Prevent assigning tickets when an analyst is away

[EWA]

Hello,

 

It doesn't seem that changing an analyst status to OnHoliday prevents assigning calls to that analyst. Is there a way to stop call being assigned to the analyst?

 

[Berto2002]

@EWA what do you have configured in your assignment node? These two options can over-ride:

And in your Availability statuses do you have "Present at Work" and "Is Working Time" unticked for the status you refer to?

My understanding is that auto assignments therefore will not reach these people but MANUAL ones will (i.e. one agent can assign to an unavailable agent); so we have an internal 'policy' to only ever assign the team and each team make their own Owner assignments.

I would like Hornbill to update this document (User Availability Status (hornbill.com)) to say what each of the options in the Manage Availability States UI does ("Present at Work", "Is Working Time", etc).

[EWA]

Thank you for the comprehensive answer. The manual assignment is the main concern as we have many new users. 

[Berto2002]

@EWA solution suggestion for you.

Create a simple form any of your analysts can access in which they can select the team they are in. We do this by asking them to select from a simplelist in the form which lists all the team names in Display and teamId in the Value.

Create a workflow behind it that simply takes them out of that team by using the customer of the ticket and the teamId from the simplelist. This will prevent people assigning to them manually in their absence but, according to my testing, does not remove their Ownership of any Requests already assigned to them.

Your form could have a return date they enter when they fill it in, which will suspend until that date and then initiate the reverse operation 'automatically' to put them back in the group it took them out of (and send a notification to confirm).

If not that, your form can have an add/remove toggle for them and when they return, they do the reverse operation manually. You might like to have stored the value of the team they are removed from in a user profile custom field so they get added back the same team and have no choice to add themselves to other teams.

Your form could have options for more than one team if that's how you are configured.

It can also set the users "Availability" status with the same workflow.

You then 'simply' embed the use of this form in your absence process along with them setting outlook, etc.

Alternative: ask for an enhancement to allow workflow to update the "allow assignment" parameter in the service desk area (Service Desk (hornbill.com)) or have that linked to the Availability Status updates.