US 8,266,227 B2Granted

Method, system and program product for assigning a responder to a requester in a collaborative environment

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorsCharles Steven Lingafelt, David Paul Merrill, John Elbert Moore, Jr.

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Abstract

A method, system and program product for assigning a resource to a client in a collaborative environment. The method includes defining, using a tool, a threshold value for collaborative attributes for each resource responding to one or more clients and calculating on a periodic basis, using the tool, an updated value for the collaborative attributes for each resource. The method further includes comparing, upon receipt of a collaboration request, the updated value with the threshold value defined for collaborative attributes for a first resource and, if the updated value is less than the threshold value for the first resource, connecting the client to the first resource for establishing a collaborative session. If not, repeating comparing the updated value with the threshold value for the collaborative attributes defined for a next resource and connecting the client to the next resource whose updated value is less than the threshold value.

Claims2

Dependent claims

A method of managing access to first and second support persons, the first support person currently engaged in one or more chat sessions with one or more first customers respectively, the second support person currently engaged in one or more chat sessions with one or more second customers respectively, the method comprising the steps of:

a computer determining a first workload of the first support person based in part on an amount of text entered by the one or more first customers into the one or more respective chat session with the first support person and determining a second workload of the second support person based in part on an amount of text entered by the one or more second customers into the one or more respective chat session with the second support person;
and
the computer receiving a request by a third customer to initiate another chat session with a support person, and in response, the computer determining which of the first and second support persons has a lesser amount of workload, and based on the determination of which of the first and second support persons has a lesser amount of workload, the computer initiating a chat session between the third customer and the first or second support person which has the lesser amount of workload;
and wherein a greater amount of text correlates to a greater workload than a lesser amount of text, for both the first and second support persons.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.