Creating call queues and queue groups
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 Center > Call Queue > Call Queue.
- Click New .
- Configure the following:
GUI field
Description
ID
Enter an ID for the queue.
Number
- Enter an extension for callers to dial and enter into a call queue following the extension number pattern. See Configuring PBX options.
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.
Status
Select to enable the call queue.
Enter the queue name displaying on the queue extension, such as Support.
Description
Enter any notes about this queue.
Department
Select the department to which the queue belongs. For information on creating departments, see Creating extension departments.
Queue Setting
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.
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.
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.
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 .
Call Distribution
Skill Based Routing
Select and choose a call routing option. This option is based on agent skill level scores. For more information, see Creating agent skill levels.
- Lowest level first: The call will ring the agent with the lowest skill level score first and move up the rank if the agent is unable to take the call, that is, the agent’s extension is in a Not Ready status.
- Highest level first: The call will ring the agent with the highest skill level score first and move down the rank if the agent is unable to take the call, that is, the agent’s extension is in a Not Ready status.
Default skill
This option appears if you select a value other than Disabled in the Skill Based Routing field.
Select the group, such as Billing, Sales, or Support, that the call distribution is executed. You can add a new skill or modify an existing one. For more information, see Adding agent skill sets.
Distribution policy
Select a call Distribution policy.
This option works as following:
- If Skill Based Routing is not selected, calls are distributed according to the policy you choose.
- If Skill Based Routing is selected, calls are distributed according to the skill based call routing option you choose. This option only applies to the situation when you have agents with the same skill level in a queue. In such cases, calls are distributed to these agents according to the policy you choose.
- Ring all: rings all available agents (default).
- 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. However, a queue manager with privileges can change the priority of a call on the agent console of the user portal. See Setting caller priorities.
Additional Setting
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.
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.
Announcement to Caller
- 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.
-
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.
-
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 .
Service Level
- Interval: Enter the time period in minutes for calculating the threshold up to a maximum of 10080 (or one week).
- Threshold: Enter the call answering rate for a certain period of time. The action triggered by the threshold being reached is configured in Call Handling .
- Service level low threshold is used in call handling: Click Service level low call handling to configure how other callers will be dealt with according to the Queue Overflow call handling action you set in Service Level Low when the call queue is full.
Events
Select the event that triggers an action which is configured in Call Handling .
Setting
- Send alert email: Select if you want to send an email when an alert event is triggered. Click New to enter an email address.
- Call extension/number: Select this option and an extension number if you want a phone call when an alert event is triggered. Click New to add an extension.
- GUI popup: Select to have a popup notification on the user portal GUI when an alert event is triggered. This only applies to agents with the particular privilege called Queue alert. See Agent Console Privilege in Configuring agent profiles.
- Alert interval: Enter a value in minutes during which time no alert is sent. For example, if you enter 60, you will not receive any alerts for an hour even if an alert event is triggered. This will be the case each time when you receive an alert notification.
If you enter 0, you will receive notifications each time when an event is triggered.
Callback Setting
This option allows callers waiting in a queue to request a callback following the recorded instructions and wait for an agent to return their call.
Status
Select to enable this option.
Callback mode
- Agent Call Back Manually (From Call Center Console): Select to allow an agent to manually call the caller using the agent console on the user portal.
- Call Back When Agents Available: Select to allow the FortiVoice unit to call the caller automatically based on the callback number collected when an agent is available.
- Virtual Placeholder: Select to allow the FortiVoice unit to hold a caller’s previous call waiting position. This happens when a caller does not wish to wait and leaves his/her number following the prompt. When the caller calls back later, the FortiVoice unit checks the caller’s number against the ones left and put the caller in his/her previous waiting position is a match is found.
Prompt voice menu
Select the method to collect the callback number.
- System Default: Select to use system defined voice file.
- User Defined IVR: Select to use user configured IVR.
For more information on IVR, see Configuring IVRs.
Prompt to caller after callback call established
Select to ring the caller when a callback call is set up.
Select a greeting sound file for the announcement. For more information, see Managing phone audio settings .
Survey settings
Surveys are used to collect customer feedback to ensure that the service delivered by your call center agents consistently meets corporate standards and drives high customer satisfaction.
Status
Select to enable this option.
Survey
Choose the survey configuration for the call queue. For more information on surveys, see Configuring surveys.
Agent
Agent type
Select the agent login mode.
Once enrolled into the queue, static agents are always connected to the queues while dynamic agents need to log into the queue in order to process calls.
Auto-logout time
If you select Dynamic login mode, enter the agent login expiry time in hours. For example, if you enter 5, the agent will be logged out 5 hours after having logged into the queue.
Logout all agents after scheduled business hour
If you select Dynamic login mode, select to log out all agents in the queue when the scheduled business hour is due.
Enter the time (in seconds) needed by agents to complete a queue call including taking notes or record-keeping, starting from the moment that call is hang up.
The default is 0 second.
Wrap up outgoing call
Select if the agent needs to make an outgoing customer call and time to take notes or record-keeping, starting from the moment that call is hang up.
You can enter the wrap up time in the Wrap up time field.
Select this option so that if an agent is on the phone when a queue call comes in, the caller information will display on the agent’s phone. The agent can choose to answer the call or not. If the agent does not answer the call, after the ring duration is due, the call is transferred to the next agent.
This option is different from the call waiting feature of a regular extension (See Setting extension user preferences). On a regular extension, the call waiting feature only applies to the calls that directly go to the extension. On a queue extension, the call waiting feature only applies to the calls that go to the extension from the queue.
- Click to expand Agent members for enrolling agents into the queue.
- Click + to select the agents for this queue.
- Click Close.
- Close OK.
You can type an agent’s extension or name in the Search field and press Enter to search for the agent.
You may select to queue a caller or not if there is no agents available.
If you select Do not queue, an incoming call will be handled by your general call handling configuration, such as auto attendant.
Scheduled Business Hour Call Handling
This option is only available when you edit a call queue.
For details, see Configuring scheduled business hour queue call handling actions.
Non Scheduled Business Hour Call Handling
This option is only available when you edit a call queue.
For details, see Configuring scheduled business hour queue call handling actions.
- Click Create.
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.
This option is only available when you edit a queue.
To configure the call handling action
- Go to Call Center > 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.
Service level represents the maximum amount of time a caller should ideally have to wait before being presented to an agent. You need to set the service-level-calculation-option, service-level-interval, and service-level-threshold in the FortiVoice CLI under
config service call-queue.For example, if service level interval is set to 60 seconds and the service level percentage is 80 percent, that means 80 percent of the calls that came into the queue were presented to an agent in less than 60 seconds. Any service level percentage lower than 80 is considered to be low.
All Agents Logout
There are no agents in the queue to answer calls. The action for this option only works if you select Queue caller for When no logged-in agent.
All Agents Paused
There are no agents in the queue to answer calls. The action for this option only works if you select Queue caller for When no logged-in agent.
Unclassified
Any reason that you need to schedule call handlings.
- 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 Dial extension 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.
This option is only available when you edit a queue.
To configure the call handling action
- Go to Call Center > 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 Non Scheduled 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 Dial extension 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 Center > Call Queue > Queue Group.
- Click New.
- Enter a name for the group.
- For Member, click the + sign and select the available call queues that you want to include in the group.
- Click Close, then Create.