iService is a platform for interacting with customers and getting work done. Most of the work you do in iService will be in the form of a conversation. For example, a customer might ask a question via email and you might provide the answer via an agent response. Or, you might initiate the conversation with an agent email. These conversations are stored in the iService database as interactions organized by topics.
This concept is depicted below.
The core concept of iService
Contacts – every interaction is associated with a contact. This is usually a customer, but can be any entity with an email address or login. For example, you might receive automated notifications from other systems as well as from people. iService will create a contact for every incoming question if one doesn't already exist.
Agents – agents are contacts that provide answers. Their user type grants them access to various features that are appropriate for their role. Learn more about configuring agent user types in Settings – User Types. Agents are given skills to determine the types of questions they can answer.
Topics – are used to categorize questions and answers. They control routing and queuing of incoming messages, and are used as a topology for the iService knowledge base. Skills are associated with topics to limit the agents allowed to provide answers. Only agents with all of the required skills are routed questions from the topic.
Metrics – all of the interaction and contact data are available for detailed metrics and KPIs.
