Configure Skill-Based Routing

Now that you've navigated the Flex UI and handled your first voice and SMS Tasks, you can start customizing your Flex instance.

Currently, when a call or SMS comes in, it goes into a single Queue that all Agents are part of. As you are developing your call center, you will want to create multiple Queues for different purposes and assign Agents to these Queues based on their roles and skills. For example, you might want to have a Sales Queue for sales inquiries and a Support Queue where your Support team can help existing customers. You might also create Skills and Queues based on the languages that your Agents speak.

In Flex, you can accomplish this Skill-based routing by creating Skills (which are general categories that you use for grouping your Agents and assigning Tasks), assigning Agents to those Skills, and then creating new Queues to match these Skills.

The steps involved in setting up Skill-based routing are:

1. Create a new Skill (such as Sales or Support) in the Flex Admin UI
2. Assign workers to that Skill (for example, you would assign workers who are part of the Sales team to the Sales Skill)
3. Create a new Queue for the Skill, so that incoming Tasks requiring that Skill can be queued for the correct workers
4. Create a new Workflow, which looks at incoming Tasks and assign them to the appropriate Queue based on their properties
5. Create an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to assign Tasks with properties for routing (for example, the IVR would ask a caller which department they want to reach, and then assign the call as requiring the Skill that the call needs)

This section of the onboarding guide covers steps 1-4. You create an IVR system in the next step of the Onboarding Guide.

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Create new Skills in the Flex Admin UI

To get started with Skill-based routing, you first want to create a new Skill in the Flex Admin UI. Typically, you create one Queue for each Skill you create. For example, you might create the Skill "Sales" and then create one Queue called "Sales" to route all sales traffic to Agents with the Sales skill.

In the Flex UI Admin View, navigate to the Skills section. Here, you can see a list of existing Skills and create new Skills.

You can create Skills with or without levels. If you create a Skill with levels, you can then assign Agents the Skill and give them a specific level - for example, you can create a Support skill with levels 1 through 5, and then categorize Agents with this Skill based on their expertise or seniority. This allows you to route tasks based on an Agent's level within a given Skill. If you create Skills without levels, everyone with that Skill will be at the same level.

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Warning

Skill names should not have spaces in them, to ensure compatibility with TaskRouter (which you will be using later to route Tasks to the correct Queues).

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Warning

Adding levels to Skills may route more than the ideal amount of Tasks to the Agents in the more advanced levels. Tasks are routed to Agents with higher levels before Agents with lower levels. It's important to keep this in mind if you choose to use Skills with levels.

To get started, create a new Skill called "Sales":

• Under Name of skill , type "Sales"
• Do not check the box Does this skill require levels?
• Click Add new skill

"Sales" IN task.skillsNeeded .

Under Matching Workers , click on the value for Task Queue to edit it. Select the Sales Queue from the dropdown.

Leave everything else with their default values.

Next, create a new filter for Support. Click on +Add a Filter again and fill out the following information:

• Click on Unnamed Filter to edit the name of the filter. Call it "Send to Support".
• For Matching Tasks , copy and paste the value under Workflow expressions from the Support Skill you created in the Flex Admin UI . It should look like "Support" IN task.skillsNeeded .
• Under Matching Workers , click on the value for Task Queue to edit it. Select the Support Queue from the dropdown.
• Leave everything else with their default values.

Finally, click Save at the bottom of the page to save this Workflow.

You have now created a TaskRouter Workflow. When you send an incoming call to this workflow (which you will set up in the next step), it evaluates the incoming Task, looks to see whether it requires the Sales or Support skills, and routes the Task to the appropriate Queue if so. You set the default timeout value to 20 seconds, meaning that TaskRouter waits for the first reserved Agent to accept the task for 20 seconds before moving on to the next available Agent.

You can add additional filters to Workflows beyond Skills filters and can add a number of attributes to Tasks to route them appropriately. Learn more about what's possible with the TaskRouter Expression Syntax here.