Freshdesk offers 3 types of automatic ticket assignment (AKA ticket routing) that considers agent availability, load, and expertise. The right setup for your business reduces logistic overhead and improves agent efficiency and resolution times.

About automatic ticket assignment

It is possible to assign tickets to agents via automation rules. However, automation rules are limited in the following ways:

1. Automation rules do not consider agent availability while assigning tickets.
2. Setting up automation rules for agent assignment can be cumbersome for large teams, and rules need to be updated whenever your team changes.
3. When you assign a ticket to a group, an agent isn't specified. Instead, all agents in that group are notified.

Freshdesk's automatic ticket assignment circumvents the need to specify agents in a rule. Instead, it provides 3 methods by which an available agent in a group can be selected for ticket assignment.

Configure automatic ticket assignment for a group

Process:

1. create an automation rule for group assignment
2. go to Omniroute and set up load and preferences
3. create skills and assign them to agents
4. Edit the group to enable ATA and choose method.

After collapsible

To set up any of the 3 methods:

1. As an admin, go to Admin > Team > Groups.
2. Hover over the group of choice and click the Edit (Pencil) icon.
3. Go to the Group Properties tab and toggle on Automatic ticket assignment.
4. Choose the assignment mode you want.
   • Round-robin
   • Load-balanced
   • Skill-based
5. Optionally, under Agent availability status, let agents control their own availability.
6. Under Ticket escalation settings, choose a time limit and an agent to email in case a ticket is unassigned.
7. Review your settings and click Save.

Agent availability

Agent availability dashboard

and availability dashboard

FAQ and troubleshooting

1. How is an agent's load determined for load-balanced assignment?
2. How does skill-based assignment work?
3. when you edit
4. how routing works etc.

Existing stuff

Omniroute

• additional settings for load-balanced and skill-based
• monitoring agent availability
• things I don't want to read

FAQ folder: Automatic Ticket Distribution

• Does the Round-Robin functionality work only during business hours?
• Does the Round-Robin assign tickets in alphabetical order?
• What happens to a ticket when the caps for all agents are met?
• How does Automatic ticket assignment work after an agent logs out
• What is automatic ticket assignment?
• Is there a way to prevent automatic ticket assignment when an agent replies to an unassigned ticket?
• Is it possible to automatically assign tickets based on agent workload?
• Is there a report on the total time that an agent has been available for ticket assignment?
• How do I enable Round Robin Ticket Assignment in my account?

FAQ in article: Skill-based

Some of these FAQs (mentions of tickets and chats) are only applicable to you if you are using Freshdesk Omnichannel.

1. What happens when the properties of a skilled rule are updated? 
   The skill rule is considered only for new or existing chats that are up for skill recalculation (open, SBRR group, unassigned, not spam/deleted). Existing tickets/chats remain unaffected.
   
   
2. Can a manager have access only to update skills for agents in their own team?
   1. If you are using Freshdesk or Freshdesk Omnichannel then yes. If an agent’s role is a supervisor and they have group access, they can only see agents that are a part of their group under Admin > Skills.
   2. If you are using Freshchat, then no. All groups and agents from Freshchat will be displayed under the agent list page.
      
      
3. How to delete an agent skill? 
   You can delete skills from the Skill List tab. Tickets already assigned to agents based on the deleted skill will not be unassigned. However, tickets with the deleted skill that weren’t assigned to any agent will be checked against the remaining skills in the Skill List.
   
   
4. When does a skill for chat gets recalculated? 
   Skill is calculated for a ticket or chat the first time it’s assigned to a group for which SBRR is enabled. Note that the ticket should not be assigned to an agent at this point. Skill is recalculated when the ticket becomes unassigned within the SBRR group, the status is open, and is not marked as spam.
   
   
5. What happens when an admin changes the skill of a ticket? 
   • If the ticket is unassigned and the skill is changed, the router will look for an agent with the updated skill.
   • If the ticket is assigned, the skill change doesn’t change the agent that owns the ticket, as the existing agent will have all the context of that ticket. Once the ticket is unassigned, a new skill is added based on the skill conditions.
     
     
6. What happens when the load of the agent is increased? 
   • If an admin increases the capacity of agents globally or at a group level, the router assigns the unassigned tickets to agents. The router picks the tickets based on created time (even if the Omniroute settings are based on resolution time or resolved time). 
   • The oldest tickets will be assigned to agents that have matching skills. Depending on the agent’s availability, it could be assigned to agents that have the first or the 35th skill as the skill of the ticket. 
   • The router looks for an agent for assignment when agents are added to a group in bulk, skills are added in bulk to agents, or when skill-based routing is enabled for a group
   • This means that if a support team has set up skills to ensure, say, queries on damaged goods are always prioritized over shipment tracking tickets for a set of agents, it will fail when the global capacity is increased until agents reach the new max capacity.
     
     
7. What happens when an agent under skill-based routing becomes inactive?

   When an agent becomes inactive, all chats that have a response from the customer will be unassigned. This will happen regardless of whether there’s another agent available to handle the chat. A note will be displayed in the conversation that says, 'Chat unassigned by Intelliassign.' Once assigned to the right agent, another note will be displayed as 'Assigned to <agent name> by Intelliassign.'
   
   

8. What happens to the existing chats/tickets when skill-based routing is enabled?
   Nothing. Skill is not calculated for existing chats in routing-enabled groups. When an existing chat is assigned to a group with routing enabled (after skills routing is enabled) skill is calculated.
   
   

9. How do you set a load for chats?
   The current load levels are used to set the chat load for an agent. If an agent is a part of multiple load levels, the highest load they’re assigned is taken into account.