Departments

To optimize the process of distributing chats among agents and bots, there is an option to create departments. Departments are a mechanism for grouping agents, available in the Control Panel. For effective use of this mechanism, it is recommended to create multiple locations and set a default department for each of them. Depending on which location the visitor contacts, the inquiry will go to that department.

Department Identifiers

Two identifiers are provided for departments:

Numeric Identifier (department_id) - an integer that is automatically assigned to a department upon creation and is not displayed anywhere in the interface.

Alphabetic Identifier (department_key) is a string and is automatically assigned to a department upon creation. It is used for generating a button when creating a separate location for the department, can be used when selecting a button by the visitor, and in some APIs. The identifier will be formed from the department name (e.g., for the Technical department, the identifier will be technical_department.

Creating and Editing a Department

Only staff members with administrator rights can create and edit departments.

In the Control Panel menu, under the Team section, select the Departments block.

departments

On this page, the administrator registers departments - groups of agents and supervisors, usually combined by product segments or areas of resolved issues.
To register a new department, click the Create New Department button in the upper right corner of the page.
To change the settings of one of the created departments, select it from the list and click the Edit button next to its name.
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General

Fill in the required field Department Name. After saving the department, an alphabetic identifier for the department will be formed based on its name. The Department Name can be changed at any time in the future, and the alphabetic identifier will remain unchanged regardless of renaming.

Note that the Department Name is localized to other languages. When switching the interface to another language, you will need to enter the name for that language.

Templates

Enter response templates that will be offered to all staff members of this department. In Chat Platform terminology, this level of templates is called team templates. For more information about the template system in Chat Platform, see the material about templates.

Timeouts

If necessary, you can set timeouts for any department that are different from those set for all chats in General Settings.

Chat Routing to Department Depending on Location

You can configure the default department to which users will be directed, depending on the location of the Chat Platform button on your website. As a result, users from different pages of the site will be directed to different groups of agents or bots. To select the default department for the required location:

In the side menu of the Control Panel, select the Buttons and Locations section.
In the Location section, select the required button location.
In the Chat button is for department section, select the department to which users will be directed by default through this location.
Click Save.

In addition, each location can be connected to communication channels from those added and configured in General Settings.

Department Selection by Visitor

Users who submit requests through communication channels are offered to choose a department for their request at the beginning of the dialogue. The list of departments offered to the visitor can also be configured. For this reason, it is recommended to give departments understandable names so that visitors can associate their question with the department. If you want the user to choose a department for their request each time they contact through the button:

In the side menu of the Control Panel, select the Buttons and Locations section.
Navigate to the Chat section. In the Visitor should choose department before chat parameter, choose the option Mandatory.

Please note that the status of the agent call button now depends on the presence of agents in the Online status in the department you have selected for the current location.

If you want users in chats from Communication Channels to also choose a department for their requests, you need to set the appropriate settings for each channel separately. You can configure it so that users from certain channels choose a department from one list of departments, visitors from another channel choose from another list, and for some channels, department selection is not mandatory. Settings are defined when creating a channel, but you can also change them later. To do this, you need to select General Settings in the side menu, then the Communication Channels item, and in the Actions column of the desired channel, click on the edit icon. In the opened channel editing window, set the necessary parameters in the Department Selection section.

Department Monitoring

Just like monitoring agent performance, various statistics can be collected on department performance. Basic indicators are displayed on the Dashboard, including when using its extended version. You can track the number of online dialogues at any given moment, the number of chats handled by each department, see the time that requests spend in the department's overall queue, and so on.

Chat Redirection to a Department

For more information about chat redirection, you can refer to this article.