All emails entering a company’s email system can be distributed via ACE, provided the ACE solution is configured to do so.
ACE Email is the part of ACE retrieving emails from the company’s email system. It also takes care of identifying and distributing emails to the appropriate agents. Technically the ACE Email concept consists of an ACE Account Server and one or more ACE Email Servers.
ACE Email basically operates in the same way regardless of whether the agents process their emails in a separate email program or use the built-in email function in ACE Agent. Both methods can exist in the same solution. Emails that can be handled in a separate program when the contact itself is handled in ACE Agent are the more traditional ones. Contacts from e.g. Facebook and Twitter, or Workitems, can strictly technically be regarded as emails but cannot be routed out from Telia ACE. Consequently, these variants of emails must be handled completely via ACE Agent.
Agents processing emails in a separate external email program must have an email address specified in the User accounts window in ACE Admin. If emails will be processed in ACE Agent’s built-in read and write window, the field for email address in the User accounts window in ACE Admin may be left empty. In this case you will have to specify a return address under the Accounts tab in ACE Admin’s Emails and work item accounts window.
Accounts and entrances for email
The specific destination from where an ACE Email Server should retrieve emails is configured in the Email and Work Item accounts window, the Accounts tab.
When you have entered the names of the email accounts (existing in the company’s email server) from which the ACE Email Server should fetch email, the following will happen:
- For each new account added in ACE Admin a new entrance will automatically be created. These entrances can thereby be seen in the Entrances, menu choices and task types window under the Routing | Entrances and menu choices... and also be selected in the Contact routing window, under the Email tab.
- The account information you have entered will be transferred to ACE Account Server.
- ACE Account Server will regularly poll (check periodically) all specified accounts.
- When an email arrives to one of these accounts in the email server, ACE Account Server will read the email in order to transfer it to the email server upon a request to receive a new email for this specific account.
Actions for email
ACE Email Server will analyse all emails that have arrived. Any result from this analysis will be sent as an automatic reply to the sender. You regulate exactly what will happen by i.a. configuring
- method for configurations,
- pattern matching,
- automatic answer.
Using the analysed email, ACE Email Server creates a contact placed in a queue in ACE Server. When the time has come to deliver the contact to an agent’s ACE Agent, ACE Email Server sends a signal to the company’s email server. This signal means that the physical email should be delivered to a specific agent’s email address. The agent then processes the contact in ACE Agent and the email in his external email client.
Useful detailed facts about email
- Queues and contact routing for email is handled in the same way as for other media.
- If the agents will be processing emails in an external program, their email addresses must specified in the user account for each agent.
- If an email is generated by a computer program, ACE will erase the email without creating a contact. The Email Account Server looks at e.g. the email header for texts such as Auto‑Submitted and Auto‑Forwarded.
- Agents have the option of ending emails via the Interaction View function, if, for example, a number of similar letters have arrived from the same sender, or so-called spam. For this, the agent requires access to this function, and that the emails have not been routed to an agent, meaning that they are in Created or Queue status.
- If you just want to deliver the email contacts, without moving the actual emails to the agents’ email boxes, you can, in the open interface for email, set a specific so-called flag with the meaning Deliver email without a physical email. This can be used if you have configured your system for so-called screenpop from an external email system, meaning that the email is routed differently than the contact. As the contact is delivered to the agent, ACE makes a screenpop towards another system, where the email is opened automatically and is seen on the agent’s screen.