About
Call Queue, also known as automatic call distribution (ACD), is an application that routes incoming calls to a specific group of users. Before connecting to a user, callers are placed inside a queue, allowing users to deal with incoming calls without losing other callers to a busy signal or unanswered phones. While waiting, callers will hear music and/or pre-recorded announcements.
Call queues are often found in offices that handle high-volume customer calls from callers who do not need to speak with a specific person but who require assistance from any of multiple persons, like sales representatives and or support staff. Call queues have a wide range of features.
By default, agents are logged into the queue. They can log themselves in and out. While they are logged out, they are still agents of the queue and will show for example in reports, but the system will not route calls to the agent. When an agent puts herself on do-not-disturb (DND), this agent is logged in however the system will also not route calls to the agent.
Agents are organized in pools. The agents in the primary pool are included unconditionally. The agents in the other pools are included when the condition for the pool is true. This makes it possible to add additional agents for example when waiting times are getting too long or all of the primary agents are logged out.
Creating a Call Queue
Configuring a Call Queue
Once a Call Queue has been created, you can customise and configure your Queue
Outbound Calling
The queue's Outbound Calling page allows the queue admin to set up outbound numbers for agent dialing. Once the outbound numbers have been configured for the queue, users can initiate calling using a star code or have the system start the calling (see below).
Agent Login/out
Extensions may be listed as agents of a call queue. In order to receive calls from the queue, they need to be logged in. After adding an agent to a call queue, the agents is logged in by default.
Agents can be logged in to one queue and logged out from another queue. Login and logout is only available for call queues, not for ring groups or other account types that might send calls to an extension.
Agents can use one of several methods to control their login status:
Phone Buttons
This method allows users to use a on their phone to log in and out of queue. The busy lamp field on the phone will show if the extension is logged in or not.
Buttons can be configured to toggle login for all queues or for a specific queue. When a queue is used in the button definition, the button toggles the login status only for that queue. Otherwise it will toggle the status only for that queue.
WebRTC - User Portal
When using the WebRTC, the system will prompt the user after logging in or logging out from the user front end for the desired queue status.
The login status can be set in when clicking on the queue symbol.
Star Codes
While phone buttons are only available on devices that support busy lamp fields, dialing star codes is available for any device. Unless changed by the administrator, the code for logging in is *64 and the code for logging out is *65.
In order to log in or out of a specific queue, the queue number needs to be appended to the star code. For example, *65447 will log the agent out from queue 447. If there is no queue specified, the code will log the agent in or out from all queues.