intelligent routing

Intelligent routing compares characteristics of the new assignment and characteristics of the workforce to make a good or best-match assignment. Like a good supervisor who hands out work to her team in a thoughtful, sensitive way, intelligent routing in your application can significantly affect the productivity and throughput of an entire work group.

An intelligent routing algorithm can examine backlogs, the presence or absence of operators, operator skills, the urgency or priority of an assignment, a customer's location or time zone, and other factors. Your system includes three standard activities as examples:

• Work-.ToSkilledGroup — Implements skills-based routing. This activity sends an assignment to a randomly selected operator within a specific work group who: (1) is available between the time the assignment starts and is due and (2) has the minimum skill proficiencies to complete the assignment. Using indexes maintained in the Index-OperatorSkills class, this activity operates efficiently.
• Work-.ToLeveledGroup — Sends an assignment to the operator within a specific work group who has the least urgent total worklist, based on a computed score.
• Work-.SampleToSkilledGroupList — Demonstrates a simple use of the getAvailableSkilledOperatorsList() function. Part of the Routing library, returns a list of qualifying operators who are available and meet required and desired skill requirements. Your routing algorithm can apply additional filtering and fairness criteria to select which of the operators on the list receives the assignment. (If none of the operators in the group meet the standard function qualifications, the list contains only the work group manager's Operator ID.)

Skill-based routing, an important type of intelligent routing, compares the skill proficiency of operators in a work group with the skills required, and other skills desired, to perform an assignment accurately and quickly. For example, an assignment may require an operator who has passed the NASD Series 7 exam, and may prefer that the operator have a speaking proficiency in Spanish.

Skill-based routing affects only which workbasket or which operator worklist receives an assignment. It does not prevent an operator who doesn't meet the skill profile used in routing from accessing an assignment in a workbasket and performing the assignment.

See the PDN article Use pickBalancedOperator() in routing activities to fine-tune operator workloads.

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