Calling Queues

If you need a solution to manage incoming calls and have customers waiting on the line until an agent picks up the call, you can create a Calling Queue entry. This will allow you to have multiple calls on hold, queued by first-in, first-out order until agents become available.

Queues consist of:

• Incoming calls being placed in the Queue
• Agents that answer the Queue
• A strategy for how to handle the Queue and divide calls between agents
• Music played while waiting in the Queue
• Agents are the extensions or users answering the calls that have been placed into a specific queue. An agent logs in, indicating that they are now ready to take calls. An inbound call is sent to a queue, which is then transferred to an available agent.

Click on the Calling Queues menu Option

We will now see a list of Calling Queues that are set up on this Client. This list will include which agents are members of that Queue and those current agents’ current state.

You can edit or delete any Queue by highlighting the Queue and pressing the edit or delete buttons at the top.

Pressing the Add button will allow us to create a new Queue

For each Queue, we have the following settings broken into the following tabs

• General
• Advanced
• Timing
• Capacity
• Announce
• Periodic Ann.
• Screen Pop

General (tab)

• Identification
  • Name – Name for this Queue
  • Department – Optional Department this Queue belongs to. See the Department section of this documentation for more information on how Departments are used.
• Agents
  • + Add Agent – Agents who are part of this Queue and can Log In, Log Out, Pause, and Unpause
• General Options
  • Strategy – Here, you can pick which Ring Strategy the Queue will use to try and call the agents.
    • Ringall – Will ring all agents logged into the Queue and not paused and not on a active call
    • Leastrecent – Ring the single-agent who least recently hung up a call in this Queue
    • Fewest calls – Ring the single-agent with the fewest completed calls in this Queue. 
    • Random – Will pick a random agent to call, and if they do not answer in the Agent Timeout time, try another random agent until the Queue Timeout is met.
    • rrmemory – Take turns ringing each Agent while remembers where the last pass was left off.
    • wrandom – Ring a random agent, but uses the Agent’s penalty when calculating their metric (low penalty = high chance of ringing)
  • Auto Fill – If enabled and you have more than one caller in Queue waiting for an agent, the system will attempt to deliver more than one call at a time to available agents. If you disable this, the system will only try to find a free agent for one caller at a time.
  • Queue Timeout – How long in seconds the caller can wait in Queue to have their call answered before sending the caller to the Fail-over Destination
  • Queue Weight – If an agent belongs to more than 1 Queue, the Queue with a higher weight will attempt to deliver the call to agents with queues that have a higher weight.
  • Ring Mode – If enabled, ringing will be played versus Music On Hold
  • Pick a music on hold group – What MOH group of files to play while a caller is waiting on hold. See the MOH section for more information on how to control MOH files.
  • Prefix – Caller ID Name prefix that will be added to all inbound calls when ringing the Agent.
  • Ringtone – Assign a distinctive ringtone to the queue.
  • Inbound Caller ID – Inbound Caller ID rule, which will apply to either caller name or number. This setting will override any other Caller ID settings.
• Fail-over Destination
  • Destination – Destination to route the caller to if the call is not answered before the Queue Timeout setting above.
• Destination on press a key
  • Destination – Destination to route caller too if they press any key on their phone while on hold. This destination only works if you have a Periodic Announcements set as defined below and only works while that announcement is being played.

Advanced (tab)

• Auto Pause – If an agent does not answer a queue call, we can auto-pause that Agent based on the options below.
• Auto Pause Delay – If using auto-pause above by default, an agent missing a single queue call will kick in auto-pause. Here you can set a delay that says the Agent must have been idle for X seconds since they last accepted a queue call before they will be auto paused.
• Ring In Use – If enabled, the Queue will send an agent on an active call, an additional attempt of a new call. If disabled, the Queue will attempt not to send additional calls to agents on active queue calls.
• Allow Forward – If a user has call forwarding enabled and this option is checked, the Queue will follow the user’s call forwarding settings.
• Shared Last Call – If enabled, this will allow the system to honor wrap up times across multiple queues by sharing the last call info of agents across all queues for agents who are logged into more than one Queue at a time.
• Use Company CallerID – If calling an agent is an External number and not an Extension on the system, checking this box will force the Caller ID to be the companies Global Caller ID, defined in the Settings module outline here. If this is not enabled, the system will set the Caller ID as the incoming caller’s Caller ID information.
• Mark Calls as Answered elsewhere – The members of the Queue will get this message when a call has been answered by another member.

Timing (tab)

• Agent Timeout – How long to ring the Agent for in seconds before trying the next Agent or Group of agents based on the Ring Strategy as defined above.
• Retry Delay – How long to wait between trying a new agent in seconds after the Agent Timeout above is met.
• Connection Delay – Do you want to add a delay in seconds after an agent answers an incoming queue call before connecting the caller to the Agent.
• Wrap Up Time – After an Agent has hung up with a queued caller, how long in seconds do we want to wait before trying to send that Agent another queue call.

Capacity (tab)

• Max Callers – Maximum number of callers who are allowed to be waiting in the Queue for an agent. 0 means unlimited. If set to a number, and that number is met, any new callers trying to join the Queue will be routed to the Fail-Over Destination of that Queue.
• Join Empty – Can a caller join a queue if it has no agents logged in to the Queue. If not enabled and a caller tries to join a queue with no agents logged in, the caller will be routed to the Fail-Over Destination of the Queue.
• Leave When Empty – If all agents log out of the Queue and the Queue still has callers waiting in Queue enabling, this will cause all abandoned callers to be routed to the Fail-Over Destination of the Queue once all agents have logged out of the Queue.

Announce (tab) – This option will play to the callers waiting in queue things like their Estimated Hold Time and their current position in Queue.

• Announce Frequency – How often in seconds should we announce the below settings.
• Announce Hold Time – Each time this announcement runs based on the frequency defined above, do you want to inform the caller of the estimated hold time.
  • Yes – Setting to yes will have it play the estimated hold time each time the Announcement Frequency runs.
  • No – Setting to No will have it never play the estimated hold time.
  • Once – Setting to One will only announce the estimated hold time the first time the announcement happens and will not announce the hold time each frequency after that.
• Announce Position – Here, we can define if we want to announce the caller’s position in the Queue based on the Frequency settings above.
  • Yes – Will announce to the caller their current position in the Queue each time based on the Announce Frequency above.
  • No – Will never announce to the caller their current position in Queue.
  • Limit – Will only announce the caller’s position in Queue if their position is below the Announce Position Limit set below.
  • More – Behaves like Yes option above except if the Position of the Caller is higher than the Announce Position Limit below the system will only say there are more than X callers waiting in Queue ahead of you with X being the Announce Position Limit below.
• Announce Position Limit – A numeric value used with the Announce Position setting above when set to Limit or More.

Periodic Ann. (tab) – This option will allow playing custom periodic announcements for callers waiting in Queue. Periodic announcements are played only when there are two and more users in Queue.

• Announcement – Pick which announcement you want playing to the callers on a period basis. The drop-down of Announcements is controlled through the Announcement module on your WCP, as documented here.
• Frequency in seconds – How often in seconds should this announcement be played.
• Relative frequency – By default, the frequency in seconds above will take that setting and subtract the length of your announcement. If this is enabled, it will take the frequency in seconds and add on the announcement length on how often to play the announcement to callers.

Screen Pop (tab)

Available variables to use in the URL:

• {{callerid_number}} = CallerID number of the originator of the call that is arriving to this queue
• {{callerid_name}} = CallerID name of the originator of the call that is arriving to this queue
• {{extension}} = the number of the Local Extension user receiving the call and ringing
• {{extension_name}} = the name of the Local Extension user receiving the call and ringing
• {{did}} = the number that the originator of the call that is arriving to this queue originally dialed
• {{wait_sec}} = how long, in seconds, the caller waited in the queue
• {{queue_name}} = name of the queue where the call is arriving to (this queue)
• {{queue_extnum}} = number of the queue where the call is arriving to (this queue)
• {{queue_entry_position}} = entry positinon that this call arrived to within the queue

Screen Pop Type – Enable or disable Screen Pops for when receiving an incoming call from this Queue. If enabled (setting this parameter to “url”), users working in the Call Panel will receive a screen pop when the call is ringing or answered (depending on your configuration).

When – Define the moment the screen pop will launch, either when the call starts “ringing” or when it gets “answered”

URL – The URL that will be opened when the screen pop launches. This URL can contain call variables so that the webpage for the exact correct resource gets automatically displayed when the screen pop triggers.

Allow User Override – This will allow end users to configure the Screen Pops settings from within their Call Panel.