Contact Center Agent and Supervisor User Manual

New task-by-task manual

The User Manual covers the same tasks one page at a time, with a screencast for each. Each task below links to its page there.

This is the task-oriented user manual for the two people who operate the Contact Center every day:

• The agent, who signs in, takes calls from a queue, works outbound records, and wraps up each contact with a disposition.
• The supervisor (manager), who prepares the routing environment, watches the live dashboard, and monitors, whispers to, or barges into live calls.

Each task below is written as an independent, searchable how-to with its own heading, prerequisites, and numbered steps, so you can jump straight to the one action you need. For the concepts and architecture behind these tasks, see Agents, Queues & Dialer and Agent Desktop & Dashboard.

Where the audio lives

The Telephony soft phone is where call audio and the device controls (dial pad, hold, mute, transfer, hang up) live. The Agent Workspace (Interaction Center → My workspace) adds the CRM context, work offers, and wrap-up. Keep both open during a shift.

Roles and permissions

You are a…	Grant the role/permission	It lets you…
Agent	ContactCenterSignIntoQueues	Sign in to queues/campaigns, change your own presence, accept/decline offers, and complete work in My workspace.
Supervisor	Supervisor role (includes MonitorContactCenter and ContactCenterInterveneInCalls)	Open the Live dashboard, listen to, whisper to, or barge into live calls, and message agents. ContactCenterInterveneInCalls adds taking a call over, ending, transferring and recording it, and setting an agent's state.
Administrator	ManageContactCenter (everything below), or individually ManageContactCenterQueues, ManageContactCenterAgents, ManageContactCenterSkills, ManageContactCenterBusinessHours, ManageContactCenterVoiceMedia, ManageContactCenterDialer	Create queues and entry points, skills, reason codes, agent entitlements, business hours, voice media, and dialer profiles. There is no separate screen for creating agents: an agent is an Orchard user with the agent permission.

Confirm your role with your administrator before starting. When the optional Agent Entitlements feature is enabled, agents only see the queues and campaigns they are entitled to; without it, any agent may sign in to any queue or campaign. Supervisors only see monitoring actions the active voice provider actually supports.

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Part 1 — Agent tasks

Everything in this part happens in the floating Telephony soft phone and the My workspace desktop.

How to sign in to a queue or campaign

Prerequisites: the ContactCenterSignIntoQueues permission and, when the Agent Entitlements feature is enabled, at least one queue or campaign entitlement assigned by your administrator.

You sign in from the soft phone, not from My workspace; the workspace only shows a chip for each queue you are signed in to.

1. Open the Telephony soft phone.
2. In the soft phone, open the Work tab.
3. In Select queue(s) and/or Select campaign(s), choose the memberships you want to receive work from. When entitlements are enforced, you can only pick memberships you are entitled to.
4. Click Sign in. Your presence changes to Available and the Work tab lists every queue and campaign you are now signed in to.
5. If inbound calls are already waiting in one of those queues, routing offers you the next queued call immediately after sign-in.

To leave a single membership, use its Sign out action; to leave everything, use Sign out of all. Sign-in and sign-out happen over the real-time hub, so the page does not reload.

See Agent Workspace.

How to set your presence to Available

Prerequisites: you are signed in to at least one queue or campaign.

1. In the soft-phone header, open the presence dropdown.
2. Choose Available.

Returning to Available immediately asks routing to offer any call already waiting in your signed-in queues, so you do not have to wait for a new inbound event.

See Agent Workspace.

How to request a break

Prerequisites: you are signed in.

1. Open the presence dropdown in the soft-phone header.
2. Choose Break. While work holds you, the same item reads Request break.

A break is system-approved:

• If nothing is being routed to you, the break is granted immediately and your presence becomes Break.
• If an offer or call is already in flight, the request is kept pending; you finish the current work and the break is granted automatically afterward.

While in RequestBreak or Break you are not eligible for new routing decisions. Return to Available when you are ready for work again.

See Agent Workspace.

How to go not-ready with a reason code

Prerequisites: your administrator has defined reason codes under Interaction Center → Management → Agent states.

1. Open the presence dropdown.
2. Pick a reason code (for example Lunch, Coaching, or Team meeting).

The reason sets your presence to the state the administrator mapped it to (for example Meeting or Training) and records the reason on your profile and in the audit trail. A reason mapped to Break submits a break request instead: the break starts at once when you are idle, or when your current work ends. If no reason codes are configured, the dropdown falls back to the built-in not-ready states. Available and Offline are always listed.

See Agent States.

How to receive and accept an inbound call from a queue

Prerequisites: you are signed in to the queue and your presence is Available.

1. When routing selects you, a ringing offer card appears showing the customer (name or number), the source queue, and a countdown.
2. Click Accept before the countdown ends.
3. The reservation is accepted, the media connects, and the work moves into your active interaction panel. (Until then the panel reads No active interactions right now.)
   • On providers that ring your own device, your device rings and you answer there.
   • On server-side delivery (for example the bundled Asterisk path), the call is connected during accept and stays controllable from the soft phone.
4. If you do nothing before the countdown ends, the offer is revoked and re-routed to another agent.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to decline an offer

Prerequisites: a ringing offer card is visible.

1. Click Decline on the ringing offer card.
2. The offer is released and immediately re-offered to the next available agent.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to put a call on hold and resume it

Prerequisites: you are on an active call and the provider advertises the Hold capability.

1. In the soft phone, click Hold. The caller is placed on hold.
2. Click Resume to return to the caller.

Hold only holds the call. To place a second call, use Add call (see How to conference two calls).

If the provider does not advertise Hold, the button is hidden.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to mute and unmute

Prerequisites: an active call and provider Mute capability.

1. Click Mute to stop sending your microphone audio.
2. Click Unmute to resume.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to send DTMF digits (dial pad)

Prerequisites: an active call and provider SendDigits capability.

1. Open the soft-phone keypad.
2. Press the digits you need (for example an IVR menu selection). Each press sends a DTMF tone to the far end.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to transfer a call

Prerequisites: an active call and provider Transfer capability.

1. Click Transfer on the soft phone. The transfer panel opens inside the phone, in place of the keypad; the back arrow returns to the keypad.

2. Search the directory by name or extension and pick an entry, or type where to send the call. Like the keypad, the panel has a Transfer to an extension / Transfer to a phone number toggle under the field:

   • In number mode the field is the keypad's country-flag field: the number is read and checked the way the keypad checks one, so an incomplete number and the phone system's own number are refused before anything is sent.
   • In extension mode type the colleague's extension (for example 2); it is sent as an extension, never dialed as a phone number.

   Picking someone from the directory works in either mode.

3. When the call offers both, choose Blind (the call is sent straight to them) or Warm (you speak to them first). A call that supports only one shows no choice.

4. Click Transfer (or press Enter).

Transferring a Contact Center call

When the call came to you through the Contact Center (a queue, a direct line or a campaign), the Contact Center carries the transfer rather than the phone provider, and the panel lists:

• Agents — every other agent with their extension and presence. Only agents shown as Available can be picked; the others are listed so you can see why.
• Queues — every enabled queue, with how many callers are waiting in it.
• Outside numbers — the approved external destinations, when you have the Transfer Contact Center calls externally permission. A number that is not on that list can be typed only when an administrator turned on Let agents transfer to numbers that are not on this list (Settings → Contact Center). Emergency, premium-rate and the contact center's own numbers are always refused.

An extension typed in extension mode is the agent it rings: the transfer (blind or warm) goes to that agent exactly as if you had picked them from the list. An extension that belongs to nobody, or to someone who is not a Contact Center agent, is refused with the reason.

Blind transfer

• To an agent: the caller hears the queue's hold music while the call rings on that agent's phone as a normal offer. If they do not answer within the ring window, the caller goes to that agent's voicemail.
• To a queue: the caller joins the queue, keeping at least the priority they had, and is offered to the next available agent; with nobody free they hear the queue's treatment.
• To an outside number: the call leaves the contact center and is connected to that number from the platform's own number.

In every case the call leaves your phone at once and you go into wrap-up, or straight back to ready for a direct call, exactly as when a call ends.

Warm (consult) transfer

1. Choose Warm, pick an available agent or an outside number, and click Transfer. The caller is put on hold with the queue's hold music and the destination is rung. The panel shows Calling…; you can Cancel transfer at any time.
2. When they answer, the panel shows Talking to…: you are speaking to them privately while the caller holds.
3. Click Complete transfer to join the caller to them and leave the call, or Cancel transfer to drop them and return to the caller.

If the person you consulted hangs up or does not answer within 30 seconds, the caller comes straight back to you and the panel says so. If the caller hangs up during the consult, the consult ends and the person you consulted is released. A queue cannot be consulted; send the call to a queue with a blind transfer.

Provider differences

Transfer support is provider-dependent. The bundled Asterisk provider supports blind transfer and a two-call conference but rejects warm (consultative) transfer. Telnyx supports every Contact Center transfer above, including the consult. Only the actions the active provider supports are shown.

On Telnyx, a number you dial from the keypad is connected by the phone system: your phone rings its own line for a moment and answers it by itself, and the number is dialed from there. Such a call can be transferred -- blind or warm, to a number or an extension -- and merged like any other. If the phone system cannot connect the call that way -- for example your phone is still registering -- the phone dials the number itself, and that call cannot be transferred or merged: the transfer panel says so instead of offering a target, and its line in Active calls shows a disabled checkbox.

Transferring a keypad call on Telnyx

• Blind: the caller is put on hold (they hear the hold tone) and the destination is rung. The panel shows Calling… with Cancel transfer. When the destination answers, the call is handed to them and leaves your phone. If they decline or do not answer within 30 seconds, the panel says so and the caller is still with you, on hold -- click Resume. If you hung up in the meantime, a colleague's caller is sent to that colleague's voicemail.
• Warm: the caller is put on hold and your phone rings a second, consult call by itself; you talk to the destination on it. Once they answer, click Complete transfer to hand them the caller, or Cancel transfer to drop them and take the caller off hold. If they hang up first, the caller is still with you, on hold. If the caller hangs up during the consult, the consult carries on as an ordinary call. Hanging up the consult after they answered hands them the caller, as on most phone systems.
• Receiving one: a call a colleague hands you rings your phone with Answer and Decline, showing the caller's number and Transferred by and the colleague's name. Declining it gives the caller back to the colleague. Once answered it is an ordinary call on your phone: you can hold it, transfer it again or merge it.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to conference two calls

Prerequisites: two active calls (for example the original caller on hold plus a second call) and provider Merge capability.

1. With two or more calls up, the soft phone's Active calls list on the keypad shows a checkbox beside every call and a Merge calls button, which stays disabled until two or more calls are ticked.
2. Tick the calls to join, or tick Select all. The button then reads Merge 2 calls, Merge 3 calls and so on, and the line beside it names the calls it joins.
3. Click it. The calls are merged; no provider call id is required.
4. The conference is listed under its own Conference heading with its participants. Each participant has its own hang-up button, which ends only that participant's call.

To get the second call in the first place, click Add call during a call:

• The current call is put on hold. The keypad opens with an empty number field and the held call is listed above it.
• Type the number and press Enter (or click the green call button).
• Changed your mind? Click Back to call or press Escape to take the held call off hold.

To add another call to a running conference, tick any participant of the conference and the new call; the button reads Add to conference, and the new call joins the same conference rather than starting a second one.

Leaving a conference or ending it for everyone. In a conference, Hang up reads Leave: you drop out and everyone else stays connected to each other. A Contact Center caller is never disconnected by you leaving; their call stays on your phone. If only one other person is left, Hang up simply ends the call, so nobody is left alone on the line. To end the call for everyone, click End for all and confirm. The confirmation starts on Keep talking, so pressing Enter does not end the call by accident.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to end a call (hang up)

Prerequisites: an active call.

1. Click the red Hang up to end the selected call. It sits with your own call controls: Mute, Hold and Keypad. The keypad stays closed during a call until you open it to send digits. With two or more calls up, End all (outlined in red, in the row with Transfer and Add call) ends every call after you confirm. In a conference, see leaving a conference or ending it for everyone.

When an answered queue or campaign call ends, a terminal provider event moves you from Busy to Wrap-up so you can complete after-call work. A direct call to you, or a call you dialed yourself, skips wrap-up and returns you to work.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

How to complete after-call work (wrap-up) and become available again

Prerequisites: the call has ended and you are in Wrap-up.

Wrap-up is not a timed auto-return — you control when it ends by completing the activity. The platform does cap it: after 15 minutes (a setting your administrator can change) you are released automatically, and the activity stays open.

1. In the active interaction panel, click Complete activity. This opens the shared Omnichannel completion page for the assigned activity.
2. Review the customer/contact context and open the customer record if details need correcting.
3. Review the activity details (campaign, channel, urgency, schedule, instructions, assignee).
4. Update the subject details captured by the activity's subject content type.
5. Choose a disposition from the list defined by the activity's subject flow. If the subject flow requires a disposition, completion is blocked until you pick one.
6. Add notes if needed and submit.

Completion records the wrap-up end time and returns you to a pending break if you requested one during the call; otherwise it returns you to Available so routing can offer the next call. This is what prevents a new call from arriving before after-call work is finished.

See Agent Workspace.

How to preview-dial a record

Prerequisites: you are signed in to a campaign loaded with a dialer profile that uses the Preview mode.

1. When preview work is assigned to you, the docked agent bar shows the offer (Preview — review then dial) with Dial and Skip, and the browser opens the assigned activity's Complete activity page so the record is ready (unless the page you are on has unsaved changes).
2. Review the customer and activity context before dialing.
3. Click Dial: the platform places the call for you, so you do not dial it yourself. Skip passes on the record.
4. Talk to the customer, then complete the activity with a disposition.

See Agent Workspace.

How to place a manual outbound call

Prerequisites: the soft phone is connected and the provider advertises Dial.

1. Open the soft-phone keypad.
2. Enter the destination in E.164 form (or select the country and type the national number — the field normalizes it).
3. Click Call. Use hold, mute, transfer, and hang up as needed during the call.

See Placing and Handling Calls.

What to expect in power and progressive (automated) dialing

Prerequisites: an administrator has enabled Contact Center Paced Dialing and loaded activities for your campaign with a Power or Progressive dialer profile, and you are signed in to that campaign. Automated pacing is compliance-gated.

In automated modes you do not press dial. When the pacer connects a customer and reserves you:

1. A work assignment arrives and its Complete activity page opens automatically.
2. Handle the conversation on the soft phone exactly like an inbound call.
3. Complete the activity with a disposition to return to Available for the next paced call.

Pacing, retry, do-not-call, and calling-window rules are enforced by the profile — see Dialer.

See Dialer Profiles.

How to protect sensitive data (credit cards) in a recording

Prerequisites: the Contact Center Call Recording feature, Allow agents to pause recording turned on (the Recording governance tab of Settings → Contact Center), the ContactCenterSecurePauseRecording permission, and a voice provider that can pause recording on the live call.

1. On the active interaction in My workspace, click Pause recording before the customer reads out the sensitive data. If your tenant requires a reason, enter one.
2. The interaction shows Recording paused for sensitive-data capture and the button becomes Resume recording.
3. Click Resume recording as soon as the customer has finished.

If you forget to resume, the platform resumes recording by itself after the tenant's maximum secure-pause window. While recording is paused, supervisors cannot listen, whisper, or barge. Every pause and resume is audited.

Automation can also bracket a step with the Start Call Recording and Stop Call Recording workflow tasks, and the Collect data securely control (Secure Data Capture feature) lets the customer type the value on a secure page instead of reading it out.

See Agent Workspace.

How to review your recent activity

Prerequisites: you have handled at least one interaction.

1. In the soft phone, open the Recent tab (inbound and outbound history), or use the Recent activity panel in My workspace.
2. Review the direction, outcome, and time of your last interactions before taking the next offer.

See Agent Workspace.

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Part 2 — Supervisor and manager tasks

Supervisors prepare the environment and monitor operations. The configuration screens live under Interaction Center → Management; the live tools live under Interaction Center → Live dashboard. For the full manager runbooks, see Agent Desktop & Dashboard.

How to create an inbound queue

Prerequisites: the ManageContactCenterQueues permission and the Work Distribution (Queues) feature enabled. Define any required Skills and Business hours first.

1. Go to Interaction Center → Management → Queues and click Add (create).
2. Give the queue a name. For inbound voice, point an inbound entry point at the queue and pick the number there.
3. Choose the routing strategy (longest-idle, round-robin, or least-busy) and, optionally, a sticky-agent preference.
4. Set the SLA threshold and the reservation timeout.
5. Add any required skills so routing only offers work to agents who have them.
6. Attach a business-hours calendar and choose the After-hours action: Hold in queue or Overflow.
7. Optionally set an overflow queue for long waits.
8. Save. Then create an Inbound entry point that maps the DID to this queue, and sign a skilled agent in to test.

See Queues and Queue Groups.

How to configure a dialer (dialing) profile

Prerequisites: the ManageContactCenterDialer permission and the Outbound Dialer feature. Power/Progressive modes also require Paced Dialing.

A dialer profile is a reusable set of dialing settings. It does not name a campaign or a queue: you pick the campaign together with the profile when you load dialer activities, and agents get the calls by signing in to that campaign.

1. Go to Interaction Center → Management → Dialer Profiles and click Add.
2. Choose the dialing mode: Preview, Power, or Progressive.
3. Choose the voice call provider. For Power, set Calls per agent (1 to 3), the only pacing setting.
4. On the Dialing card, set Max attempts and Retry delay (minutes) for the automated modes.
5. Configure the compliance settings: do-not-call/suppression and the allowed calling window.
6. Save.

See Dialer Profiles.

How to load dialer activities

Prerequisites: the ManageActivityBatches permission. Dialer activity loads require an existing dialer profile.

1. Go to Interaction Center → Management → Load Activities.
2. Click Add Activity Load and, in the creation dialog, select the source first:
   • Manual — activities assigned to the agents you pick.
   • Automatic — unassigned automated activities an AI profile works on its own.
   • Dialer — unassigned phone activities queued for the outbound dialer.
3. For a dialer load, choose the Dialer profile (it sets the dialing mode) and the Campaign. The campaign comes from the load, or from the subject's default campaign when you leave it empty; agents sign in to that campaign to get the calls.
4. Fill in the record filters and Save, then choose Actions > Load batch to run the load in the background.
5. The loaded activities become available to dialing according to the selected profile.

See Load Activities.

How to monitor the live dashboard (workload, queues, and productivity)

Prerequisites: the Supervisor role (or MonitorContactCenter), the Supervision & Live Dashboard feature, and an agent entitlement record of your own that lists the queues you supervise. The dashboard shows only the queues and campaigns on your own entitlement; without a record it is empty.

1. Open Interaction Center → Live dashboard. It connects to the real-time hub and refreshes automatically, so it can be left open on a wallboard.
2. Read the three sections:
   • Summary metrics — total items waiting across all queues, available agents, total agents, and queue count.
   • Queue tiles — per-queue waiting count, signed-in/available/busy agents, longest current wait, and SLA breaches. Tiles turn amber near the SLA and red once items breach it.
   • Agent board — every agent's live presence, current reason, and how many interactions they are handling.
3. Use it to spot a backing-up queue, an SLA breach, or too few available agents, then rebalance staffing or open a campaign.

See Live Dashboard.

How to monitor a live call

Prerequisites: an agent is on a live call, and the active voice provider advertises Monitor and implements the executable monitoring contract (the bundled Asterisk Contact Center Voice provider and the Telnyx provider do). You hear the call through your own soft phone, so keep it open: the platform rings it for you and it answers by itself.

1. On the Live dashboard agent board, find the agent who is on a call.
2. Click Listen on that agent's card. You listen to the live call silently; neither party hears you.
3. The card shows You: Listen (or Connecting your phone… until your phone answers), and your soft phone shows a Monitoring banner with the agent's name. The banner, not a call row, is how your phone shows it.

The action invokes the provider first and only records the audited monitoring event after the provider confirms success. If the provider does not support the action, the button is not shown; an agent on a number they dialed from the keypad or on an extension call shows On a call with the number or colleague and the call's length, and can be listened to, coached, joined and ended like a Contact Center call (a keypad call can also be taken over; neither can be transferred or recorded from the dashboard). An agent on a call that cannot be monitored — one whose provider does not support monitoring, or a call the soft phone placed by itself — shows Cannot be monitored, with the reason in its tooltip.

Switch mode, or stop

While you are on the call, the card's Listen, Whisper and Barge buttons (and the same switcher on your phone's banner) change how you are heard without ringing you again; the active one is shown pressed. Stop — on the card or the banner — hangs up only your leg: the call goes on for the agent and the customer exactly as before.

See Live Dashboard.

How to whisper to an agent

Prerequisites: the provider advertises Whisper and implements the contract.

1. On the Live dashboard, find the agent on a live call.
2. Click Whisper on the agent's card. You can coach the agent and only the agent hears you; the customer does not.

See Live Dashboard.

How to barge into a call

Prerequisites: the provider advertises Barge and implements the contract.

1. On the Live dashboard, find the agent on a live call.
2. Click Barge on the agent's card. You join the call as a full participant that both the agent and the customer hear.

See Live Dashboard.

How to take over a call

Prerequisites: ContactCenterInterveneInCalls, an agent profile of your own, your soft phone open, and a provider that can hand a call to a supervisor (Telnyx can).

1. Click Take over on the agent's card. If you are not on the call yet, you barge in first, and the call is taken over as soon as your phone is on it.
2. The customer hears you before the agent is released. Your phone's banner changes to You took over … 's call, with Hang up.

From then on the call is yours: the interaction, its talk time and its after-call work are recorded against you, and the released agent goes to wrap-up (a queue call) or back to ready (a direct call). The takeover is audited as SupervisorTookOver, naming you and the agent.

How to end, transfer or record a call

Prerequisites: ContactCenterInterveneInCalls.

Open More ▾ on the agent's card:

• End call… asks you to confirm, then ends the call for everyone on it.
• Transfer… sends the call to a queue, an available agent or a phone number, as a blind transfer. Anyone listening is released first.
• Start recording / Stop recording turns the call's recording on or off, under the tenant's recording governance. Neither is possible while the agent has recording paused for a sensitive-data capture.

How to set an agent's state or message them

From More ▾ on any agent's card:

• Set Available, Set Not ready or Set Break changes the agent's state under the same rules as their own change: an agent on a call gets it when their work ends. Sign out of queues (after a confirm) signs them out. These need ContactCenterInterveneInCalls.
• Message… sends a short note (up to 500 characters) that appears on the agent's soft phone until they dismiss it. Messaging needs only MonitorContactCenter.

Every intervention is audited under your name (SupervisorEndedCall, SupervisorTransferredCall, SupervisorChangedRecording, SupervisorSetAgentState, SupervisorMessagedAgent, SupervisorMonitorModeChanged) and limited to agents and calls in the queues you supervise.

How to review productivity with reports

Prerequisites: the Contact Center Work Distribution and Reports features (the Contact Center reports appear when both are enabled) and the ViewContactCenterReports permission.

1. Open the Reports area and choose a Contact Center report — for example the agent, queue/SLA, interaction, transfer, recording, or campaign report.
2. Apply filters (date range, queue, agent, campaign) and review the metrics. Talk time, wrap-up time, and average handle time come from the interaction timestamps recorded on each call.
3. Export to CSV, or to Excel (.xlsx) when the Reports (OpenXml) feature is enabled, when you need the data outside the dashboard.

See the Enterprise report catalog for every report, its formula, and its drill paths.

See Reports.