?

Hi @Ricky Phung,

Thanks for ​the response. Off your responses, I've got some further questions:


Will toggling between channels within an interaction/conversation card still put the other conversation segment on hold?
[A] Yes.
[Q] So to clarify - if an Agent is on an active Voice call, they use Channel switching to create new Email interaction - this will put the voice call on hold when toggling to the email?


Does channel switching require the customer to have been profile matched/added into External Contacts before a channel switch can occur?
[A] Yes, contact information (e.g. email address and phone number) is dependent on such information populated for the contact record stored in External Contact.
[Q] To confirm, what will happen if the customer has NOT been profile matched? 

     a) Channel Switching option will appear with the [+] but only the 'Create new' option will appear, or

     b) Channel Switching won't be available at all?

Under the new interaction/conversation card plus (+) button - does the 'Create new' work the same as 'start a new interaction', or is this 'Create new' External Contact?
[A] Intention is to start a new interaction.
[Q] To clarify, when clicking on 'Create new', will this present the existing 'Create new interaction' selection/box? If so, will the Queue be pre-populated?

Thanks @Robert Wakefield-Carl for your insights!

We currently don't use External Contacts - so it sounds like Effortless Channel Switching will not be the 'omni-channel' saviour we were hoping for.

I was hoping that this switching would still be possible to just create a new interaction directly from the current conversation. Whilst there wouldn't be a list of other contacts from the External Contact - it could still relate to the current conversation and pre-populate the current queue.