Agents

An agent is a person who handles incoming or outgoing calls for a business. A contact center agent might handle account inquiries, customer complaints, or the support issues.

POM manages the agents by implementing a state machine for each agent. Through Agent APIs, POM also provides a way to login these agents. When an agent logs in to POM, POM stores the logged in agent and manages the agent lifecycle through an agent session. The system creates an agent session when an agent logs in and ends when the agent logs out. In one agent session, the agent can either get attached to various agent-based campaigns or can serve inbound calls as a blended agent. Supervisor Dashboard facilitate the administration and management of these agents. Administrator can view the current statistics of an agent, and controls the agent statistics through Supervisor Dashboard .

You can view various agent properties through Supervisor Dashboard. The important properties are agent skills, zone, time-zone, locale, and agent extension and agent states. Apart from agent states, it specifies the other properties in the Login command, which marks the beginning of an agent session, while the agent states are run-time properties and you can view on Supervisor Dashboard and are managed by POM.

Agent’s state is a collection of sub states that include Agent State, Call State, and Job State. Agent State includes Ready, Not Ready, Pending Not Ready, Logout, Busy, Work Not Ready, Unknown states. Agent state indicates whether an agent is working or idle. Call state includes Idle, Talking, Callback, Conference Owner, Conference Passive, Consult, Preview, Wrapup. Job State can be Job Attached, Job Detached, Job End, Pending Inbound, Job Inbound, Pending Manual Inbound, Pending Job Movement, Pending Job Attach.

Agent states

• Ready: When an agent logins and sends Ready command from desktop, POM puts the agent in Ready state. The agent is available to take calls. If an agent is attached to a campaign and there are contacts in that campaign, POM connects calls to such agents.

• Pending Not Ready or Not Ready: When an agent sends a NotReady command from agent desktop, POM puts the agent into Not Ready state. On getting request from desktop POM can move that agent to not ready state. The agent is unavailable to take calls. On receiving this command from desktop, POM makes sure that it excludes this agent from available agent pool and it does not give further calls to the agent. An agent can send this command anytime, so if the agent is already busy with a customer call, POM puts such agent in Pending Not Ready state. When the agent’s current work is over, it moves the agent to Not Ready state. However, through this command an agent can also change the reason for going to Not Ready state. Issuing this command in Not Ready state with new reason code can change the reason of the Not Ready state. Agent desktop can send request to move an agent to Not Ready state with walkaway status if agent is not doing any activity on desktop. In such case POM generates a major alarm P_POMAGT16. For more information about the alarm, see Troubleshooting Proactive Outreach Manager.

• Log Out: When an agent sends Logout command from desktop, POM puts the agent in the logout state. POM permits only Not Ready agents to logout. However, under some circumstances POM also permits a pending logout of an agent through Pending Logout command. This command is for integrated desktops that can communicate with contact center. If the desktops find that the agent does not have any outbound skills, then these desktops can send this command to logout the agent.

• Busy: This state indicates that an agent is interacting with the customer. In this state, the agent call states can be either Talking, Dialing, Preview, ConferenceOwner, ConferencePassive, Consult, or Callback.

• Work Not Ready: When an agent or the customer ends up a customer call, agent wants to update customer call information in to system. An agent can do this when the agent is in wrapup state. When the customer call ends, either by the agent or by the customer, POM puts the agent in Wrapup and Work Not Ready state. If nailing of an agent drops while the agent was Busy, then also agent goes into Wrapup and Work Not Ready state. For more information about nailing, see Proactive Outreach Manager Overview and Specification Guide.

Agent call states

Agent call states broadly represent the states in which the customer contacts the agent. The different call states are:

• Idle: This state represents that agent is available for POM system to connect with customer call.

• Preview: This state represents that the POM system has offered a preview of customer data to agent and agent can be in next possible states as either Dialing or Wrapup, that depends on whether agent accepts or rejects the customer preview. POM receives the Preview Dial command when the agent accepts the preview in desktop, while Preview Cancel command is sent when agent cancels to dial the customer using offered preview.

• Callback: This state represents the agent has a preview of customer data who has requested a callback. Similar to preview state it also has the same set of next state as either Dialing or Wrapup. You can send Preview Dial and Preview Cancel commands after this state from the agent desktop depending on whether agent decide to dial the customer or reject the preview respectively.

  POM server can send time in UTC (yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm) in pending callback notification if the UTC is set in TimeZonePendingCallbackDueTime parameter of pim_config table. The query to update this parameter is:

  update pim_config set config_value='UTC' where config_name='TimeZonePendingCallbackDueTime'

  The existing functionality in which POM sends the due time as per the POM server time zone is the default behavior, and is used to maintain backward compatibility.

  Earlier, the skill information was refreshed from Communication Manager when an agent was attached to the job. Any request to refresh the skill would take time to reflect depending on Communication Manager work load. In the current release of POM, we do not refresh the skill information while attaching an agent to a job. If the agent skill information changes, the agent needs to logout and login again for the changes to take effect.

  Earlier for agent type of callback, the list of agents was fetched from Communication Manager. In the current release of POM, we fetch the list of agents from POM database cache. In case of fresh install or upgrade, when the agent logs in for the first time, the agent can view the skill information and other details of all agents who are logged in at that point of time for callback.

• Talking: This state tells that the agent is on the call with the customer. While agent is in Preview or Callback states, and decides to dial the customer and customer picks up the call, then agent goes into Talking state. In Progressive or Cruise Control type of campaigns the agent directly goes into Talking state from Idle state. In such campaigns, the system launches the call and after detecting a live voice, the system connects the agent with the call. POM displays the Talking state as Call Connect.Agent Activity Details report. An agent can also choose to redial a customer call in the Wrapup state. If the call succeeds, POM again puts the agent in Talking state. In this case, it displays the Talking state as Call Connect in the POM Agent Activity Details report.

• Hold: This state displays when the agent has put the customer call on hold. The agent can send a Hold Call command from desktop to put a customer call on hold. When customer call is on hold, the system plays the application configured in campaign strategy for hold. The agent can also send a Unhold command from desktop to unhold the customer call. The unhold command changes the agent state from Hold to Talking. The system stops playing the hold application. When the agent is a ConferenceOwner of a conference, the agent can put the customer call on Hold. This situation is similar to Consult where the agents can talk with each other while the customer is on hold.

• Consult: Consult is the state when agent talking with customer tries to consult another agent or external party for consultation. An agent can send Consult command from desktop to initiate a consult. If the other agent is already busy with a customer call, the agent gets a pending consult request. POM makes sure that it gives this pending consult to the agent when agent finishes the current work. At most an agent can have maximum of two pending consults request while agent is busy with other customer call. If the other agent is in Idle state then it directly takes the agent to a Consult state. During an active consult, customer call is on hold and hold music is played.

  With the aid of this pending consult notification, other agent gets to learn about a pending activity. The agent then can either expedite up the current call, or can reject the pending consult request.

  The agent manager cannot identify passive agent nailing. The owner agent of the consult or conference can release the passive agent from the conference if the nailing drops. When passive agent loses nailing, the owner agent knows as the voice of passive agent also drops. In such a case the owner can either cancel the consult or end the conference depending on whether the agents are in consult or conference, respectively. When such action occurs the passive agent comes out of the consult or conference.

  If you are using Avaya Aura Agent Desktop (AAAD) to access agent functionality, and the agent initiates a consult with another agent, then it shares the details pertaining to the customer and the agent notes with the consult recipient agent when the conference is completed, not during the consult phase. For more information about agent behavior, see Agent Desktop User Guide.

• Transfer or Conference: POM supports only consultative transfers and remove the conferences. Both parties must be in consult state before initiating transfer or conference while customer call is on hold. After this state an agent can go either in transfer or conference state. Agent can send transfer command to transfer the current customer call to another agent. After the call is transferred successfully to other agent, the initiator goes into "Idle" state to take next calls and the other agent becomes the owner of that customer call. The responsibility of wrapping up customer call also lies with the owner agent. In this case, POM displays the talking state as Call Continue(transferred) in the POM Agent Activity Details report.

  Similarly an agent can send conference command to conference another agent. POM supports three party conference only which includes two agents and one customer only. After the conference is successful, the initiator goes in to Conference Owner state and the other agent goes in to conference passive state.

  A POM agent can transfer a call to an external party during a consult, or a conference, while placing a customer call on hold. The agent who originates the consult, or transfer, or conference can exit the call after transferring it. External transfer at telephony level generates “Refer with Replaces” SIP request for the external party, or the agent. The agent endpoint or gateway in between must handle the “Refer with Replaces” request and generate an “Invite with Replaces” request for the customer call leg. In the enterprise network, Avaya Aura® Communication Manager (CM), or the gateway interfacing the external agent has to handle it.

  On transfer during a conference, the POM system disposes the call and the agent Desktop gets the CallWrapUp pop-up window to mark the completion code. To identify the calls that are transferred to an external party, the agent must dispose the call with “Transferred to external number” custom completion code, which can be configured on the Campaign Creation page.

  POM Campaign Detail report displays the completion code “Transferred to external number” for calls that are transferred to an external party. The agent activity detail report displays the agent activity as "Wrap-up" calls get disposed from the POM system.

• ConferenceOwner or ConferencePassive: The agent who initiates the conference request is ConferenceOwner. The agent who accepts the conference request is ConferencePassive. The conference owner can change the ownership of conference by sending Change conference ownership command. The conference owner can make other agent as owner of this conference. The call wrapup responsibility lies with conference owner always. At any point of time in the conference, either of the agents can end the conference. Ending the conference takes the passive agent to Idle state where the agent can take next calls, while the owner goes into Talking state and the owner can wrapup the call. Similarly, if customer drops the call in a conference the conference ends and the owner goes into Wrapup state, while passive agent goes to Idle state and take next calls.

  The agent manager is unable to identify passive agent nailing. The owner agent of the consult or conference can release the passive agent from the conference if the nailing drops. When the passive agent loses nailing, the owner agent knows as the voice of passive agent also drops. In such a case the owner can either cancel the consult or end the conference depending on whether the agents are in consult or conference respectively. The passive agent comes out of the consult or conference call.

• Wrapup: Wrapup is the state where agent gets some time to add some feedback about the customer and give the proper disposition to the call. POM sends a list of custom completion codes that are associated with the campaign of which the agent processes the contact. Among these completion codes, one of these completion codes, is a default completion code that is defined in the campaign strategy. If agent failed to update completion code in given wrapup time then POM automatically updates the default completion code, moving the agent to idle state for taking next calls. POM sends the configured wrapup time and number of wrap time extension. An agent can have to dispose the call when agent is in wrapup state. However, from POM perspective it is a guideline and to implement this timer and number of wrap time extension are the obligations of desktop. When, desktop sends Wrapup Contact command, either self-generated because of expiry of timer or agent initiated, POM makes this agent available for next calls by taking by taking the agent to Idle state.

  Note:

  The system can show an agent in Wrapup state even if the agent is talking with the customer and the agent desktop shuts down abnormally and the desktop has already invoked the AGTSaveAgentForHA command. For more information about the AGTSaveAgentForHA command, see Proactive Outreach Manager Developer Guide.

• Dialing: When the agent accepts the preview on desktop, it sends the preview dial command to POM, changing the agent call state to Dialing. The agent can also be in the Dialing state on redial.

External Transfer Limitations

The external transfer feature has the following limitations:

1. External agent being station or VDN on CM, CM must know the route to the customer or Address of Record (AOR) that is mentioned in the Refer-To header of REFER request that the MPP generates during the transfer.

   Refer-To:<;sips:3ld812adkjw@biloxi.example.com;gr=3413kj2h?Replaces=090459243588173445%3Bto-tag%3D7553452%3Bfrom-tag%3D31431:>;

   If the MPP places the customer call through the same CM, then the CM does the routing. Else, you must configure the CM so that it routes the “Invite with Replace” to the desired gateway or trunk through which customer outbound call is made. The customer call can then be transferred to an external agent.

   To achieve this routing, make a route-pattern on the CM and put it in the locations. In the route-pattern, put trunks to the gateway or Avaya Aura® Session Manager which can route “Invite with Replace” further to the customer.

2. External agent being a SIP endpoint registered on Session Manager, the SIP endpoint must support “Refer with Replaces”. As observed, Avaya Workplace Client or Avaya one-X® Communicator does not support this and end up dialing a new call to the customer.

3. External agent is a PSTN entity that is dialed out of the Enterprise network. If the external agent is dialed out through a trunk on CM to the PSTN network, the CM fails to transfer the call and drops the external agent’s ongoing call if “Disconnect Supervision” is disabled for the outgoing trunk. To fix this issue and transfer the call, change the trunk-group and set the Disconnect Supervision-Out? to ‘Y’.

   Note:

   You must set the Disconnect Supervision In and Out values in Avaya Aura® Communication Manager. For more information on Disconnect Supervision In and Out, see Proactive Outreach Manager Integration Guide

Job states

The agent job states represent the agent state related to job-task to which the agent is attached. A job-task in POM is an entity that consists of Job ID, Action Name, and Zone Name. POM distributes the Agent licenses at these job-tasks level. Hence, these states also affect the licensing and have impact on the nailing of an agent. For more information about nailing, see Proactive Outreach Manager Overview and Specification Guide.

• JobAttached: JobAttached is the state when agent is assigned to a job.

• JobDetached: JobDetached is the state when agent is removed from the job.

• JobEnd: JobEnd is the state when the job task removes the agent. The agent can be put in Job End sate when:

  1. Campaign pauses or ends

  2. Agent is moved from one job to another

  3. When the system donates the agent to other job because of limited number of available agents.

  Note:

  Job End does not mean that the running job is finished or terminated. Job End means that an agent is no longer associated with the job. Hence the job for the specific agent ends.

• JobInbound: JobInbound is the state when the agent is released from Outbound activity. Agent Manager does not assign any job to such agents. Hence agent is free to take inbound calls. The system can put the agent in this state either when administrator invokes Release from Outbound command from Supervisor Dashboard, or the blender component of the system invokes the command BlendToInbound for a particular agent. For more information about blending, see Proactive Outreach Manager Overview and Specification.

• Pending Inbound: Pending Inbound is the state when the agent is marked for inbound, but the transition is not complete as agent is busy with the current outbound call. Pending Inbound is a transition state.

• Pending Outbound: Pending Outbound is the state when agent is marked for outbound, but the transition is not complete as agent is busy with the inbound call. Pending Outbound is a transition state.

• Pending Manual Inbound: Pending Manual Inbound is the state when an agent is moved from outbound to inbound manually. This command is given on Supervisor Dashboard and through JMS it is communicated to PAM. The agent, if busy, is kept in this state until the current call ends. Then the state is transitioned to JobInbound. The command can be given for any agent from Supervisor Dashboard. If the agent is idle, this transition is immediate, otherwise, a supervisor can see this job state in the Supervisor Dashboard under the job state of an agent. The system can ignore the command Release From Outbound in some scenarios such as:

  • The agent has some pending activity such as PendingCallback or PendingConsult.

  • During HA of the agent manager.

  • If JMS is not functional.

  For such scenarios, the system raises an event P_POMAGT50. For more information about the event, see Troubleshooting Proactive Outreach Manager.

• Pending Manual Job Movement: Pending Manual Job Movement is when an agent is moved from one outbound job to another outbound job. If an agent is currently busy talking with customer, and is kept in this state until the current call ends. Then the state is moved to Job Attached state. These parameters must be filled by supervisor with caution as the movement is bound to create effects in the system. The system tries to move some other agent to the job to which this agent was associated. This fills the shortage of the agent. Hence, you must change all parameters in one go.

• Pending Job Attach: Pending Job Attach is the state when agent is associated with the job. When a nailing request is sent to an agent, this request is attached to a respective job. This request state is temporary and once agent is nailed the agent job state changes to Job Attached.