Hello, I'm trying to experiment with the Skills Based Routing, by making the caller select the skill (Press 1 for skill A, press 2 for skill B, etc.). The only way to do it as far as i can see, is to set an attribute to the call - there is such an option in the attendant. However, i'm not sure what to select for Attribute and for the Value. Help file points to: Interaction Attributes Reference Guide, but I seem to be missing this one. I've asked our partner for the guide, but am wondering if anyone has already tried this. Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Dmitry.

There are a couple of ways to handle this... Old and broke... The usual method is to have a workgroup transfer node for each menu item. Let's say for example that all of these would transfer the call to the "Customer Service" ACD queue, but each node would assign a different skill in the Advanced Workgroup Settings... dialog (Note: skills can only be used in Attendant with ACD workgroups). New hotness... With current 3.0 software (was it SU12 where this was introduced?), you could use a set attribute node for each menu item to set call attribute Eic_AttDynamicWorkgroupSkills to the name of the skill to be assigned and then send them all to a single workgroup transfer node to the appropriate ACD workgroup queue. In the Advanced Workgroup Settings... dialog for the workgroup transfer, check the box to use the skills set in that call attribute.

With the same structure, you can even time deletion of skills to expand the group of agents.

Ah. Robert said the magic word: "Advanced Workgroup Settings". Up until now, i did not even think to click that button. Now, that i have, i saw the white box for SKILLS. but it is all blank. Took me a little while to figure out that the reason this box is blank, is because I have no skills created yet. Once i created a few "test" skills, I was able to mark them in the Advanced Workgroup Settings, and thus successfully transfer calls to the same queue with diff skill based on customer's selection. Seems like I'm going to need a default/catch-all skill that will be assigned to ALL agents, and will be assigned to those callers that do not make the selection. Otherwise, i'm going to risk a very poor customer experience. I'm attaching a screenshot of what my test attendant profile looks like.

Now that i have the Skills Based Routing figured out (I hope), at least the technical and admin part of it, i'm trying to figure out the reports - and so far i see no canned reports that have anything to do with Skills. Does anyone have any ideas for how to get some reports out of this? Dmitry.

Originally posted by Dmitry;23832
Now that i have the Skills Based Routing figured out (I hope), at least the technical and admin part of it, i'm trying to figure out the reports - and so far i see no canned reports that have anything to do with Skills. Does anyone have any ideas for how to get some reports out of this? Dmitry.

Unfortunately, no skills based reports are shipped OOTB with CIC, even when the skill information could be stored in the Report logs DDBB by means or Report Groups (advanced reporting functionality) This is something I personally complaint about several times to ININ. There is no point in touting a platform as skill based routing capable, when no means are available OOTB to check how accurate or effective is implementing this strategy.

In the last couple of 3.0 SU's, there is a new addition to Attendant that will allow you to work around this... though it requires a bit of work to set up. You can use the Set Advanced Statistic node to set the Report Group for the call (prior to workgroup transfer and skill assignment) to assign the same value as the skill that will be used. Then (and this is the part I don't remember the exact steps for), modify the queue report configurations in Interaction Administrator to sort by Report Group (Queue Period Statistics Response Report for example). This will show you stats for a queue broken down by Report Group which is now for all practical purposes the same as by skill. This is nice in that it doesn't require modifying the actual report, just how it is displayed.

Just a quick addition to what dcurrier mentioned above: if you happen to be using DNIS based reporting (by checking the setting in IA), you're warned to not use Report Groups for skill based reporting. The reason is that an interaction can only be assigned a single Report Group. DNIS reporting uses the Report Group functionality internally, so you can end up screwing up things a bit.

Researching today this topic i stumbled onto this ININ KB article: https://my.inin.com/Support/Pages/KB-Details.aspx?EntryID=Q128086117400518 that explains the process to turn on interactions' skill data logging into CIC QPS (Queue Period Statistics). Not yet confirmed by ININ support guys (still waiting), but it seems that the skill name is stored in the chKey4 field of the workgroup QPS table. A bit of report tweaking will still be needed to generate historical reports that provide useful insight into skills assigned interaction. As you may see, manually creating a key in the Windows Registry is needed for this to happen. Not a clean and elegant way, though. Hope ININ will come soon with a best solution.

Originally posted by ijimenez;23847
Just a quick addition to what dcurrier mentioned above: if you happen to be using DNIS based reporting (by checking the setting in IA), you're warned to not use Report Groups for skill based reporting. The reason is that an interaction can only be assigned a single Report Group. DNIS reporting uses the Report Group functionality internally, so you can end up screwing up things a bit.

Is this still the case? I looked at the documentation for the new advanced statistic node in Interaction Attendant and there was no mention of DNIS reporting or of potential to mess it up.

HI, dcurier. Right from the last version of the CIC Advanced Reporting Guide (pag 24): Note: IC uses report groups for the DNIS reporting feature. Make sure the DNIS server parameter in Interaction Administrator is disabled—it is disabled by default—before you can use the report groups for another purpose Perhaps the doc is outdated (as sometimes it is), but anyway i would take care before doing anything

Yeah - I found a reference to this in the reporting online help also. Don't know for sure, but agree that caution is definitely called for.

Unless you use custom ACD routing, the skills will not be processed until you use the Custom attributes for SU12. Only way Out-of-box to do it is to use agent costing, but that is per agent in every workgroup they are assigned.