How do I automatically assign cases?

With Automatic Case Assignment you can configure your settings so that cases are assigned either round robin or capacity-based to active, online team members to better streamline workflows and ensure cases don’t get missed.

Are there any prerequisites?

Before you get started, ensure you have the following configured:

• You have the Manage Case Settings and Manage Cases permissions
• You have Teams already configured and created in Sprout

Disable notification settings

To ensure that you don’t receive a notification every time a case goes into the queue, as a best practice, Sprout recommends turning off New Available Case on Your Team notifications in your Notification settings. Navigate to Notifications under Global Features and deselect New Available Case on Your Team for Email, Drawer and Slack notifications.

How do I get started?

To start, configure your Case Auto Assignment in your Cases Settings in Sprout. This way, you can configure what works best for your Teams and set expectations about how cases get assigned. 

Note that when you enable Case Auto Assign, this applies across all Sprout Groups.

To configure Case Auto Assign:

1. Navigate to your name > Settings.
2. Click Cases Settings under Inbox. The Cases Settings opens.
3. Toggle Assign Cases to agents automatically ON.
4. Click Configure to continue customizing your settings. The Case Auto Assign popup opens.
   
5. Choose from the following:
   • Assignment Type
     • Choose either Round Robin (a set order that never changes) or Capacity-Based (the Agent with the most available capacity gets assigned first)
   • Agent Capacity
     • Choose the maximum amount of open cases that you want assigned to an Agent at any given time using this feature. Auto, manual and rule-based case assignments all count towards capacity. However, manual and rule-based cases are still assigned regardless of capacity. So if you choose 3 as the maximum capacity, and an Agent has 3 auto assigned cases, that agent can still get a manually assigned case, changing their capacity to 4/3. That Agent no longer receives any new auto assigned cases until they’re back under 3. 
   • Case Unassignment
     • Choose what happens with cases that are assigned when an Agent goes offline. Choose to either Unassign all cases or Leave cases assigned to the agent.
   • Case Auto Assign Opt Out
     • Choose if you want team members who are assigned to teams to not get assigned cases automatically. You can then add team members by entering their name and selecting from the dropdown.
6. Click Save. Your Case Auto Assign Settings are saved and start to apply to your cases.

There are two ways that you can use Case Auto Assignment once it’s configured and toggled ON. You can either use Auto Assignment on individual cases or use it via Automatic Rules.

To Auto Assign a case to a Team from the Smart Inbox or Reviews:

1. Navigate to either the Smart Inbox or Reviews tab.
2. Locate the message you want to create a case from.
3. Click the pushpin icon to create a case.
4. Select the appropriate Team from the Team dropdown.
5. Select Unassigned in the Assignee dropdown.
6. Continue to configure the case including Type, Priority, any Internal Comments and applicable Tags.
   
7. Click Create Case. The case is then automatically assigned to an Agent based on the settings you specified. 

Combining Auto Assignment with your Automated Rules speeds up your workflows and eliminates any manual assignment of cases. You can combine Case Auto Assignment with Inbox, Reviews or All Received Automated Rules.

For example, if you wanted to automatically assign Customer Feedback messages to your Care team, you could create an Automated Rule that looks for specific keywords in messages that automatically creates as case for your Care Team and automatically assigns that case.

To leverage Auto Assignment via Automated Rules:

1. Navigate to your name > Settings.
2. Click Automated Rules under Global Features.
3. Either edit an existing Automated Rule or create a new one. Choose from All received, Inbox or Reviews.
4. Enter a Title for the Rule or update the Title to denote the Auto Assignment.
5. Enter a description including Auto Assignment details.
6. Specify your criteria that an incoming message or review must meet.
   
7. Select Create a Case in the Then take these actions dropdown.
8. Choose the appropriate Team from the Team dropdown.
9. Select Unassigned from the Assignee dropdown.
10. Continue to configure the rest of the case settings including Type, Priority, any Internal Comments and applicable Tags.
    
11. Click Save. Your Automatic Rule now automatically assigns cases to Agents on the Team you selected based on your case settings.