An Omnichannel department is a collection of rooms that can be tailored to represent diverse units in your organization. This feature is essential when there are incoming chats originating from various communication channels, requiring expertise from diverse departments or specialized knowledge experts.
Key features of Omnichannel departments
Directing conversations to a department: Visitors can choose the specific department they want to forward their inquiries to.
Assigning agents to a department: You can assign agents to specific departments, ensuring that conversations for that department are routed to the most appropriate knowledge experts.
To access the Department menu, go to Administration > Omnichannel > Departments. You can View, Create New, Edit, or Delete a department.
Create Omnichannel department
To create a new Omnichannel department, follow these steps:
Click the Create Department button at the top of the Departments page.
Enable the department to be able to use it. You can also leave it disabled if you do not want to use this department immediately.
Enter the following fields:
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Name* | Enter a name for the new department. |
Description | Enter a description for the department. |
Show on the registration page | Enable this option to allow your visitors to choose the department they want to chat with. The department is displayed to the visitor in the livechat widget. |
Email* | Enter an email address to forward conversations to during offline hours. |
Show on offline page | Enable this option to display the department during offline hours. |
Send this department's Livechat offline messages to a channel | Select a channel where offline messages should be directed. |
Max. number of simultaneous chats | Enter the maximum number of simultaneous chats that agents in this department can attend. |
How long to wait to consider visitor abandonment? | Enter the time (in seconds) to wait before considering visitor abandonment. |
Custom message when the room is automatically closed by visitor inactivity | Enter the custom message to be displayed when a room is automatically closed due to visitor abandonment. |
Waiting queue message | Enter the waiting queue message that is displayed to visitors when they are waiting to chat with an agent. |
List of departments allowed for forwarding (Optional) | Select the list of departments that can receive chats from this department. This list appears to the users if the Show on the registration page option is enabled for those departments. Note that agents must be assigned to the departments. |
Fallback department for forwarding | Select a fallback department for forwarding messages. |
Unit | Select business units to associate with the department. This field is useful when monitors need to specify a unit for the departments. Keep the following points in mind:
|
Request tag(s) before closing the conversation | Enable this option for your agents to set tags for the conversation for searching and tracking purposes. |
Allow department to receive forwarded inquiries even when there's no available agents | Enable this setting to ensure that inquiries are forwarded to a department even when no agents are available within that department. This feature is specifically effective with automatic assignment routing methods and does not apply to manual selection. |
Business Hour | The field is automatically populated according to the departments assigned to the business hours. |
Agents | Assign agents to the department. |
Click Save.
Workspaces on the community plan from version
6.0and above can only create one department. The multiple department feature is exclusively available to workspaces subscribed to any of Rocket.chat's premium plans.Workspaces with multiple departments on versions less than 6.0 can continue using their departments but can't create a new one until they're subscribed to any of Rocket.chat's premium plans.
The Omnichannel chat behavior varies based on how many departments are created in the workspace:
No departments: All Livechat agents receive incoming chats using a round-robin rule.
One department: All incoming chats are only assigned to agents in that department using a round-robin rule.
Multiple departments: The visitor must select the department to handle their chat during registration.
Archive Omnichannel department
When a department is no longer needed, but you don't want to delete it, you can archive it and unarchive it later if a need arises.
For community workspaces below version
6.0with multiple departments, archiving departments can be instrumental if you want to avoid upgrading your workspace plan. Instead of deleting a department when you no longer need it, you can archive it. When the need for that department arises, you can unarchive it. This gives community workspaces below version6.0the ability to retain the same number of departments they had before the upgrade.
To archive an Omnichannel department,
Click the kebab menu across the department you want to archive.
Then, select Archive. Navigate to the Archived tab, and you'll see the archived departments.
To unarchive an Omnichannel department,
From the list of archived departments, Click the kebab menu across the department you want to unarchive.
Then, select Unarchive. The department is added back to the list of active departments.
Edit Omnichannel department
To edit an Omnichannel department,
Click the kebab menu across the department. Then, select Edit.
A panel is displayed with all the current omnichannel department information you can modify. Update the department details and click Save.
Delete Omnichannel department
To delete an Omnichannel department,
Click the kebab menu across the department. Then, select Delete.
As a workspace administrator, navigate to Administration > Settings > Omnichannel and Enable department removal to allow deleting departments.
Rocket.Chat offers omnichannel departments to categorize conversations, enhancing collaboration and timely responses for improved customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.