Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, define, in real-time, qualifier set combinations for work items. Thus, the contact center can create a dictionary of combinations of work item attributes that may be defined as work items are introduced to the system. The definition of the combinations allows for large qualifier sets without the large expenditure of resources to define all possible combinations of attributes for the contact center.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, mark a work item as interruptible. The work item may receive an interruptible marking when the work item is assigned to an adequately-matched agent rather than a well-matched. Processing of the work item by the adequately-matched agent may be interrupted if the well-matched agent becomes available prior to the work item being completed by the adequately-matched agent.

Abstract: A grid-based contact center and method of managing tasks within such a contact center is provided. Nodes within the contact center are adapted to perform multiple tasks associated with the contact center, including the management of task assignment within the contact center. Accordingly, a truly distributed contact center is provided whereby the building blocks of the contact center include the use of nodes with a conference call SRTP based Operations, Administration, and Management system.

Abstract: A contact center, methods, and mechanisms are provided for assigning work items to resources using attributes that conditionally expand a selectable pool of resources. The work item is first analyzed for any required, preferred, and conditional attributes and then queued in multiple resource attribute sets for work assignment. Work items are assigned to resources by considering a match between the analyzed attributes of a work item and a resource while observing alternative assignment conditions. When met, the alternative assignment conditions cause the work item to be queued in additional resource attribute sets thereby expanding the pool of selectable resources. Once assigned, the work item may be removed from queues not selected in the work assignment.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. In general, methods and mechanisms are disclosed that are configured to provide interactive voice response (IVR) functionality as one or more distributed resources capable of being assigned work items via a work assignment engine. Assigning work items may be performed via the work assignment engine running an IVR script. This IVR script may be configured to determine information associated with a work item such that an efficient work assignment can be made. In some cases, business rules and the information associated with the work item can affect the work assignment.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, simultaneously execute two different work assignment algorithms on the same work flow either in real-time as the work flow is received or in a simulation environment. The differences in the way that each work assignment algorithm handles the same work flow are compared and contrasted to help describe the differences in the work assignment algorithms.

Abstract: A contact center is provided with the ability to efficiently and effectively execute strategy rules by referencing and comparing schedules of contact center entities. The contact center includes a scheduling module configured to convert a textual calendar description of an entity into rich calendar information for that entity. The rich calendar information may include one or more values that define or describe an event type in the entity's textual calendar description and the one or more values may further be used in connection with making work item routing decisions in the contact center.

Abstract: A contact center is provided with the ability to efficiently and effectively execute strategy rules by referencing and comparing schedules of contact center entities. The contact center includes a scheduling module configured to convert a textual calendar description of an entity into a bitmap representation of the calendar for that entity. A bitmap comparison can then be performed by a work assignment engine in accordance with the strategy rules being executed by the work assignment engine.

Abstract: Work assignment methods and systems are provided that dynamically redistribute a percent allocation of contacts after an outage at a contact center. In general, a work assignment mechanism, upon receiving information that a contact center is removed from a system of available contact centers, dynamically recalculates a percentage allocation of each available contact center in the system. Subsequently received contacts are distributed among the available contact centers in accordance with the recalculated percentage allocation. When a contact center is returned to the system from an outage, the percentage allocation of contacts can be incrementally increased to the returning contact center.

Abstract: A high availability contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein enables snapshots of one instance of a work assignment engine to be transmitted to another server instance where they can be loaded and used as a backup to the original work assignment engine.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, determine an estimated wait time for contacts waiting to be serviced by resources of the contact center without relying on the traditional First-In-First-Out behavior of contact centers.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method for assessing the status of work waiting for service in a work queue or a work pool. Work items are placed in the work queue or work pool and have a service time goal. The work items in the work queue or work pool are scanned and a required queue position for each work item is calculated according to the amount of time remaining prior to the expiration of the service time goal and weighted advance time for servicing of work items in the work queue or pool. An array of counters has elements which correspond to required queue positions. Upon the calculation of the required queue position for a work item, the counter corresponding to the required queue position is incremented. When all of the work items are scanned, the array of counters is analyzed to predict a future state of the work queue or work pool.

Abstract: An event logging and analysis system and method are disclosed. The event logging and analysis system are described as being configured to analyze decisions made by a work assignment engine in a contact center, map the decisions to one or more events for a contact center entity, and storing information about the event in a buffer associated with the contact center entity, the information stored in the buffer describing how the new decision affected the contact center entity.

Abstract: An event logging and analysis system and method are disclosed. The event logging and analysis system are described as being configured to analyze decisions made by a work assignment engine in a contact center, map the decisions to one or more events for a contact center entity, and storing information about the event in a buffer associated with the contact center entity, the information stored in the buffer describing how the new decision affected the contact center entity.

Abstract: A microprocessor executable resource monitor operable to determine that a less skilled and/or qualified resource has been assigned to service a work item or is servicing the work item, wherein a more skilled and/or qualified resource exists but is not currently available to service the work item, monitor at least one of a level of service provided by the less qualified resource to the work item and/or a customer associated with the work item and an availability of the more skilled and/or qualified resource to service the work item, and, in response to the monitoring step and while the work item is being serviced, transfer the work item to the more skilled and/or qualified resource for servicing.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. In particular, the contact center may be configured to execute a work assignment engine and the contact center may also contain a health monitoring module that is configured to monitor events in the work assignment engine, compare the monitored events with a grammar defining expected events and an expected sequence of the expected events, and determine whether the work assignment engine is behaving appropriately based on the comparison.

Abstract: A microprocessor executable analytic module is provided that determines, for each of a plurality of selected contact center objects, a visually perceptible parameter based on contact center information and/or a performance parameter and provides a display incorporating the determined visually perceptible parameters, wherein the display comprises an array of pixels and/or cells, each pixel and/or cell corresponding to a respective contact center object and a plurality of the pixels and/or cells having different visually perceptible parameters.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, mark a work item as interruptible. The work item may receive an interruptible marking when the work item is assigned to an adequately-matched agent rather than a well-matched. Processing of the work item by the adequately-matched agent may be interrupted if the well-matched agent becomes available prior to the work item being completed by the adequately-matched agent.

Abstract: A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. Work assignment methods are disclosed that place tasks in bins by time intervals and are processed within a delta queue ring buffer. The delta queue ring buffer can assign the tasks by seconds and order tasks by interval for efficient handling, and then loop around to use the same bins. By using fixed intervals and a moving queue pointer, the scheduling delta queue solution allows for fast selection of the queue to insert and fast processing of the queues on timeout. The scheduling delta queue solution allows for the processing of at least, but not limited to one million tasks with only memory as a constraint.

Abstract: Systems and methods for providing adaptive estimated wait time predictions for work items are provided. More particularly, a processor-enabled module may select a best estimated wait time algorithm from among a plurality of estimated wait time algorithms that meets the accuracy and calculation resource conditions of a contact center based on rules. Furthermore, the conditions of a contact center may change at times and as a result the selection of which estimated wait time algorithm is considered best will adapt to suit the contact center change. In addition, the selected best estimated wait time prediction can be provided to client communication devices.