How do I enable manual contacts (call, email, SMS) for agents using Omni?

In Omni you can let your agents directly contact a customer using a phone number or an email address.

How an agent creates a manual contact

The Manual contact button can be made available on both the Inbound or Outbound pages, depending on the settings described below.

When agents click Manual contact, they can make a manual call, or send an SMS or email.

If the details they type match one or more existing contacts, they will be taken to that contact, otherwise a new contact will be created. Importantly, the settings below describe how to choose the contact list the new contact will be created in, depending on whether the agent was on Outbound or Inbound.

Activating Manual contact on the Outbound page

In the Outbound page of the Omni interface, agents must select the project they are working on. They will need to select it either when they go to the Outbound page, or they can select a different project later by clicking the pen icon next to the current project.

To enable the Manual contact button on the Outbound page, you need to make sure that the Manual calling method is enabled for the project the agent is working on.

To do so, in your Admin account:

1. Go to the Projects page.
2. Go to the Project list subpage.
3. If necessary, search for the project you want to update.
4. Click the project name to edit its settings.
5. Go to the Calling methods section.
6. Click to tick the Manual option.
7. Click the Save button to save the changes.

The Manual contact button will now be available on the agents' interface when they are on the Outbound page with this project selected.

Activating Manual contact on the Inbound page

When an agent is working on the Inbound page they will often be working across multiple projects. As such, when the agent uses manual contact to create a new contact, we need to specify which project it will be created for. This is a global setting.

In you Admin account you will need to have, or create:

• A contact list that you want new manual contacts to be added to.
• A project that will be used by manual contacts. This project should be a customer service project, with the following requirements:
  • The Office field should be empty.
  • For Default contact list select the contact list you want to use for new manual contacts.

• • The SMS sender and Email sender fields defined. 
  • In the Calling methods section, make sure Manual is ticked.
• Make sure that all agents that you want to be able to create manual contacts have access rights to this project.

Once you have all of these set up, in your Admin account:

1. Go to  General settings page.
2. Go to the Global settings subpage.
3. Go to the Message channel settings section.
4. Click the Default project for Inbound page's manual contact drop-down list and select the project you wish to use for manual contacts.
5. Click the Save button.