manage- carrier providing calls to the PABX. This information can indicate ment decisions are made from real time display information and a need to add more trunk circuits in some areas to reduce blocking, from detailed reports produced directly by the ACD. Often the and to remove trunk circuits in other areas because of low usage. It decisions must be made and actions taken very quickly to react to can also be used to find abuses, such as excessive calls to selected quickly changing traffic patterns. Longer term decisions can be extensions. made from the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and call detail reports Call management in the corporate environment network area is produced by the ACD. directed at reducing the costs for the network facilities and the costs Basic ACD design is founded on the management of queues. per call. Privately owned network facilities, leased, public and Incoming calls enter a queue and wait if servers are not available. If common carrier services may all be used at times, with changes servers are available but there are no incoming calls, then the servers made to obtain the lowest overall cost based on the tariffs for the wait in queue. A very typical goal is to connect 85% of all incoming call volumes offered to the network. The other area for call manage- calls to servers within 20 seconds. Real time display information ment attention is to reduce employee abuse and eliminate non-em- and reports produced every 15 - 60 minutes show management how ployee usage of the network. close to this goal actual performance is. If performance is better than Calls are offered to the network area from directly connected 85%, then staff may be re-assigned to other functions. If perfor- PABXs and ACDs, plus from public and common carrier networks. mance is less than the goal, then additional staff may be required. Direct access to the network may also be provided from carrier Call management in the ACD is often divided between staff networks SO that employees on travel or at home may perform managers 