1. In a communication center having plural agent stations, each agent station comprising at least a personal computer with a video display unit (PC/VDU), a communication switching apparatus for routing incoming communications to individual ones of the agent stations, a status software application for monitoring status of agent stations by software-defined states, wherein one of the agent stations may simultaneously be active in two or more of the defined states, and a routing software application, a method for reporting status of agent stations by the status application to the routing application comprising the steps of: (a) monitoring by the status application the active states of agent stations according to the defined states; (b) requesting the state of an individual agent station from the status application by the routing application, and providing with the request a status priority indication (SPI) of active defined states of interest; and (c) providing to the routing application, by the status application, the active state of the individual agent station having the highest priority in the SPI provided by the requesting application.