Creating call queues and queue groups
This option is only available if you have not purchased a call center license.
Call queuing, or Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), enables the FortiVoice unit to queue up multiple incoming calls and aggregate them into a holding pattern. Each call is assigned a rank that determines the order for it to be delivered to an available agent (typically, first in first out). The highest-ranked caller in the queue is delivered to an available agent first, and every remaining caller moves up a rank.
With call queuing, callers do not need to dial back repeatedly trying to reach someone, and organizations are able to temporarily deal with situations when callers outnumber agents.
This topic includes:
Creating call queues
Configure a call queue and add it in an inbound dial plan as a call handling action to make it effective. For more information, see Configuring inbound dial plans.
Call queues consist of:
- Incoming calls waiting in the queue
- Agents who answer the calls in the queues
- A plan for how to handle the queue and assign calls to agents
- Music played while waiting in the queue
- Announcements for agents and callers
Depending on their privileges, agents can log into a queue to answer calls or transfer calls to another queue, which can then be answered by another available agent.
Agents can be static or dynamic. Static agents are always connected to the queues, and dynamic agents need to log into the queue in order to process calls.
To create a call queue
- Go to Call Feature > Call Queue > Call Queue.
- Click New .
- Configure the following:
- Enter an extension for callers to dial and enter into a call queue following the extension number pattern. See Configuring PBX options.
- Ring all: Rings all available agents. This is the default setting.
- Round Robin: Rings all agents in a queue equally in some rational order, usually from the top to the bottom of a list and then starting again at the top of the list and so on.
- Sequential: Rings each agent in a sequential manner regardless of whether they have answered calls.
- Random: Rings an agent at random.
- Least Recent: Rings the agent that least recently received a call.
- Fewest Calls: Rings the agent that has completed the fewest calls in this queue.
- Weight Random: Rings a random agent, but uses the agent’s number of received calls as a weight.
- Priority Based: Rings agents based on call answering priorities for callers entering the call queue. A new call always starts with the lowest priority.
- Announce holdtime: Select if you want to announce the queue waiting time to a caller at the set interval. You may also select to announce only once.
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Announce position: Select to announce a caller’s waiting position in the queue, such as “You are caller No. 5 in the call queue”.
- No: Do not announce a caller’s position.
- Always: Always announce a caller’s position.
- Abbreviated: Announce a caller’s position only once if the caller is over the marked position and always announce once before the caller reaches the marked position.
- Minimal: Announce only when the caller is within the marked position.
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Mark position: Enter the benchmark for selecting Abbreviated or Minimal setting under Announce position.
For example, if you select Abbreviated and enter 5, a caller’s position is announced when the caller becomes No. 5 in the queue and announced only once before the caller becomes No. 5 in the queue. - Announcement interval: Enter the announcement frequency in seconds.
- Custom announcement: You can also customize the announcement settings. If you select Periodic or Random, enter the announcement frequency in seconds in Announcement interval. Also, select a greeting sound file for the announcement. For more information, see Managing phone audio settings .
- Queue Entry Announcement: Select Enable to announce to callers when they enter a call queue. You can also select to disable this function. Also, select a greeting sound file for the announcement. For more information, see Managing phone audio settings .
- Click to expand Agent members for enrolling agents into the queue.
- Click + to select the agents for this queue.
- Click Close.
- Click OK.
- Click Create.
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GUI field |
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Description |
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ID |
Enter an ID for the queue. |
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Number |
This is another way to use a call queue configuration in addition to adding it in an inbound dial plan as a call handling action. In this case, the dial plan ignores this extension and still uses the extension to which it is applied for call queue action. |
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Status |
Select to enable the call queue. |
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Enter the queue name displaying on the queue extension, such as Support. |
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Description |
Enter any notes about this queue. |
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Department |
Select the department to which the queue belongs. For information on creating departments, see Creating extension departments. |
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Queue Setting |
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Distribution policy |
Select a policy for distributing phone calls. |
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Enter the maximum number of callers for the call queue. When the call queue is full, other callers will be dealt with according to the Queue Overflow call handling action you set in Queue Overflow. The maximum is 100. |
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Enter the maximum call queue waiting time in minutes. When the call waiting time is due, the callers in the queue will be dealt with according to the call handling action you set in Queue Timeout. The maximum is 720 minutes. |
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Ring duration |
Enter the time in seconds to ring each agent. If a call is not answered when the ring duration is due, the call is transferred to the next agent. The range is between 5 to 120 seconds. |
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Music on hold |
Select a sound file or music on hold file to play when a caller is waiting. For more information, see Managing phone audio settings . |
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Additional Setting |
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Distinctive Setting for Agent |
Announce queue name: Select a sound file that announces the queue name. You can add a new one or modify an existing one. For more information, see Managing phone audio settings . Caller ID option: Select how you want the IDs of the calls to this queue to display. If you select Prefix, the queue Display name is added before the caller ID on the agent’s phone. If you select Replace, the queue Display name replaces the caller ID on the agent’s phone. Ring Pattern: Select a queue extension ring pattern. |
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Business Schedule |
In Available field, select an operation schedule for the queue and click -> to move it to the Selected field. For example, “business_hour” schedule means agents are only available to answer the calls for this queue during business hours. For information on scheduling, see Scheduling the FortiVoice unit. |
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Announcement to Caller |
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Agent |
This option is only available when you edit a call queue. |
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Agent Members |
You can type an agent’s extension or name in the Search field and press Enter to search for the agent. |
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Call Handling |
This option is only available when you edit a call queue. |
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Scheduled Business Hour Call Handling |
For details, see Configuring scheduled business hour queue call handling actions. |
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Non Scheduled Business Hour Call Handling |
For details, see Configuring non scheduled business hour queue call handling actions. |
Configuring scheduled business hour queue call handling actions
Configure the call handling action for the queue. This action applies to all calls once they enter into the queue.
To configure the call handling action
- Go to Call Feature > Call Queue > Call Queue.
- Select a call queue for which you want to configure queue call handling actions and click Edit.
- In Call Handling, click Scheduled Business Hour Call Handling.
- Configure the situation upon which corresponding call process can be configured:
GUI field
Description
The situation when callers exceed the maximum waiting callers you set. See Maximum queue capacity.
A popup notification appears when this barometer is triggered.
Callers waiting time exceeds the maximum waiting time set in Maximum queuing time.
A popup notification appears when this barometer is triggered.
- For each situation, click New to configure its call handling action.
- Select the FortiVoice operation schedule to implement this call handling action. For more information on schedules, see Scheduling the FortiVoice unit.
- Select the call handling action. Depending on the action selected, further configuration may be needed. For example, if you select Dialextension for Action, enter the extension to which a call is transferred.
- Click Create, then OK.
Configuring non scheduled business hour queue call handling actions
Configure the call handling action for the queue. This action applies to all calls once they enter into the queue.
For some processes that may require further actions, you need to add one or more call processes to complete the call handling. For example, after adding a process that contains a Set call queue priority action, you can add another process with a Transfer to queue action to complete the call handling. In this case, the call will be processed again with new priority after it is transferred to the queue.
To configure the call handling action
- Go to Call Feature > Call Queue > Call Queue.
- Select a call queue for which you want to configure queue call handling actions and click Edit.
- In Call Handling, click NonScheduled Business Hour Call Handling.
- On the Call Processing page, click New to configure call handling action.
- For Schedule, select the FortiVoice operation schedule to implement this call handling action. For more information on schedules, see Scheduling the FortiVoice unit.
- For Action, select the call handling action. Depending on the action selected, further configuration may be needed. For example, if you select Dialextension for Action, enter the extension to which a call is transferred.
- Click Create, then OK.
Creating queue groups
You can group queues together to facilitate queue management.
To create a call queue group
- Go to Call Feature> Call Queue > Queue Group.
- Click New.
- Enter a name for the group.
- For Member, click + and select the available call queues that you want to include in the group.
- Click Close, then Create.