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This solution article talks about how you can automatically assign tickets to agents in a group and how to change an agent's availability. 


AUTOMATIC TICKET ASSIGNMENT TO AGENTS


You can choose to assign tickets either manually or automatically to your agents or groups. However, when you have set up an automation rule to run on ticket creation to assign a ticket to a group, all agents on that group will receive a notification, but the ticket will still be unassigned. Freshdesk's automatic ticket assignment helps you automate this process of assigning tickets to the agents who are online in the selected group. 


Different types of automatic ticket assignment


  • Round-robin ticket assignment:
    This method assigns tickets to agents who are online in that group in a circular fashion. E.g., In an e-commerce business, tickets are usually transactional, involving questions on recent orders, refunds, FAQs, etc.
    • The round-robin ticket assignment distributes the tickets equitably among agents so that the workload is equally balanced. Round robin focuses on equitable distribution. By the end of the day, every agent will have handled an equal number of tickets. 
    • Use this when all agents are equally proficient or if you want new joiners to ramp up quickly by handling a variety of ticket types. Learn more about the round-robin ticket assignment.

  • Load balanced ticket assignment:
    With a load-balanced assignment of tickets, you can define the number of tickets an agent can handle at any given time. This way, you can ensure that your agents aren’t overwhelmed; especially those who already have a lot of pending tickets. 
    • Load-based ticket assignment is supported by Omniroute. You’ll be able to set the global limit and the assignment preference under Omniroute. 
    • Load balanced ticket assignment optimizes for speed of response. Agents who resolve tickets faster will be assigned more, which helps maximize quick resolution times. Be mindful that faster agents might end up with more tickets.
      Note: If you don’t have the latest version of Load based ticket assignment powered by Omniroute, please write to support@freshdesk.com. The older version is no longer supported.

  • Skill-based ticket assignment:
    When you have specific agents in a group who are more skilled at handling certain kinds of tickets, you will want to route those tickets directly to these agents. E.g., If you have a global customer base, you might have agents specialized in handling tickets from a specific language, say Spanish.
    • Within each group, you would want to assign tickets that have Spanish as the requester language to the Spanish-speaking agents, in a uniform manner. Skill-based ticket assignment in Freshdesk will assign tickets to the right agents based on the agent skills that you've defined. In the above example, 'Spanish' is the skill you can map to an agent. When a ticket-skill and an agent-skill match, the ticket will be automatically assigned to the agent. 
    • Skill-based routing assigns tickets based on agent expertise. This is ideal when you have agents handling different types of tickets, or if you want new joiners to handle simpler tickets. Use this to ensure high-priority tickets are directed to the right agents. Learn more about skill-based ticket assignment.

Changing agent availability status

Incoming tickets are now automatically getting assigned to the agents, so your job as a supervisor just became easier. However, there could be several instances when an agent might want to avoid getting more tickets, such as when he/she is working on a high priority ticket or is on the phone with a customer.

Agents can change their availability if you’ve given them the privilege - You, as an Admin or Supervisor, have the ability to let your agents choose whether they want to be assigned tickets through the automatic ticket assignment.


Here is a quick guide to giving agents the privilege to change their availability:
  1. Login to your support portal as an Administrator.
  2. Go to Admin > Team > Groups.
  3. Select the group you want to give the agents the privilege of changing their availability.
  4. Turn on the toggle for Automatic ticket assignment or Omniroute and click the check the box to Allow agents to change their availability for automatic ticket assignment. 
  5. Click Save.

To change the availability of the agents,
  1. Login to your support portal as an Administrator.
  2. From the Dashboard, navigate to the Available Agents widget > View details
  3. From here you can set the availability of your agents 


If the option Allow agents to control their availability for automatic ticket assignment is enabled, the agent can set the availability by following the steps below:

  1. Click the status icon from the Nav bar
  2. Select your status to Available



Note: If you encounter issues with automatic ticket assignment, where tickets are not being assigned to agents, please check if the cutoff value for agents has been reached in Load Balanced assignment. If Round-robin or Skill-based assignment is set and tickets are still not being assigned, try disabling Automatic Ticket Assignment for a few seconds and then re-enable it to check for ticket assignment. If the issue persists, kindly reach out to our support team.