Configure intent-based routing (preview)

2025-06-21

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

Intent-based routing is an advanced approach that uses generative AI to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of routing customer interactions. By capturing customer intents from incoming conversations and mapping them to appropriate solutions, intent-based routing makes sure that customer queries are directed to the most suitable service representatives. This method allows for a more dynamic and responsive customer service experience, moving beyond traditional static routing rules. The system organizes intents into intent groups. The intent groups are then mapped to user groups with the necessary expertise to address the specific intents.

Important

This is a preview feature.
Preview features aren’t meant for production use and might have restricted functionality. These features are subject to supplemental terms of use, and are available before an official release so that customers can get early access and provide feedback.

Prerequisites

How intent-based routing works

The intent is generated in runtime and matched against one of the intents in intent library (as part of the discovery process).
- For cases, the system uses the case title, description, and case notes to determine the intent.
- For conversations, the agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio generates customer intent based on its interaction with the customer. The same intent is used for routing.
An intent group is identified corresponding to the identified intent.
The conversation is routed through the workstream and queue, and a user group is identified based on the manually curated intent group to user group mapping.
From the identified user group, a matching user is found based on the queue’s assignment strategy.

Enable intent-based routing

You can use generative AI to capture customer intents for incoming conversations and map them to solutions tailored to fulfill requests. The intent groups are manually mapped to one or more user groups.

After you enable intent-based routing, you can control at the line of business-level to route some conversations using intent, and some through the conventional unified routing method.

If you want to enable intent-based routing for a selective set of workstreams and queues, add lines of business. Otherwise, intent-based routing is enabled for the whole organization.

Create user groups

A user group can be a part of many intent groups and an intent group can be associated with many user groups.

Note

Capacity profiles-based assignments only are supported.

On the Customer Intent Agent (preview) page, select Manage for Create user groups.
Select New user group.
Enter a group name and description, and then select a line of business.
Do the following:
- On the Attributes tab:
  1. Select one or more languages in the Language list. You can expand the categories for the languages and select the applicable ones.
  2. Select the regions that are applicable.
    
    The selections indicate the languages and regions that the user group supports. During runtime, the user group attributes are implicitly matched based on the requirements for the work item. You don't have to write mapping rules for the user group attributes. You can also set the language and regions for each user in the user management page.
    
    The language and region are supported as new out-of-the-box entities.
- On the Users tab:
  1. Select Add, and in the list that appears, choose the users that you want to add.
  2. Select Add.
  3. Save the changes.

Map user groups with intent groups

You must map the user groups with intent groups so that for an incoming conversation, the intent and intent group are determined, and the appropriate user group is identified from the identified intent group.

If multiple conditions in the intent group to user groups mapping match the work item requirement, then the user group is selected based on the order in which they're listed on the User groups tab.

If none of the user groups match, the default user group configured for the intent group is selected. You can also set up a fallback user group for a line of business to which a conversation can be routed when no intents or intent groups are identified or fail to match.

On the Customer Intent Agent (preview) page, select Manage for Add user groups to intent groups.
Select an intent group, and on User groups tab, select Add group.
On Add user group, select a user group in the list.
Select the Default checkbox if you want to use the selected group when no other user group matches.
Optionally, define the conditions that must match for the user group to be considered. These conditions are evaluated with the language and region settings for the user group.

The mapping is channel agnostic. For example, if you want the same user group to serve cases and chats and you want to write mapping rules on case and chat attributes, you must write rules that address both the channels and use an OR operator between the two rule groups, as seen in the following screenshot. The mapping rules are optional, and by default, user groups serve all channels for which intent-based routing is configured.

Screenshot that shows the OR condition between channels.

Assign queues to lines of business

On the Customer Intent Agent (preview) page, select Manage for Assign queues to Lines of business.
On the Queues page, select the queue to edit and on the page that appears, select Edit for Line of business mapping.
On the pane that appears, select a line of business from the list and save and close. The selected line of business is displayed on the queue page.

Set up queues for record channel in intent-based routing

In intent-based routing, users aren't required to be part of queues. However, for record channel, a user assigned to the queue item must be a member of the queue, otherwise, the queue item update fails and assignment fails. Learn about how unified routing affects queue items. Therefore, we recommend that you update your record queues to be public for intent-based routing. If you prefer to use private queues for intent-based routing, make sure that users are added to the user groups and queues.

Routing type	Queue Type	Users Association
Intent-based routing	Public recommended approach	Add users to user groups only
Intent-based routing	Private	Add users to both user groups and queues
Traditional routing	Public	Add users to both user groups and queues
Traditional routing	Private Recommended approach	Add users to both user groups and queues

Assign workstream to lines of business

You must make sure that the workstreams and their associated queues belong to the same line of business so that the conversations are routed within the same line of business.

On the Customer Intent Agent (preview) page, select Manage for Assign workstream to Lines of business.
On the Workstreams page, select the workstream to edit, and on the page that appears, select Edit for Intent-based routing.
On the pane that appears, select a line of business from the list and save and close. The selected line of business is displayed on the workstream page.

Configure classification rules

Follow the steps in Configure work classification rulesets to set up classification rules to determine the requirements of the work items so that they can be routed to the correct intent group.

You need to write classification rules to enrich live work item with the language and region. The system does an implicit match of language and region attributes during the user group identification stage.

Configure the assignment method

Follow the steps in Assignment methods for queues to select an out-of-the-box assignment method. Even though users aren't required to be a part of the queues, you can continue to configure the assignment strategy for the queues. During runtime, after a queue is identified, the system determines the user group. Then, based on the assignment strategy configured in the queue, the conversation is assigned to a user from the user group.

Note

The check for user language and region is implicitly done for the out-of-the-box assignment method.

Customize the case form to display intent labels

During runtime, to indicate the intent and intent group that the case belongs to, you can customize the case form to display the labels on the Summary tab of the case.

In Power Apps, edit the Case for multisession form to add the intent and intent group fields. Learn more in Add or delete columns to a form.
Import the PopulateIntent script file as a webresource. The script helps fetch the current attributes for the intent and intent group fields and populates them in the UI.
Go to Form Properties to link the script and attach it to the OnLoad event.

Runtime behavior

When the service representative opens a case that’s routed through intent, the form displays the fields with the intent data.

What happens when you save and route or transfer a case

When a service representative uses Save & Route on a case to reroute it because the original intent was incorrect or for some other reason, they can select a new intent on the dialog that appears. Otherwise, the system determines the intent anew, and retriggers the routing.

Screenshot of save and route with intent UI.

When the representative uses Add to a queue to transfer the case to a queue, if the destination queue is intent enabled, the intent is determined again with line of business, intent group, and agent group. The work moves to the chosen destination queue and is assigned to a user from the identified user group. If the destination queue isn’t intent enabled, the case is assigned to the destination queue without any changes.

Fallback options

If the intent-based routing fails to identify a user group, the fallback options are as follows:

No line of business determined: Routing happens via regular unified routing flow.
Line of business determined, intent not determined: The conversation is assigned to the fallback user group configured at the line of business level.
Line of business and intent determined, intent group not determined: The conversation is assigned to the fallback user group configured at the line of business level.
Line of business, intent, and intent group determined, but no matching user group found: The conversation is assigned to the default user group configured at the intent group level.

Conversation diagnostics

You can view the conversation diagnostics in App Insights. Learn more in Configure conversation diagnostics (preview) and Understand conversation diagnostics (preview).

Considerations

The workstreams and representatives must be configured with capacity profiles only for assignment.
Overflow actions like transfer to queue are supported but assignment uses the identified user group to assign to a representative.
Routing to preferred representatives isn't supported.
Skill-based routing isn't supported.

Overview of Customer Intent Agent