Routing with Cliedesk Pro

Every edition has queues, manual and round-robin assignment, a default assignee, offline agents, assign-only mode, the five agent statuses, take and drop, and the chat-to-email handover (see the Free guides Routing: queues and assignment and Agent statuses). Cliedesk Pro adds queue rules, chat offers, Get next, channel choices, custom and automatic statuses, changing someone else’s status and private teams. Where these options are, Free shows a PRO badge.

Queue rules

Open Settings → Conversations → Queues and select Routing on a queue. Pro adds these settings to the dialog; Save routing saves them together with the assignment.

• Which new conversations come here: add conditions (the same condition editor as rules and views). The editor shows how many conversations match now. A new conversation enters the first queue, in queue order, whose conditions match. Conditions can use the subject, priority, channel, type, product, language, country, tags, custom fields and contact fields. When a field of an unassigned conversation changes (for example a tag or the type), Cliedesk checks the queues again and moves it to the first match. Conversations that someone moved by hand or that a person holds stay where they are.
• Offer chats (round robin): one Online agent sees the chat under the top bar with a countdown, Accept and Decline. If the time (Seconds to accept, 30 by default, 10–300) runs out, the next agent gets the offer. The agent’s status does not change. When everyone declined, the chat waits in the queue.
• Returning customers go to the agent who helped them last (when Online) (round robin): for the number of days in Remember the agent for (days) (14 by default, up to 90).
• Keep the assignee when they are Away or Offline and the customer writes. When this is off, the conversation goes back to the queue after the assignee has been Away or Offline for 30 minutes (pro_routing.reassign_away_minutes). Chats go back at once (pro_routing.reassign_chat_immediately).
• When a conversation reopens: Keep the assignee, keep only when Online, or Route it again.
• Route again after hours without progress (round robin): an assigned conversation with no agent message for that long goes back to the queue. Leave it empty to turn it off. Cliedesk checks every hour.
• Private: only the linked teams see the queue and its conversations (admins see everything). A team’s own queue follows its team.

Get next

Get next in the inbox takes the next unassigned conversation from your queues (by SLA urgency with Pro’s SLA, then priority, then the longest wait), assigns it to you and opens it. You must be Online, unless your role has Get next when not Online (Supervisors have it by default). Two agents never get the same conversation. In focus mode, resolving a conversation runs Get next and opens the next one.

Channels you take

If more than one channel group is in use, the status menu has Take new conversations from…: Chat and Email, forms and portal (Pro channels add Messaging and Calls). All are on by default. Round robin, chat offers and Get next only give you work from the groups you keep on.

Custom statuses and Away reasons

Owners and Cliedesk Admins (Manage the team) open Settings → Team → Statuses:

1. Under Custom statuses, select Add status.
2. Enter a Name, for example Lunch or Training.
3. Under Works like, choose the standard status it behaves like for routing.
4. Optional: enter Minutes (optional). When the time ends, the person is Online again.
5. Optional: limit it to some Teams.
6. Select Save statuses.

Custom statuses show in the status menu after the standard ones. Turn on Ask for a reason when someone goes Away: then the menu asks Why are you away?, and people pick an Away-based custom status or write a message. Reports shows Time in custom statuses per agent.

Automatic status

Under Automatic status on the same page:

• Set Away after this many idle minutes: no mouse or keyboard activity in any Cliedesk tab sets an Online agent Away. Activity sets them Online again. 0 turns it off.
• Set Offline after the app is closed for (minutes).
• Set people Offline when their business hours close (their teams’ business hours with more business hours, else the default).

Set someone else’s status

On a person’s page, Set status… changes their status. A Supervisor can do this for members of teams they lead; admins can do it for everyone. The audit log names both people.

Private teams

On a team’s page, Private team (only members see its queue and views) hides the team, its queue and its conversations from people who are not members. Admins still see them. The change is saved at once and audited.

Why did it go there?

The timeline also shows Pro’s decisions, for example “Routing: the queue’s entry conditions matched”, “Routing: offered to Ana”, “Routing: Ben is away, so it went back to the queue” or “Routing: no progress with Ana, so it was routed again”.

When Pro is turned off

Queue rules, offer settings and custom statuses stay stored but do nothing: conversations stay in the queue a rule or a person chose, round robin gives them out, nothing is offered, and Get next and the status extras are gone. A person with a custom status keeps its standard status (for example Away for Lunch) until they change it; time in a custom status counts in its standard status in Reports. A team or queue that was private stays hidden from non-members (it fails closed); in Free an admin can only turn Private off. When Pro runs again, the hourly re-route and the status checks start again.