Creating an Agent Group
[This is preliminary documentation and is subject to change. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]
When you create an agent group, you select the agents that are assigned to the group and specify additional group settings, such as the routing method and whether an agent can sign in to and out of the group. An agent who can sign in and out is called a formal agent. An agent who does not sign in or out is called an informal agent. Informal agents are treated as signed in to the agent group.
To create an agent group
Log on as a member of the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group to a computer where the Office Communications Server administrative tools have been installed.
Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Do one of the following:
If you have a Standard Edition server, right-click the name of the pool where you want to create an agent group, point to Properties, point to Applications, and then click Response Group Service Properties.
If you have an Enterprise Edition server, expand the pool, click the Server Applications folder, right-click the Response Group Service, and then click Properties.
In the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Response Group Administration snap-in, expand the pool node, right-click Groups, and then click New group.
In the Group Properties dialog box, click the General tab. In the Name box, type a name for the group.
Click the Policies tab.
Under Agent Participation Policy, select the sign in behavior for the group:
- To specify that agents in the group cannot sign in and out of the group, click Informal.
- To specify that agents in the group can sign in and out of the group, click Formal. Agents sign in and out using a Office Communicator custom tab. For more information on the custom tab, see Configuring the Response Group Tab.
- To specify that calls cannot be routed to this agent group, click Not active.
Under Routing method, select how calls are routed to agents in the group:
- To offer a new call first to the agent whose phone has been idle the longest, click Longest idle.
- To simultaneously offer a new call to all available agents, click Parallel. The call is sent to the first agent who accepts it.
- To offer a new call to each agent in turn, click Round robin.
- To always offer a new call to the agents in the order in which they are listed on the Agents tab, click Serial.
In the Agent Alert Time box, specify how long to ring an agent before offering the call to the next available agent. The default is 20 seconds.
On the Agents tab, specify how you want to create your agents list:
To use a Microsoft® Exchange Server distribution list, click Use an existing email Distribution List, and then enter the e-mail address of the distribution list (for example, NetworkSupport@contoso.com).
Note
Using an e-mail distribution list is subject to the following constraints:
- You cannot select multiple distribution lists for the agent group. Each group supports only a single distribution list.
- If the distribution list contains one or more distribution lists, members of the nested distribution lists are not added to the agent list.
- If serial and round robin routing are selected, the system chooses the agent order. It does not use the order that the agents are listed in the Agents tab.
- You cannot select multiple distribution lists for the agent group. Each group supports only a single distribution list.
To use a custom list of agents, click Define a custom group of agents. In the Agents box, select one or more agents from the list, and then click Add.
.gif)
If the group is using either round robin or serial routing, on the Agents tab, arrange the agents in the order that you want them to be offered calls. To change the order of the agents in the list, in the Agents assigned box, click an agent, and then click the Move Up or Move Down button.
Click OK.
See Also
Concepts
Creating an Agent
Creating a Queue
Other Resources
Modifying Group Settings
Managing the Response Group Service