Omnichannel Session Handling (OSH) allows agents to work concurrently on multiple contact sessions that may originate from different channels without having to manually switch channels. It also allows agents to elevate
In an Omnichannel Session Handling environment, the ability to switch a contact from one channel to another in the same session to better serve the contact's needs. For example, elevating a chat contact to a voice call. channels during an interaction when an issue is better resolved over a different medium. The resulting interaction is considered the same session as the interaction in the initial channel. OSH currently has the following limitations:
- Not supported in FedRAMP environments.
- Available for use with MAX and Fully Integrated Lightning Agent for Salesforce v14.0 and above. OSH is is only supported with Oracle Agent voice and work items. OSH is not currently supported for Oracle Agent chat and email, or any other Agent application.
- You cannot use OSH and Personal Connection (PC) priority blending in the same business unit. If you have PC blending enabled on any skills, you must disable it in those skills before you can have OSH enabled. As a result, agents in an OSH environment can use only one PC skill at a time.
- Advanced Chat v1 is not supported. Advanced Chat v2 is supported in MAX (chat only, no co-browse).
Switching from single-channel session handling to OSH drastically changes the user experience for your agents. Plan to train your agents to handle the additional cognitive load that accompanies OSH and to understand the differences in the agent application user interface when OSH is enabled. This may include the necessity to manually accept incoming contacts.
Configuration Options
OSH is not enabled on a business unit by default. You must contact your NICE CXone account representative to enable it for you. When you turn it on, it is available for all teams and agents. You can ask your account manager to also enable granular options, which allows you to assign specific teams and users to use OSH and others to use single-channel handling.
When you enable granular settings, you can configure the granular settings at the team level and the user level. User settings override team settings. Some settings you set in a single-channel handling environment no longer apply, such as the email skill Interruptible field and the team and user Auto-Parked Emails setting. As you configure OSH, you have two options for delivery to agents. Automatic delivery causes agents to receive a single voice interaction along with as many chat, email, or work item contacts as are available in the queue as the concurrent interactions settings allow. The delivery pace is about 15 seconds. There is no load balancing, so if the agent rejects a contact and more contacts are waiting in the queue, the agent continues to receive more contact requests until the queue is empty or the agent accepts enough contacts to meet the maximum concurrent interaction threshold. The other delivery option allows agents to request contacts. A voice contact and one chat, email, or work item contact are automatically delivered to the agent. The agent can click a button to request another chat, email, or work item contact. The agent cannot choose which contact type will be delivered; it is based on priority and acceleration settings.
Contact Refusal
Agents enter a refused state under different circumstances with OSH than they do with single-channel session handling.
- When an agent in a working state rejects an additional digital interaction, the agent is not placed in a refused state. It doesn't matter if the agent manually rejects the contact or allows it to time out; the result is the same. The contact reenters the queue. If you configured automatic delivery, the agent continues to receive offers for additional contacts until either the agent accepts enough contacts to meet the maximum allowed concurrently or enters an unavailable state.
- When an agent in an available state rejects a contact of any type, the agent enters a refused state.
- If an agent is pinned up, the agent cannot reject the contact.
OSH Reporting
To handle reporting in an OSH environment, agent focus is logged. Agent focus on chat, email, SMS, and work items depend on where the agent's cursor is placed or on which element of the agent application interface is active. Because an agent can see multiple contacts simultaneously, it is possible for an agent to read two different contacts at once; however, because the agent can only take action on the active contact, time is only logged to the active contact. OSH adds the following metrics to reports: Concurrent Time, Agent Time, Productivity Rate, Elevations, Elevated, and Parent ContactID.