How to handle a Team being overloaded via Ticket Routing

There are times that a Team may be overloaded with work while other Teams are not. For example, let’s say you have a Ticket Routing Rule named HelpDesk that has this Escalation Path:

1. QuickFix Team [Bob, Sue, Phil]
2. Tier 2 Team [Jill]
3. Tier 3 Team [Mary]

The goal of a QuickFix team is to quickly handle incoming tickets to increase customer satisfaction, while escalating any tickets that will take more than 15-minutes to higher tiers. With Rocketship’s Ticket Routing module, as tickets come into QuickFix, each ticket is routed to the “1st available person” in the Team. Often, this will result in a round-robin type scheduling situation for QuickFix since they use short, defined blocks of time (e.g., 15 minutes “up or out” scheduling).

But let’s also assume that today the QuickFix team is absolutely overloaded. They have more incoming tickets than they can handle.

Ticket Routing will look at the next Team

If the Ticket Routing module is unable to find an available resource in a Team, it will move to the next Team. So if QuickFix is fully booked with work, then it will look in Tier 2 for an available resource.

How does Ticket Routing know if a Team is overloaded?

The module will look at each Team to determine if they have a block of X hours free within Y days. Let’s say we consider “30 minutes free within 2 days” as being “available”. It would do this:

1. QuickFix Team
   1. Does Bob have “30 minutes free in the next 2 days?” No?
   2. Does Sue have “30 minutes free in the next 2 days?” No?
   3. Does Phil have “30 minutes free in the next 2 days?” No?
   4. Move to next Team
2. Tier 2 Team
   1. Does jill have “30 minutes free in the next 2 days?” Yes? Assign her the ticket and (optionally) schedule her.

How do you define “X hours free within Y days”?

By default, the Ticket Routing module uses the “[BUILTIN] Default Escalation Recipe” found in Rocketship Admin->Scheduling->Next Activities->Next Activity Recipes. Out-of-the-box, this is set to “30 minutes free within the next 14 days.”

Now, let’s go back to our HelpDesk example. Let’s update our logic so that a ticket is routed to the 1st Team/Resource that matches “free for 30 minutes within 1 day,” but goes to the dispatcher or helpdesk manager otherwise (so they can manually resolve the scheduling issue).

1. Log into Rocketship Admin
2. Click on Scheduling -> Scheduling Home -> Next Activity Recipes
3. Click on ‘New’
   1. Next Activity Name: 30 minutes in 1 day
   2. Minutes to Schedule: 30
   3. Must be within: 1
   4. Visibility -> Escalation Rule Visibility Only: Yes
4. Click Save

Be sure to set “Escalation Rule Visibility Only” to YES. When set to YES, this recipe won’t show in the Ticket Insight. We’ll just use it only for the Ticket Routing Rule.

We now have the logic “30 minutes within day”, so next let’s go update our Ticket Routing Rule to use it.

1. Click on Dispatch&Escalations -> Escalation Rules
2. Click View on the HelpDesk rule in our example above
3. Click Edit
4. For Default Scheduling Setting, select: 30 minutes in 1 day
5. Click Save Changes

Now, this Escalation Rule will use “30 minutes in 1 day” instead of “30 minutes in 14 days” when scanning through Teams and Resources.