Monitoring Hunt Group Queues (3300ICP)

[thegav]

Hi All,

Just a quick query (3300ICP R9 w/ 5340's). Is there anyway of monitoring/displaying how many people are in a Hunt Group queue, without using ACD?

The scenario is that I have programmed HG2000, and if it's busy the auto-attendant asks if the caller wants to hold or take a message. If they want to hold, the call is transferred to HG2001 (aka 'The Queue') which has the same members, just different camp-on settings, allowing for infinite camp-on. It has a RAD which basically says "We'll be with you shortly".

Is there anyway of providing my staff with a way to see how many people are camped-on to that hunt group (HG2001)? The first member doesn't even get campon tone as documented, so they have no idea if anyone is in the queue, let alone how many are in there. If not supported by default, maybe custom programming with the API/HTML toolkit will be possible?

I want to avoid ACD where possible, as it is just extra things for the staff to remember with logins/logouts and agent id's, etc.

Thanks heaps!

 

[Mitelpassion]

don't think you will see camped on qty's. haven't had a request like this before.
if you went acd though you could see this on the phone by pressing a button.

One of the new software releases will have something called ACD Express or ACD light. I'm not sure what version, could be MCD 4, aka release 10. This might help however you're concerned about complicating thing by getting the people to log in and out of phones.

I think you may have look at complicating things a little more

 

[thegav]

haha ok I guess I'll just have to complicate things. Trust me, if at any time they see "Logged Out" on their phones, they will freak out. Pressing the login button I can teach them, remembering their agent ID, well, might not do so well. Maybe I can do something with MiTAI to have queues displayed on the computer screens through a small program, or on the 5340's. Maybe just make things easy for myself and force ACD onto them!

I'm just about to get my MCD 4.0 upgrade so I'll check out Express ACD (main reason I want it, along with PRG's). Hopefully that will be my silver bullet to hunt group perfection.

Thanks a bunch, appreciate the input!

 

[thegav]

Damn, the 'gotcha' is that you can't use Mobile Extension with ACD sets. ACD sets must be Single-line on the prime. Agents using Mobile Extension have Key System on the prime.
This definitely rules out ACD for me. If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears!! Maybe I've missed something.
Thanks.

 

[slapin]

I can make a custom application for it. Let me know if you need more details.

 

[kwbMitel]

Outside of ACD there is nothing built in that will provide queue status.

Your gotcha with mobile extension might be overcome by associating ME with a different EXT and putting a key appearance on the agents phone as well as the monitor. This might require changing the prime of the Agent phone. The New extension would not be live and I'm unsure how this might affect ME. Just thinking out loud.

Another thought is that with MCD 4, and with ACD express, there is no licensing applied to the phone to designate it as an ACD set. This being the case, the key line programming should now be possible.



*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[Canuckvoip]

Hi thegav,
Sounds harsh but...
You have an active call centre.
You cannot manage what you cannot measure.
Implement ACD and tell the agents to "suck it up".
That's step 1.
Step 2 is to get either Prairiefyre or Taske (I like PF).
Why you need this:
You need the ability to do 2 things. They are "real time monitoring". And you need historical reports.
You need to understand how Harry and Sally compare to each other statistically as agents (historical).
You also need to understand (as a supervisor/manager) what is going on in your call centre right now/live (real time).

It is one thing to be able to see what hapenned last week/month, and quite another to see problems hapenning now.
Last week/month the reports might look bad and there are excuses upon excuses.
Real time lets the supervisor/manager see calls waiting etc and fix the problem now.
If you pay attention to real time/now, the historical reports end up looking good!

Anyway, do the ACD. You will end up better off after the initial agent backlash my friend.

Dave



You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[thegav]

Thanks for all the suggestion guys.

Canuckvoip: If we had an active call center - I would be deaf to the complaints of agents! They would do as I tell them, so no issue there! What we have is a few guys (myself included) taking calls, and we are just working out the best strike between simplicity and functionality.

ICD systems are definitely out of our price range, but I hear what you are saying. I would LOVE to have Prairiefyre even in this environment.

Happy to go with ACD though if that's our best bet. It's not really that much more complicated, but if people don't remember the ACD 'rules', we might miss calls, which would be bad and will cause freakouts amongst my colleagues. It's not a traditional call center, just a small office with a few people, who are constantly moving around, hence the ME. It's just that there are twice as many lines as there are people taking calls, so we need to know when there is someone in the queue.

Thanks again all.

 

[Canuckvoip]

Hey thegav,
Sorry if I came on a little strong.

Gotta say though that one of your statements says it all.
ACD is purposely built for customers that have twice as many lines as agents.
A little bit of due diligence with login/out and make busy during the day will work.
Each agent can have a button that when pressed will show how many calls are in queue.
You can have callers dial out to a vmail box if they want to (for less important calls) while listening to a RAD.

Go for it!

Dave

You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[thegav]

Yeah I'm definitely going to do it, just need to work out what I'm going to do about ME. Might try kwbMitel's suggestion and see how I go. Otherwise I think ACD will take priority over ME. Overflow to mobiles should be fine.

Cheers!

 

[thegav]

Well, so far, I have upgraded to MCD 4.0 - It seems that only hot desk users can becmoe ACD Express agents, and all the normal rules of ACD apply, just with lower licensing limits and functionality. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Problem with ME and ACD is that ME will not activate twinning if the desktop monitor does not have a key appearance to the associated extension, and if it does, you can not enable any kind of ACD (Traditional, Hot Desk, HotDesk Express).

Might have to check Personal Ring Groups to see if this can replace ME, or ditch ME in favour of ACD, unfortunately.

 

[Mitelpassion]

for the mobile extension part:

I think if you can make the desktop monitor line ring then you should be ok. no need for key system. maybe use a call forward or reroute from the ACD set.

I've done something similar for a client where the agents go home and still take calls - but there was manual programming required. Basically bypassed ACD and pushed calls into a hg. HG contained the desktop monitors of the agent's phones.

 

[thegav]

Yeah that's what I thought, but the twinning won't initialise unless there is a key appearance for the twinned extension on the monitor. When I try to start the twinning for a specific extension it just says 'FAILURE' on the MAS until I set the appearance.

I thought maybe a DSS key might do it, but it still says 'FAILURE-Reconnecting' until I put a key appearance to the specific extension on the monitor. I'm going to have more of a play with it, and if I make any interesting discoveries, I will post an update for others in the same scenario.

Cheers.