If you receive a particularly complex or unique request, you may want to collaborate with someone outside the KANA Response system to answer the customer inquiry; you can send the message to the third party with your request for comments.
A collaborated message can be sent to an infinite number of people outside the KANA Response system as long as it is sent back to KANA Response from the original recipient of the collaborated message and within the timeout period. For example, an agent collaborates with a webmaster. The webmaster forwards the message to the database administrator. The database administrator forwards the message to the Chief Executive Officer. The Chief Executive Officer replies to the database administrator. The database administrator forwards the response to the webmaster and the webmaster sends a reply to KANA Response.
When the third party receives the collaboration request from you, the third party uses a standard e-mail program to send the necessary information to you. You review and personalize the message before sending the answer to the customer. Make sure that you delete any portion of the explanatory template text that you do not want the customer to see. A copy of the completed response is kept in the KANA database.
If the third party does not respond within the time set by the KANA Response administrator, the message comes back to you, so that you can take other action to get an answer to your customer.
Standard collaboration templates can be written and entered into your system. By selecting the Collaborate action in the Recipient list, the comments in the response templates are inserted into your message to the third party when you send it. Your KANA administrator or workflow manager should create response templates before you send a message for collaboration. If not, the person who receives the message may not understand why the message was sent and what to do next.
The only difference between collaborating and answering is that you address the e-mail to your collaborator instead of returning it to the sender. See How To Answer a Message for the primary information about answering a message.
Note: The Forward, Collaborate, Redirect, and To actions are mutually exclusive; if you choose one, you cannot choose the others. For example, if you want to collaborate on a message with your company’s accountant, after you select the accountant in the Address Book and click the Collaborate button, the only available actions are Cc and Bcc.
How do I collaborate on a message?
Learn about possible collaborate scenarios.
How do I reject a message or return it to the agent?
How do I view customer history?
How do I review the source of a message?