An agent receives a workitem in one of the following ways:

• Alerting assignment – The agent receives an alert on the agent desktop and they can either answer or decline the workitem. The agent can receive the assignment in one of the following ways:
  • Queue assignment – The workitem is assigned like an ACD interaction. 
  • Manual assignment – The workitem is assigned to the agent manually. Any user with the necessary permissions can assign a workitem that is waiting on the queue to themself or to any other agent. 
  • User assignment – The workitem, which is non-ACD interaction, is assigned to the agent by another user or by a workflow. 
• Non-alerting assignment – A workitem that is not part of an ACD queue is assigned to an agent by another user or by a workflow. The agent does not receive any alerts, but only sees it on their workitem list.

In queue assignment, when an agent becomes available (agent on queue and not fully utilized), Genesys Cloud scans the high-priority workitems in the queue to assign a suitable workitem to the agent. During this assignment stage, it is possible that none of the workitems that are scanned is suitable to be assigned to the agent. In parallel, the system may pause the evaluation of interaction and workitem queue backlog until the high-priority workitems are cleared. This scenario results in the agent being idle until a suitable interaction or workitem becomes available. To prevent this situation, consider the following best practices:

• Dedicated queues – Create queues that are dedicated to each media type. When you create queues with mixed media, priority of workitems can sideline other interactions, such as a voice call. 
• Queue membership size – Exercise adequate caution while adding members to the queue. When you add agents to multiple queues, the system may pause evaluations of queue backlog to maintain system stability. This is more likely if the system suspects a potential misuse.
• Agent skill and language configuration – Some workitems require agents to possess a set of skills or language. Ensure that you have tagged skills and language to each agent accurately. 
• Agent division-specific permissions – Since workitems are division aware, ensure that the agents on the queue have the Workitems > Workitem – accept permission in the division of the workitem.
• Routing method on queues – Ensure that the queues set up for workitems have one of the following routing methods set: standard routing, bullseye routing, or preferred agent routing. Genesys Cloud currently does not support conditional group routing and predictive routing for workitems.