Assigning Agent IDs

[apezzi]

I have taken over the administration of our call center and would like to clean it up a bit. The previous administrator never deleted an Agent ID when an employee left. Instead, he would replace the name field with "available" and then swap that out when he needed to add a new agent...at least in theory (it's a mess!). Going forward, I would like to remove the Agent ID when an employee leaves.

I have two questions:

Is this best practice, or am I missing something?

Are there specific Agent ID ranges I should use? In other words, do the ID numbers themselves get defined in the system configuration and/or are there certain ranges I should avoid. If so, how can I obtain that information.

I apologize in advance if these are silly questions. I am completely new to this! I have poured over manuals...I can find lots on the stations but not much on agent administration.

 

[fataldata]

Is this best practice, or am I missing something?

Meh! you could do either as long as you are not reaching a capacity limit on ID's there is nothing wrong with having ID's ready to go and presumably already configured for the appropriate call center.

Are there specific Agent ID ranges I should use?

No, they just need to be valid extensions in your dial plan I believe. Maybe avoid ranges that start with a 9 or for that matter any other feature code like AAR.

 

[montyzummer]

Agree with the answers above from fataldata , one thing I always do is create default template stations and agents for all the different departments containing all the relevant info.

Then it is as easy as "typing duplicate agent XXXX" XXXX= template , then you can easily populate upto 16 agents with the same settings as the template for that dept.

The above is really only for new starters , I would recommend actively maintaining your other agents with correct names etc.

APSS (SME)
ACSS (SME)
ACIS (UC)

 

[apezzi]

The Agent ID needs to follow the dial plan? I thought only the Stations/Extensions did. eeech...so much to learn!

@montyzummer - I plan to use the dup command. This is why I don't see a need to keep old Agents ID's active. If you only change the Name field then the Agent ID says active. This means anyone can continue to use that id to log in.

Thanks for the quick responses!

 

[montyzummer]

you could change the password or add one to the agent.

APSS (SME)
ACSS (SME)
ACIS (UC)

 

[Stinney]

At a previous company we would do this becuase the company allowed agents to give out their agent ID to callers. We wanted to make sure the agent ID was out of service for at least 6 months before reissuing it. So we would rename them Available mm/dd/yy so we would know when it could be put back in service.

Also for CMS, they didn't want the agent ID to go back in service too soon after termination of the agent as well. If you have an agent leave 1/2 way through a month and assign the number to a new agent that started the next week after the old one left, the 2 agent's data is going to blend for the month and you won't have clean data for the new agent until the following month is up.

- Stinney

I love learning and passing on knowledge. "Because knowing is half the battle".... GI JOOOOOE!

 

[apezzi]

Thanks Stinney...that makes some sense.

I guess I was thinking security. Our users don't use passwords. It would be great if we could disable an ID.

 

[Stinney]

You could create a dummy skill and make sure to assign it to unused agent IDs. That way someone can't accidentally log into an active queue.

- Stinney

I love learning and passing on knowledge. "Because knowing is half the battle".... GI JOOOOOE!