Creating capacity rules to balance agent workloads

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Location: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Capacity rules

Capacity rules are part of omnichannel routing that help you balance your team's workload by setting capacities on automatically assigned work. The standard omnichannel routing configuration assigns work to the agent with the highest spare capacity for the channel who has an eligible status. For example, you could specify that only 10 open email tickets can be assigned to an agent at a time. This can be a great way of ensuring that your less experienced agents are not assigned too much work while they ramp up.

Additionally, you can decide whether you want omnichannel routing to evaluate agent spare capacity based on the percentage of their capacity currently assigned or the number of tickets they're still able to receive based on their maximum capacity for the channel.

However, you can also configure omnichannel routing to use round robin assignment. When using round robin assignment, omnichannel routing checks that agents have some amount of spare capacity, but assigns work based on time elapsed since last assignment for the channel rather than how much spare capacity agents have.

Omnichannel routing comes with a default capacity rule that you can use as-is or edit. Admins can also create your own capacity rules to suit your needs. Agents are always assigned to whichever capacity rule you set as the default initially, but you can change their assignment if needed. An agent can only be assigned to one capacity rule, so if you assign an agent to a new rule, they are automatically unassigned from their current one.

Tip: Capacity rules prevent omnichannel routing from automatically assigning work to agents who are at capacity for a given channel. However, it's still possible for agents to exceed the specified capacity by manually assigning work in excess of the limits or inactive tickets assigned to them becoming active again.

This article contains the following topics:

• Adding capacity rules
• Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats

Adding capacity rules

Omnichannel routing comes with a built-in capacity rule to get you started, but you can add additional rules as required. You must be an admin to create and manage capacity rules.

To add a capacity rule

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Omnichannel routing > Capacity rules.

   

2. On the Capacity rules page, click Add capacity rule.
3. On the Add capacity rule page, provide the following information:
   1. Name: Enter a descriptive name for the capacity rule.
   2. Description: Optionally, enter a description that helps you to identify the capacity rule.
   3. Set as default: New team members are automatically assigned to the default capacity rule. Team members who are already assigned to a capacity rule won’t change.
      Note: If you create a new capacity rule and assign a team member to it, they are removed from the default capacity rule. If you delete a capacity rule, all team members assigned to it are assigned back to the default rule.
   4. Assignees: Click Add assignee to specify the agents to whom this rule applies.
   5. Capacities > Email: Enter the number of open email tickets (including web form, side conversations, and API) that can be assigned to an agent at one time. This includes all open email tickets, regardless of how they were assigned to the agent. Tickets that are pending or on hold are not counted towards capacity. (Maximum 500)
   6. Capacities > Messaging: Enter the number of messaging tickets that can be assigned to an agent at one time. Inactive messaging tickets are counted if Count inactive conversations towards an agent's capacity is selected. Otherwise, only active messaging tickets are considered. This capacity also applies to chats in some circumstances. When applicable to live chats, an agent can be assigned up to this number of live chats and this number of messaging conversations at the same time. (Maximum 500)

      See Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats.

   7. Capacities > Talk: Enter the number of call tickets that can be assigned to an agent at one time. Options are 0 or 1. If you choose 0, the agents cannot receive calls. Calls are no longer counted towards an agent's capacity after the wrap-up time ends, if configured, or after the agent hangs up.
4. When you are finished, click Add capacity rule.

   Your new capacity rule is displayed on the Capacity rules page and begins to work immediately.

Understanding how capacity rules work for messaging conversations and live chats

When using capacity rules with conversational channels, it's important to consider the following information:

• The value you specify for Messaging capacity applies to both messaging conversations and live chats separately. If you specify a messaging capacity of 3, agents could be assigned up to 3 messaging conversation tickets and 3 live chats simultaneously.
• In conversations, there is a concept of active and inactive tickets. Zendesk defines a messaging conversation as inactive when an end user hasn't sent a reply in the last 10 minutes. However, admins can use the capacity release settings to modify this value and change the status of inactive messaging tickets.
• The omnichannel routing configuration contains a Count inactive conversations towards an agent's capacity setting.

  This setting is off by default. When off, omnichannel routing counts only active messaging tickets towards an agent's capacity. This means agents can have any number of inactive messaging conversations and live chats assigned to them in addition to the specified capacity of active conversations. Customizing your capacity release settings can help you fine-tune agent capacity in this scenario. When an inactive conversation becomes active again, agents can exceed the specified capacity. Omnichannel routing won't assign them any new tickets for that channel until they have spare capacity again.

  When this setting is on, omnichannel routing counts all open active and inactive messaging tickets towards an agent's capacity. Omnichannel routing assigns new conversational tickets to agents only when their total number of assigned messaging and live chat tickets, respectively, are below the specified capacity.