Trait and Responsibility Definition

Traits allow Stratus Agent to distribute incoming tasks in the best manner. Agents are pooled by their defined traits and will be selected according to the Distribution Policy. When your Agents are part of multiple Organization Units it might be necessary to rate and weight traits differently. This is done by using and assigning multiple duty profiles to your agents.

A trait and its underlying attributes can describe virtually anything allowing you and Stratus Agent to categorize or compare agents against each other. Examples for traits are:

Product expertise
A language proficiency level
Various hard- or soft-skills required for the job, e.g. an ability to adapt to technical challenges or soft skills in handling customers particularly well

Responsibilities on the other hand are optional parameters for traits which can be enabled "per duty profile" to assign your Agents more or less responsibility - or a "role" in the team. This allows you escalate calls via Duty Profile levels e.g by starting the first level with highly qualified or more available agents first, escalating to their responsible leads when the call can't be handled on first level.

WebConfigurator - Distribution order setting

Defining Traits

The 'Traits' page is accessible on Settings -> Distribution section -> Traits:

Via the 'Traits' page you can define Agent traits that both services and agents should possess to be able to manage the incoming or outgoing the contact center conversations. It is possible to create a hierarchy of necessary traits using the buttons:

'+ Add Root'
'+ Add Child'

A child always inherits the attributes of its root. So you usually start by adding more generalized categories of traits (like Language) and define the levels. The child elements (e.g. specific languages) will

WebConfigurator - Traits Page

Delete Root Trait

To delete an existing root trait click 'Delete' button. If any service (see → Organization Units) is currently using the root trait or its child ones, the 'Delete' button is disabled.

Before you delete traits

Before removing a root trait on the 'Traits' page, check their use in your Distribution Policy
Removing a trait will also remove it from your Agents traits and according Duty Profiles

The Traits panel contains the following settings:

Control Name	Description
Name	Root trait name.
Organization Unit	Select Organization Unit to which the root trait will be assigned. All underlying Child-OU will also see and have access to this trait.
Weight	The weight has an influence on the distribution of a task if multiple agents are available and responsible. This value is multiplied with the integer value of the attribute or responsibility and it ensures prioritizing between the traits. If you use a value 0 the weighting will play no role in the order algorithm. The trait will simply be checked if present and required in your Distribution Policy
Responsibility Necessary	Set 'true' if you want to enable responsibilities for this trait category. Set 'false', if no responsibility is required for this trait category.
Attributes
Name	Attribute name: the level of the trait expression (any level name, e.g. Junior, Senior, Expert). Name is editable.
Add	Allows to add attribute to the list.
Up and Down buttons	Assign levels so attributes with higher weight / relevance are located at the bottom. Use the up-down-arrows to change the order as needed.
Delete	Allows to delete attribute from the list.
Responsibilities	_{Section becomes available if 'Responsibility Necessary' check box is enabled}
Name	Responsibility name: the level of the responsibility (any level name, e.g. Low, Medium, High). Name is editable.
Add	Allows to add responsibility to the list.
Up and Down buttons	Assign levels so higher responsibility is located at the bottom. Use the up-down-arrows to change the order as needed.
Delete	Remove responsibility from the list.

Child Traits

Child traits are added to the roots. A child trait can be a sub category or an assignable trait. Two flags allow controlling the assignment of the attribute and responsibility separately: 'Attribute Assignable' and 'Responsibility Assignable'.

Why have child traits? The option to control "Attribute Assignable" is useful to create invisible trait subcategories. These categories can also be assigned to be exclusive to specific Organization Units only, e.g. to allow specific Technical Skills to be defined for some OU only. Other uses cases would be to prepare traits for later use, but not set them "ready to use" just yet. Vice versa you can or keep "legacy" traits active in the system that should not be used anymore.

When does "Responsibility assignable" make sense? Responsibles for a trait can be useful if you want certain skills to tie to a "role" or specific person in your company. For example you can define an English language trait and a specific "Expert" for that trait to escalate calls to when tricky situations need to be resolved. This allows Stratus Agent to select from all Agents capable of speaking English, but when you assign one Agent as "Responsible" you can define only that specific agent (in his duty profile) to be part of the the last escalation level in your Distribution Policy.

WebConfigurator - Child Trait Details

Child Traits the following settings:

Control Name	Description
Name	Child trait name.
Organization Unit	Select Organization Unit to which the child trait will be assigned. Underlying OU will inherit the traits.
Attribute Assignable	Set 'true' to allow the assignment of the root trait attributes to an agent Set 'false' to disallow the assignment of the root trait attributes to an agent
Responsibility Assignable	Set 'true' if the responsibility level defined in the trait root has to be assigned to an agent Set 'false' if this trait requires no responsibility level