Improve Work Distribution with Enhanced Omni-Channel
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you'll be able to:
- Explain how queues control the distribution of work items to reps or AI agents.
- Describe how skill-based routing matches work to the most qualified reps or AI agents.
- Identify the routing models available in Enhanced Omni-Channel and when to use each.
Route Work with Queues
Imagine you're a Salesforce admin setting up support routing for your service team. Cases are pouring in from email, chat, and SMS—billing questions, technical fires, high-priority escalations—and they all need to land with the right people. How can you possibly manage so much noise and chaos?
That's exactly what queues are for.
A queue is a holding area for work items waiting to be assigned. When a work item enters Omni-Channel using queue-based routing, it lands in a queue first. From there, the routing engine picks an available rep or AI agent who's a member of that queue, based on capacity. (Queue-based routing is just one option—work can also route by skills or go directly to a specific rep or Agentforce agent, without ever touching a queue. More on that next.)
Understand Routing Configurations
Every queue in Enhanced Omni-Channel is linked to a routing configuration. The routing configuration is where you define the rules that control how work gets distributed. Here are the key components.
Enhanced Omni-Channel Component |
What It Controls |
|---|---|
Routing Model |
The method used to identify the right rep for the work item, for example, the least active rep or most available rep. |
Units of Capacity |
A percentage or specific amount of capacity a single work item consumes for a rep. |
Priority |
The relative urgency of work in this queue compared to other work items. |
Push Timeout |
How long a work item waits for a rep to accept before it's reassigned. |
Drop Additional Skills Timeout |
Whether skill requirements relax over time if no perfectly matched rep is available. (Whether or not a skill is dropped is set elsewhere in the routing logic.) |
Routing happens in two phases—think of it like sorting mail and then delivering it. First comes classification, then matching.
Classification is the routing logic that determines the required queue or skills. This logic runs the moment work enters the system or when automation triggers it. Matching then finds the right service rep for that work. By the time an owner is assigned, the matching process is complete.
Remember, if field values on a work item change after the classification logic has run, it doesn't run again automatically.
Assign Skills to Refine Routing
Queue-based routing is straightforward—work goes to an available rep who belongs to the queue. Skill-based routing? That's where things get interesting. Skills add precision.
Instead of creating a separate queue for every combination of language, tier, and product—which would be a nightmare—you define a handful of skills and let the engine do the matching. A few dozen skills can cover what would otherwise take thousands of queues. That's efficiency.
Skill-based routing matches incoming work items to reps who have the specific skills required to handle them. You define skills (for example, Spanish language support, Tier 2 technical knowledge, or billing expertise), assign skills to reps, and attach skill requirements to work items. The most common way to do this is in an Omni-Channel flow, where you build the list of required skills dynamically. You can also define skills on a routing configuration or use skills-based routing rules that map object fields to skills.
Queue-based routing and skill-based routing are two separate models. A work item uses one or the other—never both.
With queue-based routing, the engine checks queue membership. With skill-based routing, it checks skills. It doesn't check both at the same time. This is different from other platforms, so it's worth mentioning to your service team.
Use Unified Routing for Voice and Digital Channels
With Enhanced Omni-Channel, skill-based routing extends across all your channels through Unified Routing. No more managing separate routing logic for voice calls, chat sessions, and SMS conversations like you're juggling flaming torches. Unified Routing handles it all in one platform. A rep with the right skills gets the right work—whether it's a phone call or a WhatsApp message.
As a best practice, avoid attaching too many skill requirements to a single work item. If your skill requirements are too narrow, you risk a situation where no rep ever qualifies for the work—because no single person holds that exact combination of skills. The more complex the combination, the bigger the risk. Start with your most critical skills and expand from there.
Choose Your Routing Model
Just like Standard Omni-Channel, Enhanced Omni-Channel gives you three routing model options. Think of them as three different strategies for keeping your team balanced and your customers happy.
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Least active: Routes the next work item to the rep with the lowest consumed units of capacity. Work items aren't all the same size. A voice call might consume 100% of capacity while a case takes 25%. Reps can also have different total capacity. This model keeps the lightest-loaded rep at the front of the line.
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Most available: Routes the next work item to the rep with the most spare capacity—their total allowed capacity minus what they've consumed. This keeps everyone as far from full as possible, so no single rep maxes out before others. It matters most when your reps have different total capacity limits.
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External routing: Hands the assignment decision to a third-party routing system. Salesforce holds the work item and waits for the external platform to connect in via the Omni-Channel API and tell it where the work should go. Use this when you have an existing routing platform you want to keep making the decisions—Omni-Channel handles the delivery.
Set Interruptible Capacity
Every rep has two capacities: a primary capacity and an interruptible capacity. Think of interruptible capacity as the stuff that can wait—email cases, async tasks, the kind of work that won’t explode if it gets pushed aside for a minute. When that work comes in, it fills the rep’s interruptible capacity instead of their primary capacity.
Why does this matter? It gives you two powerful routing strategies.
First, uninterruptible work can push ahead of interruptible work, so if a high-priority voice call comes in, the engine can still route it to that rep even if their interruptible capacity is full, as long as their primary capacity has room.
Second, higher-priority work can push over lower-priority work on the same channel. For example, if a Tier 1 or Tier 2 case comes in, it can route to a rep already handling a lower-priority case, ensuring critical work doesn’t sit in a queue while reps are busy with routine requests.
The two capacities fill independently, and priority ensures the most urgent work gets handled first.
Interruptible capacity is configured on the service channel, the routing configuration, or both. The routing configuration can inherit the service channel's setting or override it.
What’s Next?
Now that you understand how queues, skills, and routing models work, you're ready to put it all together. In the next unit, you explore the steps to activate Enhanced Omni-Channel in your org, prepare your channels, and start managing your contact center with supervisor tooling.