kevinc@uunet.uu.net (Kevin Collins) (11/06/90)
In article <13968@accuvax.nwu.edu>, HWT@bnr.ca (Henry Troup) writes: > I thought that ACD was Automatic Call Direction (now superseded by > UCD, Universal Call Direction) which distributed calls between a > number of agents (people), not a voice mail system. [definition of > Automatic Call Distribution from Northern Telecom DMS*-100 docs] I don't know if {Automatic,Universal} Call Direction is the same as Automatic Call Distribution or not, but I do know a little history about the origins of Automatic Call Distribution. Long ago in the early days of digital PBX's, when features were features and bugs were everywhere, there came a wonderous feature called a "Hunt Group". When a call came into a Hunt Group, the PBX would do a linear search, starting always at the head of a defined list of extensions, and offer the call to the 1st extension it found that wasn't busy. This method would give many calls to the extensions at the start of the list and few calls to those at the end of the list. To help alleviate this problem, vendors came up with "Distribution Groups". This method used a circular queue, and after an extension took a call, it would move to the end of the queue. Both these methods had the problem of offering a call to an extension when the person wasn't at their desk. ROLM invented the idea of ACD; they associated "states" with the extensions (Available, meaning the ext. could take calls, and Unavailable, meaning the ext. could NOT take calls). The routing could be done in one of three ways: Hunt Groups, Distribution Groups, or by Longest Time Available. Statistics on the agent's performance (time Avail., time Unavail., calls answered, etc.) were also kept. Also, I _think_ that queueing calls when everybody was busy was first offered with ACD. ACD has advanced a _looooong_ way since those humble beginnings; I could give more detail, but that would be a different message. *DMS is a trademark of Northern Telecom. Kevin Collins | Aspect Telecommunications USENET: ...uunet!aspect!kevinc | San Jose, CA Voice: +1 408 441 2489 | My opinions are mine alone.