Abstract:
A contact center is provided that includes an input operable to receive work items  204   a - w , a work item processing agent  200  to populate work item containers  212   a -I with information respecting the received work items, and an Aagent Work Awareness Algorithm (AWAA) server notification agent  216  to notify subscribing AWAA agent entities of state changes in the work item containers. The processing AWAA server agent transfers work items to a subscribing AWAA agent entity when requested by the subscribing entity.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
       [0001]    The present application claims the benefits of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/866,313, filed Nov. 17, 2006, entitled “CONTACT CENTER AGENT WORK AWARENESS ALGORITHM”, which is incorporated herein by this reference. 
     
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    The present application is directed generally to contact centers and specifically to methodologies and systems for distributing work items and alerting agents of work items available for servicing using Session Initiation Protocol (“SIP”) or SIP-like techniques. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0003]    In Automatic Contact-Distribution (ACD) systems, contacts incoming to a contact center are answered and handled by a plurality of resources. The ACD system automatically distributes and connects incoming contacts to whatever resource, such as agents, have the skill set suited to handle the contacts and are free, i.e., not handling other contacts at the moment. As used herein, a “contact” refers to any mode or type of contact between two entities, including without limitation voice calls, VoIP, text-chat, e-mail, fax, electronic documents, web forms, voice messages, and video calls, to name but a few. 
         [0004]    Due to the random and peaked nature of inbound contacts from customers, a contact center frequently becomes overloaded when no suitable resources are available to handlecontacts as the contacts come in. The contacts are placed in different queues based upon some preestablished criteria, such as business/service policies, objectives, and goals for each contact type, and are placed in each queue in the order of their arrival and/or priority. Numerous techniques have been devised for determining an actual or anticipated wait time for each enqueued item, and the enqueued items are typically serviced based on the actual and/or anticipated wait time. In more elaborate systems, business/service policies, objectives, and goals and/or the degree to which they are realized are considered in selecting which work item is to be routed to an available resource. As will be appreciated, a “work item” can be a voice call to answer/service, an email to respond to, a web chat session needing an answer, an instant message to answer/service, and the like. Although this approach is effective in many applications, the approach can lead to a valuable resource being tied up on a work item of little value, not only causing inefficient use of contact center resources but also leading to frustration of more valuable customers due to long wait times and/or service by a less skilled resource. 
         [0005]    This problem is at least partly attributable to the inability of resources (e.g., agents) to preview work items before the work item is transferred to the resource and the inability of undedicated resources to log in and service work items during the often brief or randomly occurring periods when such contact center representatives have time away from other job responsibilities to assist the contact center resources in servicing contacts. Information about the work item is normally provided to the resource after the ACD has already determined that the resource is the optimal resource to service the item. Resources, particularly highly skilled agents such as Subject Matter Experts or SMEs, need to be able to pre-view not just a selected work item but all work items that are available and not yet handled and determine, using their own judgment, whether they are the optimal selection to service the work item. Information unknown to the ACD, such as pre-existing relationships between the SME and a selected contactor, could then be considered in the work item distribution process. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0006]    These and other needs are addressed by the various embodiments and configurations of the present invention. The present invention is directed generally to the application of presence, particularly SIP-based or SIP-like techniques, to a work distribution architecture. 
         [0007]    In a first embodiment of the present invention, a method for servicing work items is provided that includes the steps of: 
         [0008]    (a) subscribing, by a work item presence or Agent Work Awareness Algorithm (“AWAA”) server, to a work item container and/or a queue of work item containers on behalf of a resource, the subscription requesting the subscribing entity to be notified by the presence server of a state change in the work item container and/or queue of work item containers; 
         [0009]    (b) in response to a state change in the work item container and/or queue of work item containers, receiving a notification from the presence server, the notification comprising information respecting a work item associated with the work item container and/or queue of work item containers; 
         [0010]    (c) providing the information to the resource (e.g., an automated or human servicing entity such as an agent); 
         [0011]    (d) receiving, from the resource, a selection of the work item; and 
         [0012]    (e) requesting the transfer of the work item to a communication device associated with the resource to permit the resource to service the work item. A “work item container” is a set of data structures used to contain selected information about a work item. 
         [0013]    In a second embodiment, a method for servicing work items is provided that includes the steps of: 
         [0014]    (a) maintaining a set of work item containers, each work item container receiving a work item for servicing by a resource; 
         [0015]    (b) when a state of a selected work item container changes, determining a set of entities that have subscribed to be notified of a state change in the selected work item; and 
         [0016]    (c) notifying each of the members of the set of entities of the state change. 
         [0017]    “State” refers to properties of an object that characterize the object&#39;s current condition, such as work item container unpopulated, work item container populated, work item not ready for servicing, work item ready for servicing, and the like. A “state change” occurs when a work item or work item container changes from a first to a second state. 
         [0018]    In one configuration, the invention addresses the problem of providing the current status of pending work items to be assigned to available contact center resources by using a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) presence server based centralized or distributed agent work distribution algorithm. The algorithm performs the agent work distribution capability by using attributes or states associated with pending work items that are maintained by SIP presence watcher (e.g., user agent) techniques. Such technique are currently used to track the use of voice call endpoints by a person who may use several different voice call endpoints, thereby permitting a voice endpoint contactor to know which of the voice call endpoints the contact should be directed to without needing to poll or search all of the possible voice endpoints. 
         [0019]    For the agent awareness algorithm, the information about the work item contactor can be maintained for the work item associated with the contactor. The information about the contactor maintained for each pending work item can include, for example, name, company name, account information, wait time, and work item priority. Other information may be maintained depending upon the application. 
         [0020]    The information is provided to subscribing entities through notification messages. The work item information is updated by a SIP-like monitoring technique that passes status information about a work item from an entity, such as a Private Branch exchange or PBX, database interface, email server, video web chat server, and the like, to a work item presence server, which is a SIP-based or SIP-like presence server. Using notification messages, the current status of the work item information can be accessed by applications having a presence server interface capability and access permission to access the presence server information. The application can then display some or all of the waiting work items that the presence server resource can respond to via a computer terminal user interface. 
         [0021]    The resource has the ability to select any waiting work item to respond to next rather than letting the work distribution algorithm make the decision. Detailed information about a waiting work item is included in the information accessible by the application, thereby permitting the resource to use his or her judgment to select manually which work item to respond to next. Optionally, the contact center work distribution algorithm can provide an automated recommendation to the resource as to which work item to choose next based on the application&#39;s internal rules engine. 
         [0022]    The present invention can provide a number of advantages depending on the particular configuration. For example, the contact center provides a simple and efficient interface to undedicated agents, such as SME&#39;s, to service work items on an as-available basis. This can provide substantial improvements in customer satisfaction and realization of service level goals and policies as well as providing a higher level of utilization of enterprise personnel resources. Using a SIP-based or SIP-like mechanism to expose potential agent work to agents, the interface is readily adaptable for use with off-site personnel, whether in a home office or in a contractor&#39;s facility and does not require specific hardware or software in the remote endpoint for compatibility. The interface is generally agnostic to the database and access mechanisms of the contact center. The resource can use standard SIP signaling to interface with the contact center through, for example, a Personal Computer, a laptop, or desktop, whether at home or work. This capability permits a contact center to interface readily with contact center&#39;s of other vendors that provide an AWAA-compliant SIP-based interface to an AWAA-compliant SIP presence service. With such a compliant interface, the AWAA technique allows offloading work items from a primary work facility to contractors or other enterprise locations. 
         [0023]    These and other advantages will be apparent from the disclosure of the invention(s) contained herein. 
         [0024]    As used herein, “at least one”, “one or more”, and “and/or” are open-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive in operation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B and C”, “at least one of A, B, or C”, “one or more of A, B, and C”, “one or more of A, B, or C” and “A, B, and/or C” means A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B and C together. 
         [0025]    It is to be noted that the term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or more of that entity. As such, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more” and “at least one” can be used interchangeably herein. It is also to be noted that the terms “comprising”, “including”, and “having” can be used interchangeably. 
         [0026]    The above-described embodiments and configurations are neither complete nor exhaustive. As will be appreciated, other embodiments of the invention are possible utilizing, alone or in combination, one or more of the features set forth above or described in detail below. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0027]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a work item servicing architecture according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
           [0028]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of entities in the architecture of  FIG. 1 ; 
           [0029]      FIG. 3  is a flow chart depicting an operational embodiment of the architecture; 
           [0030]      FIG. 4  is a flow chart depicting an operational embodiment of the architecture; and 
           [0031]      FIG. 5  is a flow chart depicting an operational embodiment of the architecture. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0032]      FIG. 1  shows an illustrative embodiment of the present invention. 
         [0033]    A work item servicing architecture  100  comprises a communications server  108 , a set of data stores or databases  112  containing contact or customer related information and other information that can enhance the value and efficiency of the contact, a work item presence server  136  and associated database  140  containing subscription information, a contactee presence server  144  and associated database  148  containing presence and availability information respecting contactees and their communication devices, and first, second, . . . nth presence awareness agents  164   a - n  associated with a respective first, second, . . . nth resource  168   a - n , all interconnected by a private (trusted) or public (untrusted) data network  140 . 
         [0034]    The communications server  108 , which is optional, directs communications, such as incoming Voice Over IP or VoIP and telephone calls, or work items to resources  168   a - n  for servicing. The term “server” should be understood to include an ACD, a Private Branch Exchange PBX (or Private Automatic Exchange PAX) an enterprise switch, an enterprise server, or other type of telecommunications system switch or server, as well as other types of processor-based communication control devices such as media servers, computers, adjuncts, etc. Illustratively, the switch and server of  FIG. 1  can be a modified form of Avaya Inc.&#39;s Definity™ Private-Branch Exchange (PBX)-based ACD system or MultiVantage™ PBX running modified Advocate™ software, CRM Central 2000 Server™, Communication Manager™, S8300™ media server, SIP Enabled Services™, and/or Avaya Interaction Center™. 
         [0035]    The resources  168   a - n  can be automated devices or human agents. Examples of automated devices include Interactive Response Units (e.g., Interactive Voice Response Units). The human agents may be located as part of the enterprise premises containing the communications server  108  or located off-site. 
         [0036]    Human agents receive incoming or outgoing contacts, or work items, and interact with the customer associated with the contact by means of a suitable communication device (not shown). The communication devices may be packet- or circuit-switched. They may be compatible with any suitable protocol, such as H.323 and SIP, with SIP compatibility being preferred, and may or may not be part of the enterprise premises. In other words, the communication device may or may not be controlled or administered by the communications server. The communication devices may alternatively be connected directly to the work item presence server and not through an intermediate device, such as a switch or server. Exemplary communication devices include packet-switched stations or communication devices, such as IP hardphones (e.g., Avaya Inc.&#39;s 4600 Series IP Phones™), IP softphones (e.g., Avaya Inc.&#39;s IP Softphone™), Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs, Personal Computers or PCs, laptops, packet-based H.320 video phones and conferencing units, packet-based voice messaging and response units, peer-to-peer based communication devices, and packet-based traditional computer telephony adjuncts. Examples of suitable packet-switched communication devices are the 4610™, 4621SW™, and 9620™ IP telephones of Avaya, Inc. and circuit-switched (or Time Division Multiplexed or TDM) communication devices are the 30010™, 2410™, and 2420™ Digital Telephones of Avaya, Inc. 
         [0037]    The work item presence server  136  and subscription information  140 , as described more fully below, tracks the “presence”, or state, of a plurality of work item containers, that may or may not be currently associated with an active work item, and provides notification of state changes to subscribing entities. Examples of subscribing entities are denoted as the presence awareness agents  164 , which may be located in a communication device associated with a human agent, in an automated resource itself, or in some other computational component. Presence awareness agents  164  may also be associated with functional components other than communication devices, such as other communications servers of the same or a different enterprise, a communications switch of the same or a different enterprise, internal communication devices, a database interface, an application server (e.g., email server, instant message server, video web chat server, etc.), and the like. 
         [0038]    The contactee presence server  144  and associated presence information database  148  may or may not be operated by the enterprise. The presence server  144  and presence information database  148  collectively track the presence and/or availability of contactees and/or their communication devices and provide, to requesting user agents in communication devices, current presence information respecting selected contactees. As used herein, “presence information” refers to any information associated with a network node and/or endpoint device, such as a communication device, that is in turn associated with a person or identity. Presence information generally indicates what kind of context the contactee is in and what kind of communication, if any, is appropriate to reach successfully the contactee. Examples of presence information include information regarding the accessibility of the endpoint device, the recency of use of the endpoint device by the person, recency of authentication by the person to a network component, and the preferences of the person (e.g., contact mode preferences or profiles such as the communication device to be contacted for specific types of contacts or under specified factual scenarios, contact time preferences, impermissible contact types and/or subjects such as subjects about which the person does not wish to be contacted, and permissible contact type and/or subjects such as subjects about which the person does wish to be contacted). The contactee presence server  144  is particularly useful where the work items to be serviced are outgoing customer contacts that need to be configured in accordance with customer preferences and availability. 
         [0039]    The data network  140  may be public (untrusted) or private (trusted) and is preferably packet-switched. It may operate in a manner defined by the TCP/IP suite of protocols and preferably supports a SIP-based or SIP-like protocol. Preferably, the network is an untrusted network, such as the Internet. The network  140  preferably includes SIP-based components, such as proxy servers and registrars. 
         [0040]    The present invention may be used with either a client-server architecture or a peer-to-peer architecture, such as those envisioned by the Session Initiation Protocol and SIP Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions or SIMPLE. In the client-server model or paradigm, network services and the programs used by end users to access the services are described. The client side provides a user with an interface for requesting services from the network, and the server side is responsible for accepting user requests for services and providing the services transparent to the user. By contrast in the peer-to-peer model or paradigm, each networked host runs both the client and server parts of an application program. Moreover, the invention does not require a specific Internet Protocol Telephony (IPT) protocol and could be implemented, for example, using QSIG, H.323, and combinations thereof. Additionally, the invention does not require the presence of packet- or circuit-switched networks. 
         [0041]    Before discussing further the present invention, it is important to understand how SIP and SIMPLE operate in the context of a contactee presence server  144 . A user agent in a communication device sends a SUBSCRIBE request to the presence server  144 . The SUBSCRIBE is a soft subscription (it has a timer and expires if not renewed). While the subscription is active, the user agent is sent a NOTIFY by the presence server  144  whenever the status of the entity, which is the subject of the subscription, changes. The NOTIFY is used to push presence updates to all subscribers. In other words, the NOTIFY contains information relating to the status update. 
         [0042]    The SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFY messages are used by embodiments of the present invention to assign work items with an appropriate servicing resource. This feature will be discussed with reference to  FIG. 2 , which illustrates an exemplary architecture according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         [0043]    Referring to  FIG. 2 , the work item presence server (or a work item processing agent in the communications server) receives incoming and/or outgoing work items (e.g., contacts), populates newly created or reused work item containers with contact-related information and pertinent customer information from the customer information database  112 . Each work item container that may or may not be associated with an active work item. In other words, at any one time a first set of work item containers is unpopulated (or not associated with a work item) and a second set of work item containers is populated (or associated with a work item). In other configurations, the work item containers correspond to more than one work item. For example, the work item container can be a work item queue. 
         [0044]    In one configuration, each work item container is associated with a specific work item each of a plurality of work item queues corresponds to a different set of resource skills and each queue includes a number or set of work item containers. The relative locations of the work item containers in a queue may or may not be associated with a relative priority of the associated work item. For example, the work item container at the head of the queue may not be deemed to be the most important work item in a given queue to be next served. Typically however, work items are prioritized and either are queued in individual ones of the queues in their order of priority or are queued in different ones of a plurality of queues that correspond to a different priority. 
         [0045]    When a work item is assigned to a work item container, the assigned work item container includes information respecting the associated work item, such as customer identity (e.g., customer name, company name, account information, etc.), customer type (e.g., gold, silver or bronze), work item intent or purpose (e.g., purchase, service or assistance, warranty claim, etc.), customer personal information (e.g., home address, telephone number, credit card number, bank account information, etc.), customer transaction history (e.g., dates, item types purchased, and amounts of customer purchases), work item browser history (e.g., web pages accessed by customer in the current contact), customer order details (e.g., shopping cart contents), customer contact mode (e.g., circuit-switched phone, VoIP call, instant message, etc.), timestamp (e.g., timestamp when work item received, timestamp when work item placed in queue, etc.), work item priority in relation to other waiting work items, expected or predicted amount of time that the work item may be routed to a resource (when all resources are busy and a resource may become available in the future), identification of which switch locations having resources who may be able to receive the waiting work item, a Universal Resource Locator or URL such as of a series of Web pages provided by the enterprise to the customer associated with the work item, a pointer to the current location of the contact, and other work item information that may be important to assign a waiting work item to an available set of resources. Some of this information is obtained from the customer information database  112 . 
         [0046]    A servicing resource queue (not shown) may optionally correspond to each of the work item queues. The resource queues may include internal resources, external resources, or combinations thereof. Normally, each resource&#39;s skills are prioritized according to his or her level of expertise in that skill, and either resources are queued in individual ones of resource queues in their order of expertise level or are queued in different ones of a plurality of resource queues that correspond to a skill and each one of which corresponds to a different expertise level. “Skill” generally refers to an ability, proficiency, and/or expertness of an agent and is not limited to skill as the term is traditionally used in contact centers. For example, work items can be assigned to different work item queues based upon a number of predetermined criteria, including customer identity, customer needs, contact center needs, current contact center queue lengths, customer value, and the resource skill that is required for the proper handling of the contact. 
         [0047]    This embodiment is particularly suited for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) environment in which customers are permitted to use any media to contact a business. In a CRM environment, both realtime and non-realtime contacts must be handled and distributed with equal efficiency and effectiveness. Within each set of queues, each queue holds contacts of a different priority and/or different type (e.g., e-mail, fax, electronic or paper documents, webform submissions, voice messages, voice calls, VoIP calls, text chat, video calls, and the like). Each queue normally functions as a first-in, first-out (FIFO) buffer memory. 
         [0048]    When a work item container is populated initially or updated, a watcher agent  204  in the work item presence server  136  determines that the work item container has had a state change (e.g., was in a first “unpopulated” state and now is in a second “populated” state). In response, the watcher agent  204  signals the notification agent  208  with a notice regarding the state change and the identity of the work item container experiencing the state change. The notification agent  208  accesses information about the work item associated with the identified work item container, refers to subscription rules associated with the identified work item container to identify the set of presence aware agents to be notified, and generates and sends a NOTIFICATION to each subscribing presence awareness agent  164   a - z . The subscribing presence awareness agents may have previously subscribed to only the identified work item container and/or a set of work item containers that includes the identified work item container. The subscription is effected by means of a SUBSCRIBE message generated by the presence awareness agent  164 , when the corresponding user/resource logs in or, after login, in response to the corresponding user/resource interacting with the agent  164 , and sent to the work item presence server  136 . When a subscription is received by the work item presence server  136 , the subscribing presence awareness agent  164  normally receives a NOTIFICATION for each currently occupied or populated work item container to which the subscription applies. A NOTIFICATION is not normally generated for unoccupied or unpopulated work item containers. A NOTIFICATION can be received and work item container contents accessed by applications having a presence awareness agent  164  and permission to access the information. 
         [0049]    In one configuration, the NOTIFICATION contains information related to the work item in the respective container. The information, for example, includes any of the information contained in the respective container. The information is normally included in the message header or body or in an attachment as eXtensible Markup Language or XML. The NOTIFICATION can be a vehicle to push such information to the presence awareness agent  164  and/or provide sufficient information to the agent  164  to permit the agent  164  to pull selected items of information from the container. In this manner, the various resources can preview the various enqueued work items and select a work item for servicing that is an optimal match. 
         [0050]    In one configuration, first and second sets of resources are provided that correspond, respectively, to employees and nonemployees of the business or enterprise. For example, each member of the first set of resources has an internal communication device served directly or supported by the communications server  108  while each member of the second set of resources has an external communication device. The members of the first set of resources are, for example, on-site employees of the enterprise while the members of the second set of resources are home officing employees of the enterprise, contractors of the enterprise, subcontractors of the enterprise, employees of another enterprise, such as a bidding house, and the like. In other words, the first set of resources/workstations are subscribers to the enterprise network defined by a contact center or are within the premises serviced by the server  108 . The second set of resources/workstations are generally not served and/or supported directly by the central server and are typically geographically dislocated from the first plurality or set of resources. In other words, the second set of workstations/resources are not subscribers to or supported by the enterprise network and are external to the premises serviced by the switch and central server. As discussed below, the second set of resources may be used to augment or support the first set of resources, such as by servicing less valuable or profitable work items. 
         [0051]    The operation of the architecture an embodiment of the present invention will now be described. 
         [0052]    Referring to  FIG. 4 , the process for subscribing to a set of work item containers is shown. 
         [0053]    In step  400 , the external entity (e.g., computational component containing the presence awareness agent) logs into the work item presence server. This is typically effected by the resource interacting with the presence aware agent  164  of the resource&#39;s communication device to select various work item queues  208  and/or sets of work item containers  212  within a work item queue  208  for subscription. 
         [0054]    The subscription may occur before the work item container has even been populated, or associated with, an active work item. The subscription to a work item container typically has a longer life than one active work item and often spans the lives of several work items in the selected work item container. The subscription life is often time limited and stipulated by the resource. In one configuration, the subscription life is open ended until terminated by the resource. The subscription terms are preferably obtained from the resource by means of a GUI displayed on the resource&#39;s communication device. The GUI may request the resource to select which queues and/or work item containers in those queues he or she wishes to subscribe to. Alternatively, the resource could enter his or her identity or respond to a series of questions and, using the information, the communications server  108  would determine automatically to which queues or sets of work items within a queue the resource is to subscribe. 
         [0055]    In step  404 , a SUBSCRIBE message containing the resource configured subscription parameters or rules is forwarded by the resource&#39;s presence awareness agent to the work item presence server  136 . The server  136  reviews the subscription rules in the SUBSCRIBE message and updates the subscription information in the database  140  to indicate which of the work item containers and/or queues to which the resource has subscribed and the terms of the subscription. 
         [0056]    As is evident from the foregoing description, the subscription information database  140  includes information respecting subscriptions by internal and external resources. Exemplary subscription information includes the identity of the subscribing entity (e.g., name, employee identification number, IP address, Media Access Control or MAC address, port number, etc.), the work item containers and/or queues that are the subject of the subscription, and the terms of the subscription. Subscriptions terms include duration of the subscription and stipulations on the type of information in the work container that trigger a NOTIFICATION message to the resource&#39;s corresponding presence awareness agent. For example, the resource may only wish to be notified of work items from specific customer identities or types, the type of work the resource is interested in (e.g., specific products or services), specific timestamp values, specific actual, estimated, or predicted wait time values, and the like. 
         [0057]    The use of NOTIFY messages will now be described with reference to  FIG. 3 . 
         [0058]    In decision diamond  300 , the watcher agent  204  determines whether a work item container has had a state change. A state change occurs when the work item container is populated with information associated with a work item or when an already populated work item is updated. When there has been no state change during a selected time interval, the watcher agent  204  returns to and repeats decision diamond  300  after a selected time. When there has been a state change during the selected time interval, the agent  204  signals the notification agent  208  of the instance of the state change and provides details regarding the work item container experiencing the state change. 
         [0059]    In step  304 , the notification agent  208 , in response, accesses the subscription information in the database  140  and, based on the subscription information in database  140 , refers to the set of presence awareness agents having subscription terms requiring them to be notified of the state change and determines the permissible content of the NOTIFY message. Some resources may be privileged to receive more information than others or resources may elect how much information they wish to receive before transfer of the work item to them. 
         [0060]    In step  308 , the notification agent  208  generates and transmits NOTIFY messages to the set of presence awareness agents identified in step  304 . The NOTIFY message contains any of the information noted above. In one configuration, the agent  208  only sends a NOTIFY message when the contact center state requires the assistance of external resources. 
         [0061]    The recipient external communication devices can then display some or all of the waiting work items for which NOTIFY messages have been received, including detailed information about the work items to assist the resource in using his or her judgment in selecting one or more work items for servicing. In one configuration, the information includes an automatically generated recommendation from the communications server  108  or presence server  136  as to which work item should be selected by the resource. The recommendation is generated by the server&#39;s internal work item assignment rules engine using conventional techniques. 
         [0062]    The process for transferring work items to external resources will now be described with reference to  FIG. 5 . In the process, the resource has the ability to select any waiting work item to respond to next rather than letting the server  108  make this decision without input of the resource. 
         [0063]    Before discussing the transfer, it is helpful to understand that, when a work item such as a contact arrives, the communications server  108  or work item presence server, as appropriate, is notified of the incoming realtime or non-realtime contact by the telecommunications component (e.g., switch  120 , fax server, email server, web server, instant message server, and/or other server) receiving the incoming contact. The incoming contact is held by the receiving telecommunications component until the communication server  108  or work item presence server forwards instructions to the component to forward the contact to a specific workstation and/or resource. When it receives a notification that a selected work item has arrived and when it has received sufficient information, an empty work item container is populated as noted above and appropriate NOTIFY messages are sent to pertinent presence awareness agents. 
         [0064]    In step  500 , a request is received from an external resource to service a selected work item described in a NOTIFY message. The request is typically received by the external communication device from the resource, via a GUI, and the presence awareness agent  164  in the device, in step  502 , generates and sends the request including all or selected parts of the information in the NOTIFY message received in connection with the selected work item. 
         [0065]    The work item presence server  136  receives the request in step  503 . 
         [0066]    In decision diamond  504 , the notification agent  208  determines whether the selected work item is still available; that is, it determines whether the selected work item has been assigned to another resource. This is particularly important where the external resources work on a first-come-first-served basis. Alternatively, in a competitive bid situation the agent  208  determines whether the requesting resource is the highest bidder. If the work item is not available to the requesting resource, the agent  208 , in step  508 , declines the request. If the work item is available to the requesting resource, the agent  208 , in step  512 , prepares an INVITE to the external entity containing the work item invitation. If the INVITE is accepted, the agent  208 , in step  516 , forwards the work item to the external communication device of the requesting resource. The agent  208  then deletes the information from the respective work item container so that it may receive a next work item. 
         [0067]    A number of variations and modifications of the invention can be used. It would be possible to provide for some features of the invention without providing others. 
         [0068]    For example in one alternative embodiment, the external or internal resource is an employee of the enterprise  100  but is normally not assigned to the contact center. He or she may be, for example, a product designer or other type of SME whose availability to be contacted depends on other job responsibilities of the person. By providing periodic NOTIFY messages to the resource&#39;s communication device, the SME has the option of assisting in customer service activities as he or she is able. 
         [0069]    In another alternative embodiment, the present invention is used for load balancing or off loading overflow work. In this implementation, external entities, such as communication devices and servers/switches, subscribe to an overflow queue or to higher work item container numbers in a queue that is populated first at the head of the queue and last at the tail of the queue. When a work item container having a number that is a selected number or higher (or is closer to the tail of the queue) is populated, the agent  208  sends a NOTIFY message to the subscribing entity. When a work item container has number that is lower than the selected number (or is closer to the head of the queue) is populated, the agent  208  does not send a NOTIFY message as the message will be handled by internal resources. 
         [0070]    In yet another embodiment, dedicated hardware implementations including, but not limited to, Application Specific Integrated Circuits or ASICs, programmable logic arrays, and other hardware devices can likewise be constructed to implement the methods described herein. Furthermore, alternative software implementations including, but not limited to, distributed processing or component/object distributed processing, parallel processing, or virtual machine processing can also be constructed to implement the methods described herein. 
         [0071]    It should also be stated that the software implementations of the present invention are optionally stored on a tangible storage medium, such as a magnetic medium like a disk or tape, a magneto-optical or optical medium like a disk, or a solid state medium like a memory card or other package that houses one or more read-only (non-volatile) memories. A digital file attachment to e-mail or other self-contained information archive or set of archives is considered a distribution medium equivalent to a tangible storage medium. Accordingly, the invention is considered to include a tangible storage medium or distribution medium and prior art-recognized equivalents and successor media, in which the software implementations of the present invention are stored. 
         [0072]    Although the present invention describes components and functions implemented in the embodiments with reference to particular standards and protocols, the invention is not limited to such standards and protocols. Other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are in existence and are considered to be included in the present invention. Moreover, the standards and protocols mentioned herein and other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are periodically superseded by faster or more effective equivalents having essentially the same functions. Such replacement standards and protocols having the same functions are considered equivalents included in the present invention. 
         [0073]    The present invention, in various embodiments, includes components, methods, processes, systems and/or apparatus substantially as depicted and described herein, including various embodiments, subcombinations, and subsets thereof. Those of skill in the art will understand how to make and use the present invention after understanding the present disclosure. The present invention, in various embodiments, includes providing devices and processes in the absence of items not depicted and/or described herein or in various embodiments hereof, including in the absence of such items as may have been used in previous devices or processes, e.g., for improving performance, achieving ease and/or reducing cost of implementation. 
         [0074]    The foregoing discussion of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. The foregoing is not intended to limit the invention to the form or forms disclosed herein. In the foregoing Detailed Description for example, various features of the invention are grouped together in one or more embodiments for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed invention requires more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed embodiment. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into this Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate preferred embodiment of the invention. 
         [0075]    Moreover, though the description of the invention has included description of one or more embodiments and certain variations and modifications, other variations and modifications are within the scope of the invention, e.g., as may be within the skill and knowledge of those in the art, after understanding the present disclosure. It is intended to obtain rights which include alternative embodiments to the extent permitted, including alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps to those claimed, whether or not such alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps are disclosed herein, and without intending to publicly dedicate any patentable subject matter.