Key Terms And Concepts - AT&T MERLIN II Feature Module 2 Planning Manual

Key Terms and Concepts

4 Key Terms and Concepts
The terms listed below appear frequently in this guide and other CMS
documents. The paragraphs that follow the list offer explanations of these
key concepts.
Automatic call distributor (ACD)
Line groups
Agents
Agent splits
Shift configurations
Main and secondary splits
Intraflow
Intraflow threshold
Logged out state
Available state
After-call-work (ACW) state
Automatic ACW
Call management
Alerts
CMS is the automatic call distributor (ACD) for the MERLIN II system. It
distributes calls that come in on the MERLIN II system telephone lines that
have been assigned to CMS.
The MERLIN II system telephone lines assigned to CMS are organized into
line groups. You usually assign lines to line groups so that all calls coming in
on lines assigned to a particular line group are the same type. For instance,
the lines for a particular type of high-revenue-producing sales call might be
assigned to one line group, the lines for another type of low-revenue-
producing sales call might be assigned to a second line group, and the lines
for nonrevenue-producing service calls might be assigned to a third line
group. You can assign up to 28 telephone lines to CMS, and you can divide
the lines among a maximum of four line groups.
Incoming calls are answered by agents who are organized into agent splits. A
split is a team of agents who handle the same type of call. Each split is
assigned to answer calls for one or more line groups. You can have up to six
splits handling CMS calls at the same time, and you can assign up to 28
agents to a split. However, no more than 28 agents can be active in CMS at
any one time.
A shift configuration is an arrangement of line groups and agent splits for
answering calls. You can store up to six shift configurations in the system's
memory, but only one shift configuration can be active at a time.
In a shift configuration, some agent splits are main splits and others are
seconday splits. A main split has primary responsibility for answering calls for
a line group. A secondary split acts as a backup to the main split for a line
group. Agents in the secondary split answer calls that come in for the line
group when agents in the main split are unavailable. Routing calls to the
secondary split when no agents are available in the main split is called
intraflow. The number of seconds a call waits for an agent in the main split
before it is sent to the secondary split is called the intraflow threshold.