Agent groups
An Agent Group is a logical grouping of agents. Agent groups are typically set up to provide particular sets of contact-center services. The Agent Groups list shows the agent groups that are in your environment. You have two options for creating agent groups:
- Create an Agent group and then manually add agents to the group. For example, if you want to create an agent group for a group of new hires, you create the agent group, and then manually add each of the new hire's agent accounts to the group.
- Create a Virtual Agent Groups to automically group agents, according to the skills that they have. You create an agent group object and define a script to identify the skills that you want the agents in the group to share. For example, you can create a virtual agent group for all agents that can speak Russian.
Both types of agent groups are configurable on the Agent Groups screen on the Contact Center Settings page. Use the following procedures create and configure your agents groups:
[+] Creating an agent group
Creating an agent group
In the Agent Groups window, type the name you want to assign to the agent group and click Add. In our example, the new agent group is a group new hires, so let's name the agent group November2016 New Agents.
You can put the new agent group into folder. This is useful for organizing your agent groups to make them easy to locate in the future. For example, you can place our new group into the Training Groups folder. When you select the Folder option, a drop-down list box is displayed where you can select a folder or click the add folder 
icon to create a new folder.
After you click Add, the new agent group is listed on the Agents Group page. Select the agent group you just created. Note that there are two lists:
- All Agents lists all agents in your call center.
- Agents Groups Agent lists all agents in this particular agent group. For each agent that you want to add, click the agent row in the All Agents list and drag it to the Agents Groups Agent list.
Tip
On your agent group list, you might see agent groups that have an
Add script link in the script column. If you see this, it means that you or someone else created an agent group and didn't assign any agents to it. In other words, it's an empty group. You have the option to edit the group to manually add agents or click
Add script to create a virtual agent group.
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You can create a virtual agent group by specifying a script when you add an agent group.
As opposed to a regular agent group, you can't manually add agents to a virtual agent group. Agents are automatically included in the group if the agent is assigned the skill that is specified in the script.
After you add the script, you will see a link in the Script column on the Agent Groups page.. The script identifies the common skills shared by all agents that belong to the group. you can edit the script by double-clicking the script text and then updating the script in the dialog box that is displayed.
[+] Configuring the desktop for an agent group
After you populate your agent group with agents, you can assign objects to the group. Under each of the following tabs, make your selections:
[+] Configuring automatic answering and timeout settings
In the Desktop Options tab of the Agent Groups window, you can configure the timeout settings for the agent group. The timeout settings determine how long a chat or voice invitation remains active for an agent before it times out and then is routed to another agent.
Select Auto Answer if you want voice interactions to be automatically answered when an agent receives the invitation. If you don't select Auto Answer, configure the following values:
- Timeout(min): Specifies the minutes of agent inactivity (no mouse or keyboard usage) that triggers application locking. If the agent has been inactive longer than the number of minutes specified by this option, the agent session is ended.
- Alert before timeout(sec): Specifies the number of seconds that pass before the inactivity alert is sent to the agent.
[+] Managing global favorites for agent groups
On the Contact Center Settings tab, you can create a list of globally favorite contacts and internal targets (like other agents, team leads, or call routing) in the Team Communicator for your agents.
On the Agent Groups page, you can specify which favorites to assign to each agent group. You have a choice to add a new favorite or you can select a configured favorite.
Click Agent Groups > Group Favorites tab and then choose one of the following actions:
- Click the Global Favorites icon, select a global favorite in the Contact List dialog box, and then click Add .
- Create a new favorite. For instructions on how to create a new favorite, see Global Favorites.
