Queues and Queue Groups

A queue is where waiting work lines up until an agent takes it: an inbound call, a callback, or a message sent to a department. The queue decides which agent gets the next item, how long an offer rings, what callers hear while they wait, and where they go when you are closed or too busy.

Menu	Interaction Center > Management > Queues (and Queue groups)
Permission	Manage Contact Center queues (queue groups also accept Manage Contact Center queue groups)
Feature	Contact Center Work Distribution (CrestApps.OrchardCore.ContactCenter.Queues)

Create a queue group (optional)

Queue groups only organize queues for administration and reports, for example Sales and Service. They never change routing.

1. Open Interaction Center > Management > Queue groups and click Add queue group.
2. Enter a Name and, optionally, a Description, then Save.

AI answering

A queue holds callers and texts for people; it has no AI setting. To have an AI profile answer a number's calls or texts, set Route to to AI voice agent or AI agent on the number's inbound entry point. See Let the AI answer incoming calls and Let the AI answer incoming texts.

Clone a queue

To start a queue from an existing one, open its Actions menu in the queue list and choose Clone. The form opens with every setting of the original and the name Copy of the original's name. Change what you need and click Save. The agents who work the original queue are not added to the copy.

Create a queue

1. Open Interaction Center > Management > Queues and click Add Queue.
2. Fill in the cards described below. Only Name is required; every other value has a sensible default.
3. Click Save.

To send phone calls to the queue, point an inbound entry point at it. Agents take work from the queue once they sign in to it.

General

Field	What it does
Name	The name agents and supervisors see. Required.
Description	A note for administrators.
Queue group	The group the queue is reported under. Leave empty for No queue group.
Enabled	A disabled queue receives no new assignments.

Routing

Field	What it does
Default priority	Lowest, Low, Normal, High or Highest. Higher-priority items are offered first.
Routing strategy	How the next agent is chosen: Longest idle (the agent who has been available the longest, the default), Round robin (the agent who least recently got work), or Least busy (the agent with the fewest active interactions).
Prefer the last assigned agent (sticky)	When a returning customer's previous agent is available and eligible, offer them the work first.
Reservation timeout (seconds)	How long an offer rings for one agent before the unanswered-offer action applies. Default 30.
Unanswered offer action	Requeue (offer it to the next agent, the default), Send to voicemail, or Reject call (end the call).

Service levels

Field	What it does
Service Level Agreement (SLA) threshold (seconds)	A waiting item that waits longer than this breaches the service level. The live dashboard counts breaches. Default 120.
Age waiting items past the SLA threshold	Raise the priority of an item by one level for every full threshold it waits past the SLA, so old items are not stuck behind new high-priority ones.
First-response target (seconds)	Messaging only: how quickly the first reply to a new conversation should go out. 0 means no target.

Skills

Field	What it does
Required skills	Agents must hold every skill picked here at proficiency 3 or higher.
Skill requirements	Finer rules, one row per skill: Minimum proficiency (1-5); Required (unticked means preferred, which only ranks agents rather than excluding them); and Relax after (s), which drops the requirement once an item has waited that long (0 means never).

Agents get their skills on the agent entitlements screen.

Hours and overflow

Field	What it does
Inbound phone number	Only on tenants without Contact Center Inbound Entry Points: the phone number whose calls route to this queue. With inbound entry points, the card points to them instead, because numbers are routed from their entry point.
Business hours calendar	The calendar that says when the queue is open. Empty means Always open. Routing pauses while the queue is closed.
After-hours action	Hold in queue (the default) or Overflow to another queue while closed.
Overflow queue / Overflow after (seconds)	A single overflow hop: after this many seconds of waiting, move the caller to the overflow queue. 0 means no time-based overflow.
Overflow chain	Several hops, each with a queue and a wait in seconds. It replaces the single hop. A caller never returns to a queue they have already been in.

Limits

Field	What it does
Maximum callers waiting	0 means no limit.
Queue-full action	Admit anyway (the default), Overflow to the first queue with room, or Send to voicemail.
Maximum wait (seconds)	0 means no limit.
Maximum-wait action	Keep waiting (the default), Overflow to the next queue, or Send to voicemail. An overflow action needs an overflow queue or chain.

While callers wait

Field	What it does
Welcome message	Spoken once when the caller enters the queue.
Hold music	A recording from Voice media. Empty uses the phone provider's default.
Announcement interval (seconds)	How often to interrupt the music with an update. 0 means no announcements.
Announce the caller's place in line / Announce the estimated wait	What the update says. The estimate is place in line × average handle time ÷ available agents.
Average handle time (seconds)	Used for the estimate. With 0, no estimate is spoken.
Minimum / Maximum announced estimate (seconds)	Keeps the spoken estimate between these bounds (30 and 1800 by default).

Callback

Field	What it does
Callback key	The key (0-9, * or #) a waiting caller presses to hang up and get a call back instead. Empty means callbacks are not offered.
Offer callback after (seconds)	How long a caller waits before the callback is offered.

A caller who presses the callback key hangs up and keeps their place in line: the callback is scheduled with the time they first entered the queue, and it is offered to an agent as outbound work. Callbacks need the Contact Center Outbound Dialer feature; without it no callback is stored.