SaaS SPEED User Guide

December 2022

Version 2.6

Proprietary Statement

This document contains proprietary information and data that is the exclusive property of OpsTel Services LLC., Phoenix, AZ. If you are an active OpsTel Services client, you do not need written consent to modify this document for your business needs. If you are not an active OpsTel Services LLC. client, no part of this document may be reproduced, transmitted, stored in a retrievable system, translated into any language, or otherwise used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the prior written consent of OpsTel Services LLC.

OpsTel Services

2550 W Union Hills Dr, Phoenix, AZ  85027

1. Introduction

Welcome to OpsTel SPEED, your new and enhanced Reskilling and Scheduling Management Tool.  The OpsTel SPEED tool gives Contact Center operations teams and individuals the ability to temporarily adjust a call taker’s phone skills configuration and automatically return the adjusted skills configuration back to its original state. Temporary and recurring changes can be implemented either immediately or on a configurable schedule basis to better accommodate your various business needs.  The OpsTel SPEED tool is designed to meet various business scenarios and can be customized so that you, and other users in your organization, can be more efficient when using the tool.

2. Overview

The main goal of this User Guide is to aid in the training of users on the OpsTel SPEED solution, and to ensure successful user adoption of the tool within your organization.  This document will cover the various operations that can be performed using the OpsTel SPEED tool, as well as provide common scenarios of how and when the tool can be leveraged to achieve different results.  OpsTel SPEED sits on top of the existing call routing environment and enhances your existing contact center unified communication platform; thus, the expectation is that a user reading this guide will have a basic understanding of contact center call routing platforms, how call takers are being assigned call types and/or skills, and how adjusting these assignments during unexpected call volume fluctuations or scheduling call takers “On Phone Time” will improve both the availability of call takers and customer satisfaction.

3. What is an Agent State as used in SPEED?

Before jumping into the SPEED product, there are some terms users of the tool need to understand.

3.1 As Trained State

The As Trained State agent configuration within SPEED is a base set of skills assignments on which an agent has been trained and about which the agent will be capable of communicating via relevant channels within the contact center.   The As Trained State skills configuration will now be centrally managed by the SPEED application, and you, the user, will be able to view and edit any agent’s permanent state within that agent’s overall profile definition.

3.2 Active/Inactive State

The Active/Inactive State agent configuration is introduced and enabled by SPEED’s Skill Action functionalities.  Within the Skill Action menu of SPEED, you can select to configure an “Immediate Change” or a “Schedule Change”.  These two functionalities provide you, the user, with expanded flexibility in effecting needed, but temporary, skill changes for one or more agents.  The different options here allow you to decide how and when to implement a temporary change to the communications platform for an agent, or group of agents, and their associated skills.  In contrast to As Trained  State changes, these Active/Inactive State changes will automatically revert at the predetermined dates and times you specify.

4. Log Into SPEED

A user must be authorized to use the solution, and an administrator of the tool must perform that authorization.  Once the administrator has created an account for a user, the user can log into the solution using the URL below

• https://speed-s1.opstel.cloud/login

The following steps should be taken to complete the login process.

1. Enter the client URL into your browser (Microsoft Edge, Chrome, or Firefox). The SPEED Login page will appear as below (Figure 1).

2. Enter your username (LAN ID) and Windows password, then click Login.

3. If successful, you will be presented with a dashboard (Figure 2).

Figure 1 - Login Page (design may vary)

Figure 2 - Dashboard Page

5. SPEED user types

The data you see will depend on the role that you have been assigned. See details below regarding different roles and user types.

Ciena Support Engineer User: Ciena call taker who can manage their schedule through the SPEED product.

Ciena Support Manager User: Manager User Agents who have the same capabilities as the user agent plus the ability to oversee.

User Agents have access to the following screens:

• Dashboard is as shown in Figure 2 above. Click the menu on the upper right corner to access My Settings

• My Settings

• Navigate to Skills > Skills Matrix

• Navigate to Skills > Skill Groups

• Navigate to Skills > Immediate Status

• Navigate to Skills > Create New Immediate Skill Action

• Navigate to Skills > Scheduled Status

• Navigate to Skills > Create New Schedule Skill Action

• Navigate to Skills > Skills Coverage

User Agents can set schedules for skills and queues that they are assigned in InContact. They do not have the ability  to add or delete their skills. 

Manager Users also have access to  the following additional screens:

• Navigate to Agents > Agents

• Navigate to Agents > Agent Groups

• Reports

Users can schedule multiple changes throughout the day and have them applied to his or her profile in InContact simultaneously.

6. Terms and Definitions

What is a Skill Action? And what are the types of Skill Actions?

Skill Action – A user-defined configuration in SPEED that stores a desired temporary change in skill assignments to one or more agents.  Skill Actions can be Immediate or Scheduled.

Immediate – An Immediate Skill Action is one that will be implemented right away, as soon as the user publishes it.  It consists of a single duration only and ends, or reverts, at the Auto-revert Time chosen by the user.  Immediates are generally short-lived, but can extend over multiple days as well.

Schedule – A Scheduled Skill Action is one that takes place at a time, or repeated times, in the future as defined by the user.  If a user creates a repeating schedule, the desired skill changes will take place on each of the selected Days of the Week, for the entire duration of the date range selected.  The user will also define a regular daily start time and daily end time when configuring a Scheduled Skill Action.

NOTE: When a Skill Action is scheduled, the permanent state skills are set to Active in InContact and when a Skill Action is reverted, the permanent state skills are set to Inactive in InContact.

Permanent State skills have a DEFAULT Skill Status attribute that will be Active/Inactive.

What are the two general phases of a Skill Action?

Implement - Activate temporary changes to an agent's active skill assignments in customer's skill management platform (I.e. downstream technology). Immediate Skill Actions occur one time only and implement as soon as the user publishes the skill action. Scheduled Skill Actions will implement at the scheduled "Daily Start Time' and will implement again, each selected weekday, for the duration of the entire schedule. 

Revert - Reverse temporary changes to an agent's active skill assignments in customer's skill management platform (I.e. downstream technology).  Immediate Skill Actions are reverted once and the skill action is complete.  Scheduled Skill Actions will revert each day for the duration of the entire schedule, and Schedules are only "complete" after the final session that starts on the Last Implement Date.

 What do different Status Pills mean on the Immediate and Scheduled Status pages?

What other Actions can a User take regarding Skill Actions?

Revert - To reverse a skill action's temporary skill assignments early, before the configured revert time, a user may click the large red "Revert" button on the Skill Action page of an active, currently implemented skill action. Alternatively, a user may accomplish the same action by locating the desired skill action on either the Immediate or Schedule Status Page, then use the 3-dot action menu on the right-hand side and select "Revert".

Delete - Cancel all future instances of a Schedule.   Will remove the schedule from list of schedules and permanently halt all future activity.  To delete a schedule, it cannot be currently active at the time.  In such a case, the user will need to wait until the schedule normally reverts for the day, or manually revert it early.  Once the schedule is no longer active at that moment, user can delete the schedule.  Note: Schedules can be deleted before implementation time, but must be deleted at least 10 minutes before the scheduled daily start time.

7. Configure Agent Groups (for Managers only)

The following process enables a manager user to define and save a collection of Agents as a particular group that can then be leveraged throughout the SPEED product.  

Example: A collection of support engineers that report to a team manager. 

Using Agent Groups provides a quick, one-step shortcut when selecting multiple commonly-used agents. Any Agent Group created by a user will be immediately available for all other users to take advantage of, as well.

These agent group definitions exist solely within SPEED and are not linked to any other application. They can be created or deleted at your convenience without affecting any other feature or previously created skill change (E.g. you could create an Agent Group, then create a Temporary Skill Action based on that group, then later you could remove that Agent Group, if desired, and the Temporary Skill Action you’d created would be unaffected)

7.1 Procedures

1. Locate and click Agents on the left-hand sidebar menu. A submenu will appear, then click Agent Groups.

2. The Agent Groups page will appear showing the user a list of available agent groups, if any have already been created. To create a new agent group, click Create New Agent Group.

3. Create Agent Group page will appear (Figure 6).  Designate a name for your new group.  You should create a name that will help you identify the group for future usage.  Since other users might potentially benefit by using the same group, you may want to name it accordingly.

4. From the right-hand action bar, Click and Drag agents over to the gray Agents box, as many as needed. Note: you may also leverage an existing Agent Group (from the right-hand action bar) to populate your new Agent Group, if you need some or all its agents.

5. Click Publish Agent Group when complete.

8. Configure Skill Groups (for Managers only)

Skill Groups are very similar to Agent Groups, however, this process enables a user to define and save a collection of skills as a particular group that can then be leveraged throughout the SPEED product.  Using Skill Groups provides a quick, one-step shortcut when selecting multiple commonly-used skills. Any Skill Group created by a user will be immediately available for all other users to take advantage of as well. It can be used through the SPEED product for a quick way to leverage the same set of skills.

Just as with Agent Groups, these skill group definitions exist solely within SPEED and are not linked to any other application. They can be created or deleted at your convenience without affecting any other feature or previously created skill change (E.g. you could create a Skill Group, then create a Temporary Skill Action based on that group, then later you could remove that Skill Group, if desired, and the Temporary Skill Action you’d created would be unaffected).

8.1 Procedures

1. Locate and click Skills on the left-hand sidebar menu. A submenu will appear, then click Skill Groups.

2. The Skill Groups page will appear showing the user a list of available skill groups, if any have already been created. To create a new skill group, click Create New Skill Group.

3. Create Skill Group page will appear.  Designate a name to call your new group.  You should create a name that will help you identify the group for future usage.  Since other users might potentially benefit by using the same group, you may want to name it accordingly.

4. From the right-hand action bar, Click and Drag skills over to the gray Skills box, as many as needed. Note: you may also leverage an existing Skill Group (from the right-hand action bar) to populate your new Skill Group, if you need some or all its skills.

5. Click Publish Skill Group when complete.

9. Make an Immediate Change

The process to create an Immediate Change is a simple procedure and can be leveraged for any number of needs a contact center operations team may experience.  Performing this action is even easier when you also leverage the Skill Group and/or Agent Group definitions referred to above.  The main purpose of this process is to allow  you to implement a temporary skills change for one or more agents immediately—right now—and to let you specify when that change should revert back later, at the designated time of your choosing.

9.1 Procedure

1. Locate Skills on the left-hand sidebar menu and click Immediate Skill Action. 

2. The Create New Immediate Skill Action page will appear.

        3. Now you may configure an immediate change.

1. Specify a title/name for your change.

2. Click and Drag Agents and Skills from the right action menu.

3. If you select more than one agent then it will limit the skills to the Common Skills that all the selected agents are assigned.

4. Select a Time in which you would like the event to Revert.

5. Select a Date in which you would like the event to Revert.

6. Click Publish Active Immediate Skill Action to submit and run the Skill Action.

3. You may view the status of the Skill Action on the Immediate Status Page

This takes you to the Immediate Status page as shown below.

10. Make a Scheduled Change

This is an automated way to set up recurring, or scheduled-in-advance, skill changes that will implement and rollback on the days and times the user configures within SPEED.  Similar to an immediate change, this process can also leverage the Agent Group or Skill Group definitions.

10.1 Procedures

1. Locate Skills on the left-hand sidebar menu and click Scheduled kill Action. 

2. The Create New Schedule Skill Action page will appear. 

3. As you can do with most of the user interface layers within SPEED, click and drag Agents and Skills from the right action menu.

4. If you select more than one agent then it will limit the skills to the Common Skills that all the selected agents are assigned.

5. To Schedule this event, you must also decide if it's a Repeating event or Single Day event.

6. Next designate a start (First Implement) date and end (Last Implement) date, which establishes the period of time the schedule will run.  A popup calendar widget will be presented to the user to choose from.

7. Then, specify which days of the week the temporary changes should take place.

8. Also, specify the start (Auto-Run) and end (Auto-Revert) times the temporary changes should take place, on those days. A popup clock widget will be presented to the user to choose from.

9. Click Publish to submit and run the Skill Action.

10. You may view the status of the Skill Action on the Scheduled Status Page.

This takes you to the Scheduled Status page as shown below.

11. Add or Remove a Permanent Skill

As an agent expands their skillset, or when skills need to be removed from his or her permanent state configuration, this process will enable a user to take action from one place. When Managers add skills to a User Agent, they can change the value of their proficiency levels. They can also modify proficiency levels for existing users.

11.1 Procedures

1. Locate and click Agents on the left-hand sidebar menu. A submenu will appear, then click Agents.

2. The Agents page will appear showing the user a list of agents managed within SPEED. To view or edit an agent’s permanent skill state, click 3-dot Action Menu at the end of the row, then click Edit.

3. Drag permanent skills to add or remove from the agent’s list. Change proficiency levels for skills here as needed.

4. Click Update Agent when complete.

11.2 Caveats

11.2.1 Active Temporary Change in Place

When a SPEED user makes changes to an agent’s Permanent State configuration in SPEED, but a Temporary Change is already currently active for the agent profile, the SPEED product will save the new Permanent State within SPEED but will wait until the Temporary Change is set to expire before it applies the adjustment to the unified communication platform. It will not allow updates to skills that are currently being used in an Active Skill Action so the user will need to perform the update after the Skill Action has reverted.

11.2.2 No Active Temporary Change in Place

When a SPEED user makes changes to an agent’s Permanent State configuration in SPEED,  and no Temporary Changes are already active for the agent profile, the SPEED product will save the permanent state and immediately apply the adjustment to the unified communication platform.

12. Revert a Temporary Change Now

There are situations where a scheduled or immediate change needs to be reverted early. 

1. Locate and click Skills > Scheduled Status or click Skills > Immediate Status to navigate to the Scheduled Status list or Immediate Status pages respectively. (As outlined in earlier sections above)

2. The user can revert any active Skill Action from the list page using the Revert Schedule Now option from the Action Menu as shown below.

The user can also revert any active Skill Action by drilling down into the Skill Action and using the red Revert Immediate/Scheduled Skill Action button shown below.

13. Pause a Scheduled Change

There are also situations where a scheduled skill action may need to be paused for a period of time. You can pause a Skill Action using the Action Menu from the list of Scheduled Skill Actions. 

That navigates to the Pause a Scheduled Action Page

1. Populate the Notes field with details about the pause action

2. Using the date picker, choose the date that the Pause will begin.

3. Using the date picker, choose the date that the Pause will end.

.

4. Submit the Pause using the Publish Pause button. The Publish Pause button will be greyed out after the Pause has been submitted.

Note: You can only pause a skill action that is currently in Reverted/Queued or Reverted/Queued(M) status.

14. Skills Matrix

The Skill Matrix is an overview/snapshot of skills for agents.

Click on Skills tab in the left hand side menu bar and click on Skills Matrix

The Skills Matrix displays skills for agents and indicates whether the skills are permanent (P) or Temporary (T). Click on any agent to display their sorted skills.

Agents that are part of an active Skill Action are highlighted in yellow. Use the search bar to find agents easily and the refresh button to reload the data. Also use the Export button to download the data from the Skills Matrix.

15. Skills Coverage

The Skills Coverage screen is a quick overview/snapshot of the schedules and skills for agents. All times are displayed according to the user’s local time zones. The schedules can be viewed by timelines of Day, Week or Month and data is available for a month prior and a month after the current month. For example, if the current month is September the data will be available for August and October.

The displayed month can be changed using the dropdown options on the upper left corner of the screen and filters can be changed for agents and skills using the dropdown options on the upper right corner of the screen.

Skills can be collapsed and expanded to display agents assigned to the skill by clicking on the dropdown options beside the name of the skill(s).

16. Timeout behavior

The application will timeout after a preset period of inactivity. Contact your Administrator to find out the settings for your organization. Before the user is logged off, they will be presented with the option to log out or to continue the session. They will automatically be logged out if there is no response from the user within the time specified in the message.

17. Reports

Click Reports in the left hand side menu bar to display the Reports screen. The following reports are available in CSV, Excel or PDF formats:

• Skill Agent Audit Trail

• User Activity

The Skill Action Audit Trail report allows the user to generate a report of all Skill Actions that have been run for the selected agent for the specified time period.

The User Activity report allows the user to generate a report of all activities in Speed for the selected users.

Drag agent(s) to the Agents box and select the date range and report format. Click the Run button to download the report.

18. Message Notifications

Email notifications are sent out when a Skill Action is implemented, reverted, paused or if there is a conflict with another Skill Action.

Email notifications that are sent out when a Skill Action is implemented will look similar to the example below:

Email notifications that are sent out when a Skill Action is reverted will look similar to the example below:

Email notifications that are sent out when a Skill Action is set to be paused will look similar to the example below:

Email notifications that are sent out when a Skill Action is paused will look similar to the example below:

Email notifications are also sent out when there is a conflict with another Skill Action. A Skill Action conflict happens when the user attempts to create a Skill Action for the same agent and same skill at a time that overlaps with an already existing Skill Action. The user is presented with an error in the application and is sent an email notification that is similar to the example below:

19. Profile State Review

Please stay tuned for further details

20. Appendices

Please stay tuned for additional details in reference to the SPEED implementation

21. Browser Limitations

Given the modern application design of SPEED, the solution is a web application that runs within a browser.  Currently supporting Microsoft Edge, Chrome, or Firefox.

Microsoft Internet Explorer is no longer supported.

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