Upgrading to Agent Workspace
Overview
Since successfully launching Agent Workspace in March 2022, administrators have requested guidance on best practices for adopting this new agent experience. This guide has been designed to help you successfully upgrade agents and supervisors.
Applies To
- 8x8 Contact Center
- Agent Workspace
Details
Agent Console (the “classic” 8x8 Contact Center Agent Experience) end-of-life (EOL) date has been announced as Jan 31, 2023. 8x8 is helping customers get ready for this change by enabling them to switch to Agent Workspace.
Agent Workspace is Generally Available worldwide, so administrators can upgrade at any time.
If you’ve received notifications from us about an upgrade preview, then from the day of your upgrade, when your agents and supervisors log into the 8x8 Contact Center for the first time each day, they will be presented with the new Agent Workspace experience. Your agents will be able to keep this experience or change back to Agent Console (see this guide for details). During the day they can switch between either experience whenever they want. If an agent or supervisor finishes their shift using Agent Console, then the following day they will be automatically presented with Agent Workspace again.
Admin Action Required
Stage I - Readiness & Familiarization
- If you’re not familiar with Agent Workspace, check out this one-pager on Agent Workspace which provides an overview of how this experience was developed with your users in mind and provides insight as to some of the key benefits.
- To help ensure your environment is ready for Agent Workspace, review the system requirements section of the 8x8 Agent Workspace overview document.
- To become familiar with the layout of the new user interface, see the Agent Workspace Tour.
Stage 2 - Orientation & Evaluation
- Enable a test user to use Agent Workspace by reviewing the activate 8x8 Agent Workspace document and following the steps in the activate 8x8 Agent Workspace for an individual agent section for the test user.
- Log in as that user (see here for help logging in as an agent) and explore the user interface, including making an outbound call and responding to test chats/emails if possible.
Stage 3 - Socialization
- If you have staff who are responsible for training, connect them with our Agent Workspace self-paced training guide, available for free for all customers.
- Share with your supervisors and agents our 4-minute getting started with Agent Workspace video.
- Make our 88-second guide available for all contact center users via a desktop or intranet shortcut.
- Gather stakeholders together, evaluate Agent Workspace, perform a gap analysis and plan the upgrade and communications with colleagues.
Stage 4 - Upgrade
Feedback from our customers who have already upgraded tells us that Agent Workspace feels intuitive and easy to adopt for agents and supervisors that are already familiar with Agent Console. We anticipate that your users will also find it simple to adopt Agent Workspace (especially if they have watched the Getting Started with Agent Workspace video). Below is a suggested best-practice guide for a cautious upgrade path:
- Recruit a number of early adopters to switch to Agent Workspace. Socialize the recommended resources above with them.
- Set the early adopters’ agent experience to be “Flexible”. This means they can get used to the new experience but have the ability to change back to Agent Console if they experience any issues. These early adopters will become subject matter experts and test that Agent Workspace supports all your usual contact center workflows.
- Following the early adopter stage, identify teams that can be upgraded, ensuring that early adopters are embedded within the team if possible.
- Roll out the upgrade in a phased approach, using either a single team or groups of teams at a time.
- If there are any challenges for certain teams to upgrade, we recommend leaving until last so you have the majority of your staff upgraded, and have a working knowledge of the experience. Support staff can now focus on challenging teams with a mature knowledge of implementation.