Delegation-to-Attended Solutions Overview

The Need

Automation activity typically happens behind the scenes without human intervention. Exceptions do however, occur from time to time during automations, for example, due to a technical failure, an account is missing, a system is down, or the parameters are wrong.

These exceptions must be processed, and some may require attended intervention. Exceptions can be handled by:

  • Reporting on exceptions and then manually handling these at a later stage.

  • Utilizing a framework for corrective actions, enabling an employee with the relevant skills to handle the exceptions as they happen.

In addition, third-party solutions may also need to send tasks to be handled by an attended solution/employee.

The Solution

The NICE APA Delegation-to-Attended functionality enables:

  • A robot to send (delegate) a task to an attended solution/employee.

  • A third-party application (via an API) to delegate a task to an attended solution/employee.

  • A user to pull task records (via API) to monitor task progression.

Delegation-to-Attended Flow

  1. The APA Server allocates the next available Robotic Process Automation (RPA) client to execute a flow.

  2. The RPA client requires attended intervention due to an exception or business need.

  3. The RPA task is sent via API to the Robot-to-Attended queue, and an employee with the required skill pulls the request.

  4. The task is handled by an employee manually or via an attended desktop automation.

  5. As an alternative, the "work" could be sent back to the RPA pool for execution as a new task, where it is pulled by an available robot for execution.

Delegation-to-Attended Use Cases

OCR Scenario

A robot is processing invoices and cannot read a field in a pdf, so it delegates the task to an agent, sending them a link to the pdf and a description of the field that could not be read.

The agent reviews the pdf and enters the details manually.

Customer Self-Service Scenario

  1. An insurance company customer uses a self-service portal to try and add a rider to their policy. The customer enters their details and selects the required rider, for example, rental car insurance.

  2. A robot is used to automate the addition of this rider to the insurance policy. The automation pulls up the customer details by inputting the account number the robot received as a parameter into the Account Number field in the CRM.

  3. The robot gets a message that the account is blocked due to customer debt.

  4. The task is now delegated to an attended solution for manual handling with the relevant info sent as parameters, For example:

    • Task name: Add Rider to Policy

    • Account Number: 2254879

    • Rider to Add: Rental car insurance

    • Policy Number: 445822

    • Last Automation Step: Pull up customer details

    • Description: Account is blocked due to customer debt, can’t add rider.

  5. The employee investigates, contacts the customer to sort out the outstanding debt, and then submits a new task for adding the rider.