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A partner is an organization whose people do work in your help desk: a BPO, an outsourcer, a sponsor bank. In Rulebase the partner rides on the agent, not the ticket: each agent belongs to at most one partner, and a ticket counts as that partner’s when one of its agents does. Use partners to compare an outsourcer against your in-house team. Partners also scope access. A member’s access can be limited to a partner, so a team lead at your BPO signs into your Rulebase and sees their own people and tickets rather than everybody’s.
The Scope field on invitations and memberships only appears once you have set a Partner custom field on this page. Creating partners by hand does not unlock it, so if you are here to restrict what an outsourced reviewer can see, do the Configure step below even if you intend to assign people manually.

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Before you start

  • Partners live on the Partners tab of Settings > People, beside Members, Invitations, Agents, Teams, and Roles.
  • You need an admin role. Without it the tab is read-only: no Create partner, no Configure, no way to add or remove people.
  • For automatic assignment, you need a dropdown custom field on your people whose options are the partner names. Only dropdown fields work; a text, number, date, or yes/no field is offered in the picker, saves without complaint, and then never files anyone.

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Create a partner

  1. Click Create partner.
  2. Enter the Name. This is what appears in filters, routing rule conditions, and dashboard breakdowns, so use the name your team says out loud.
  3. Optionally add Domains: type a domain and press Enter for each one. They are recorded against the partner and shown in the list; they are a label for your own reference rather than an access rule.
  4. Choose the Type. The options depend on your organization’s own type, so a fintech is offered Sponsor bank, BPO, and Other, while other organizations see the full set.
  5. Click Create partner.
Create partner dialog with a name, one domain entered as a tag, and BPO chosen as the type The list then shows each partner with its type, domains, and a People count. Click a row to open it. Partners tab listing three BPO partners with their domains and people counts, beside Create partner and Configure buttons

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Let the roster maintain itself

To keep assignments current as an outsourcer’s headcount changes, point Rulebase at a field instead of assigning agents by hand.
  1. Click Configure.
  2. Under Partner custom field, search for the dropdown field on your people that names their partner and select it. Fields synced from a help desk are listed with their source in brackets, so a Zendesk dropdown works here as readily as one you created yourself.
  3. Click Save.
Set up partners dialog with a Partner dropdown field selected as the partner custom field From then on, setting that field on an agent files them under the matching partner, and Rulebase creates the partner itself the first time it sees an option it has no partner for, named after the option’s label. Clearing the field unassigns them.
The sync happens when an agent’s field value is saved, not retroactively. If your people already carry values in that field, re-save them, or assign the first batch by hand; existing values do not file themselves.

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Add and remove people by hand

Manual assignment works alongside the field, and it is the quicker path for a handful of people.
  1. Open the partner.
  2. Under People, click Add.
  3. Search for the person and select them. They are added immediately.
  4. To take someone out, click the × at the end of their row.
Bluewave Support partner page with a BPO badge and a People table listing three agents with their email addresses Removing a person unassigns them from the partner. It does not remove them from your agent roster, and their historic evaluations keep the partner that was recorded at the time.

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Scope a member to their partner

Once a partner custom field is configured, Specific partners becomes one of the scope choices for new invitations and for people who already have access. Invite members covers the invite dialog. For someone who is already a member:
  1. Open the Members tab of Settings > People.
  2. Click their row to open Edit membership.
  3. Set Scope to Specific partners, then pick the partners they should reach. Entire organization, Specific groups, and Specific teams are the alternatives.
  4. Click Save changes.
If Scope is greyed out, look at the Role above it: the control is disabled while the role is Administrator or Agent, because neither can be narrowed. Edit membership dialog for a member with the Manager role, Scope set to Specific partners, and one partner selected The Members and Invitations tabs both grow a Scope column once partners are configured; use it to audit who can see everything. A member scoped to one or more partners can reach only:
  • Agents belonging to those partners
  • Teams those partners’ agents sit in
  • Tickets where one of those partners worked
  • QA evaluations whose scored agent belongs to those partners
The restriction is enforced on the data, not just hidden in the interface, and it fails closed: a membership scoped to partners with nothing selected sees nothing rather than everything. Two roles ignore scope: administrators always have full access, and agents are always limited to themselves. See Roles and permissions.
Deleting a partner unassigns its people and drops it from any membership scoped to it. A member scoped only to that partner is left scoped to nothing, which means an empty Rulebase rather than an error message. Re-scope those memberships in the same sitting.

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Where partners show up afterwards

Filtering. Partner is a filter dimension on interaction and evaluation lists. Filter by team, partner, brand, and channel explains why it sits under a Ticket heading despite describing the agent. Routing. Partner is available as a routing rule condition, so you can send one outsourcer’s low scores to a different reviewer than your own team’s. See Create routing rules. Reporting. Dashboard charts accept a Partner filter where their data source supports it, which is how a per-partner quality view gets built. See Manage dashboard charts.