eDesk's Round Robin feature automatically assigns tickets to your Support Agents, sharing the workload across the team and maximizing efficiency.

Before you start

 
  • You’ll need an Admin login to eDesk. If you don’t have an Admin login, you can request one from an Admin user within your business.
 

01 What is Round Robin?

Round robin is a way of automatically assigning incoming tickets to each of your Support Agents in turn.

Example: if you have a team of 3 support agents and enable round robin in a message rule, then when messages come in that trigger the rule, eDesk will assign the first message to the first agent, the second message to the second agent, the third message to the third agent, the fourth message to the first agent and so on.

  • Round robin is enabled in Message Rules (see here). This means that you can apply round robin to all incoming tickets or only to tickets that meet the conditions in the rule, e.g. ticket type is Cancellation, or marketplace is Amazon.
  • Round robin does not assign tickets to a user if the ticket arrives outside their working hours or during vacation time. Working hours are set for every user in Settings → My Account → Mailbox tab → Working Hours. Vacation time is set for every user in Settings → My Account → Mailbox tab → Don't assign on these dates. If a user does not have working hours set or a vacation time, round robin will potentially assign them a ticket whenever the ticket arrives.
  • When round robin assigns a ticket to a Support Agent, it is displayed in My Tickets in their Mailbox.
  • If configured, round robin will always assign an owner to a ticket that meets the criteria in the Message Rule, even if the rule is bound to an autoresponder. It will do the same regardless of any date & time conditions that might be set up in the rule-only template. To learn more about rule-only templates, see here.  
Note: You can also use round robin to mention a user or assign a tag in rotation to each incoming ticket. See below.

02 How to setup round robin?

  1. Unless you want the round robin to assign tickets to Support Agents round the clock, make sure that every Support Agent user has their working hours set in Settings → My Account → Mailbox tab → Working Hours. If they expect to be unavailable to pick up tickets for a day or more during business hours, they should also record this in Settings → My Account → Mailbox tab → Don't assign on these dates.
  2. Go to Settings → Smart Tools → Message Rules and click the rule you want to add the round robin to. The Edit Rule page is opened. You can also configure round robin for a new rule.
  3. In the Assign ticket owner by field, we will instruct the round robin to assign the ticket owner by Roles or by Users:
     
    • Assign ticket owner by Roles
      where you select one or more roles, and then all users with the selected roles will be in the round robin. This saves you from having to select every user, and also you won’t need to update the rule whenever somebody new joins the team.

      Select Roles from the first dropdown and then click the second dropdown to choose one or more roles.Assign ticket owner by field
    • Assign ticket owner by Users
      where you select each of the users that will be in the round robin.

      Select User from the first dropdown and then click the second dropdown to choose one or more users.
      Assign ticket owner by field
  4. Click Save Changes.
    That’s it, the round robin is all set up for this rule. When tickets arrive that meet the conditions in the Message Rule, they will be assigned in turn to each of the users in the round robin. 

03 Adding @mentions or tags using round robin

Depending on your eDesk plan, you can also use round robin to mention a user in the notes in a ticket (see here) or assign a tag to a ticket (see here). We configure this in the Message rule in the same way we set up assigning a ticket owner using round robin.

To set up @mentions using round robin:
@mentions are available if your company is on the Team, Professional or Enterprise plan. 

  1. In the Mention by field, we will set up the Message Rule to mention a user by Role or by User:
     
    • Mention user by Roles
      Select one or more roles, and then all users with the selected roles will be in the round robin for mentions in the ticket. This saves you from having to select every user, and also you won’t need to update the rule whenever somebody joins or leaves the team.

      Select Roles from the first dropdown and then click the second dropdown to choose one or more roles.
       
    • Mention user by Users
      Select each of the users that will be in the round robin for mentions in the ticket.

      Select Users from the first dropdown and then click the second dropdown to choose one or more users. Only one user will be mentioned in the ticket when you use a round robin.
       
  2. In the Mention user mode field, select Apply one following round robin.

    Note: If you select Apply all, all the users or users with the roles selected in step 1 will be mentioned in the ticket.
    Mention by field and Mention user mode field
  3. When a user is mentioned in a ticket, the ticket is listed in the Mentioned category in their Mailbox.


To assign a tag using round robin: 
These instructions assume that some tags have been created already. Click here to find out how to create Tags.

  1. In the Assign to tags dropdown, select one or more tags.
     
  2. In the Tag assignation mode field, select Apply one following round robin. Only one tag will be added to the ticket when you use a round robin.

    Note: If you select Apply all in the Tag assignation mode field, the ticket will be tagged with all the tags selected in step 1.
    Assign to tags field and Tag assignation mode field

Don’t forget to click Save Changes to save all your changes to the Message rule.

Further Readings


To find out how to use Message Rules and Rule-only templates to autorespond to your customers, click here.

Interested to learn more about tags in eDesk, click here.