Create a Cloud call queue

• 5/21/2019
• 13 minutes to read
• Contributors
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• Applies to:

  Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams

Cloud call queues include greetings that are used when someone calls in to a phone number for your organization, the ability to automatically put the calls on hold, and the ability to search for the next available call agent to handle the call while the people who call are listening to music on hold. You can create single or multiple call queues for your organization.

Cloud call queues can provide:

• An organizational greeting.
• Music while people are waiting on hold.
• Redirecting of calls to call agents in mail-enabled distribution lists and security groups.
• Making settings for call queue maximum size, timeout, and call handling options.

When someone calls in to a phone number that is associated with a call queue via a resource account, they will hear a greeting first (if any is set up), and then they will be put in the queue and wait for the next available call agent. The person calling in will hear music while they are on hold waiting, and the calls will be offered to the call agents in First In, First Out (FIFO) order.

All calls waiting in the queue will be distributed using one of the following methods:

• With attendant routing, the first call in the queue will ring all agents at the same time.

• With serial routing, the first call in the queue will ring all call agents one by one.

• With round robin, routing of incoming calls is balanced so that each call agent will get the same number of calls from the queue.

  Note

  Call agents who are Offline, have set their presence to Do not Disturb, or have opted out of the call queue won't be called.

• Only one incoming call notification (for the call at the head of the queue) at a time will be sent to the call agents.

• After a call agent accepts the call, the next incoming call in the queue will start ringing call agents.

Step 1 - Get started

To get started using call queues, it's important to remember a few things:

• A call queue is required to have an associated resource account. See Manage resource accounts in Teams for details on resource accounts.
• If you plan to assign a Direct Routing number, you need to acquire and assign the following licenses to your resource accounts (Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 or E5, with the Phone System add-on).
• If you are assigning a Microsoft service number instead, you need to acquire and assign the following licenses to your resource account (Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 or E5, with the Phone System add-on and a Calling Plan).
• You only need to license the resource accounts with a phone number assigned to them. In a nested auto attendant or call queue, you do not need to license the rest of the auto attendants or call queues if they do not have phone numbers associated with them.

• To learn more about Office 365 Calling Plans, see Phone System and Calling Plans and Calling Plans for Office 365.

• You can only assign toll and toll-free service phone numbers that you got in the Microsoft Teams admin center or transferred from another service provider to Cloud call queues. To get and use toll-free service numbers, you need to set up Communications Credits.

  Note

  User (subscriber) phone numbers can't be assigned to call queues - only service toll or toll-free phone numbers can be used.

• When you are distributing the incoming calls from a Cloud call queue, these clients are supported for call agents:

  • Skype for Business desktop client 2016 (32 and 64-bit versions)

  • Lync desktop client 2013 (32 and 64-bit versions)

  • All IP phone models supported for Microsoft Teams. See Getting phones for Skype for Business Online.

  • Mac Skype for Business Client (version 16.8.196 and later)

  • Android Skype for Business Client (version 6.16.0.9 and later)

  • iPhone Skype for Business Client (version 6.16.0 and later)

  • iPad Skype for Business Client (version 6.16.0 and later)

  • Microsoft Teams Windows client (32 and 64-bit versions)

  • Microsoft Teams Mac client

  • Microsoft Teams iPhone app

  • Microsoft Teams Android app

Step 2 - Getting or transferring toll or toll-free service phone numbers

Before you can create and set up your call queues, you will need to get or transfer your existing toll or toll-free service numbers. After you get the toll or toll-free service phone numbers, they will show up in Microsoft Teams admin center > Voice > Phone numbers, and the Number type listed will be listed as Service - Toll-Free. To get your service numbers, see Getting service phone numbers or if you want to transfer an existing service number, see Transfer phone numbers to Office 365.

If you are also setting up auto attendants, you may only need to assign a phone number to the main auto attendant's resource account, and then have it direct callers to your call queue. If that's the case, the call queue will need to be created before you can create an option in the auto attendant that selects the call queue.

Step 3 - Create a new call queue

We are frequently updating how you can manage features, so the steps here might be a little different from what you see.

Using the Microsoft Teams admin center

In the Microsoft Teams admin center, Voice > Call queues, then click + Add new:

Set the call queue display name and resource account

Name Enter a descriptive display name for the call queue. This is required and can contain up to 64 characters, including spaces.

This name will be displayed in the notification for the incoming call.

Add Accounts Select a resource account. The resource account may or may not be associated with a service toll or toll-free phone number for the call queue, but each call queue requires an associated resource account.

If there aren't any listed, you need to get service numbers and assign them to a Resource account before you can create this call queue, as described earlier. To get your service numbers, see Getting service phone numbers. You'll need to create a resource account as described in Manage resource accounts in Teams if you want your call queue to have an associated phone number.

Set the greeting and music played while on hold

Greeting is optional. This is the greeting that is played for people who call in to the call queue number.

You can upload an audio file (.wav, .mp3, or .wma formats).

Music on hold You can either use the default Music on Hold provided with the call queue, or you can upload an audio file in .wav, mp3, or .wma formats to use as your custom Music on Hold.

Select the call answering options

You can select up to 200 call agents belonging to specified mailing lists or groups. Call agents must be either:

• An Online user with a Phone System license and enabled for Enterprise Voice or with a Calling Plan.

  Note

  To redirect calls to people in your organization who are Online, they must have a Phone System license and be enabled for Enterprise Voice or have a Calling Plan. See Assign Skype for Business licenses or Assign Microsoft Teams licenses.

To enable them for Enterprise Voice, you can use Windows PowerShell. For example run: Set-CsUser -identity "Amos Marble" -EnterpriseVoiceEnabled $true

• Online users with a Phone System license and a Calling Plan that are added to an Office 365 Group, a mail-enabled Distribution List, or a Security Group. It might take up to 3 hours for a new agent added for a distribution list or a security group to start receiving calls from a call queue. A newly created distribution list or security group might take up to 48 hours to become available to be used with call queues. Newly created Office 365 Groups are available almost immediately.

Routing method You can choose either Attendant, Serial, or Round Robin for your call queue distribution method. All new and existing call queues will have attendant routing selected by default. When attendant routing is used, the first call in the queue will ring all of the call agents at the same time. The first call agent to pick up the call gets the call.

• Attendant routing causes the first call in the queue to ring all call agents at the same time. The first call agent to pick up the call gets the call.
• Serial routing incoming calls will ring call agents one by one, starting from the beginning of the call agent list. Agents cannot be ordered within the call agent list. If an agent dismisses or does not pick up a call, the call will ring the next agent on the list and will try all agents one by one until it is picked up or times out waiting in the queue.

  Note

  Serial routing will skip agents who are Offline, have set their presence to Do not Disturb, or have opted out of getting calls from this queue.

• Round robin balances routing of incoming calls so that each call agent will get the same number of calls from the queue. This may be very desirable in an inbound sales environment to assure equal opportunity among all the call agents.

Select an agent opt out option

Agent Opt out option You can choose to allow call queue agents to opt out of taking calls from a particular queue by selecting Agent Opt out option.

Enabling this option allows all agents in this queue to start or stop receiving calls from this call queue at will. You can revoke the agent opt-out privilege at any time by clearing the check box, causing agents to become automatically opted in for this queue again (the default setting for all agents).

To access the opt-out option, agents can do the following:

1. Open Options in their desktop Skype for Business client.

2. On the Call Forwarding tab, click the Edit settings online link.

3. On the user settings page, click Call Queues, and then clear the check boxes for any queues for which they want to opt out.

   Note

   Agents using apps or endpoints other than Skype for Business Desktop can access the opt out option from the user settings portal https://aka.ms/cqsettings.

Agent Alert setting

This defines the duration of an agent being notified of a call before the Serial or Round Robin routing methods move to the next agent.

The default setting is 30 seconds, but it can be set for up to 3 minutes.

Set the call overflow and timeout handling options

Maximum calls in the queue Use this to set the maximum calls that can wait in the queue at the same time. The default is 50, but it can range from 0 to 200. When this limit is reached, the call will be handled in way you have set on the When the maximum number of calls is reached setting below.

When the maximum number of calls is reached When the call queue reaches its maximum size (set using the Maximum calls in the queue setting), you can choose what happens to new incoming calls.

• Disconnect The call will be disconnected.

• Redirect to When you choose this, select one of the following:

  • Person in your company An Online user with a Phone System license and be enabled for Enterprise Voice or have a Calling Plan. You can set it up so the person calling in can be sent to voicemail. To do this, select a Person in your company and set this person to have their calls forwarded directly to voicemail.

  To learn about licensing required for voicemail, see Set up Cloud Voicemail.

  • Voice application Select the name of either a call queue or auto attendant that has already been created.

Call Timeout: maximum wait time You can also decide how much time a call can be on hold in the queue before it times out and needs to be redirected or disconnected. Where it will be redirected is based on how you set the When a call times out setting. You can set a time from 0 to 45 minutes.

The timeout value can be set in seconds, at 15-second intervals. This allows you to manipulate the call flow with finer granularity. For example, you could specify that any calls that are not answered by an agent within 30 seconds go to a Directory Search auto attendant.

When call times out When the call reaches the limit you set on the How long a call can wait in the queue setting, you can choose what happens to this call:

• Disconnect The call will be disconnected.

• Redirect this call to When you choose this, you will have these options:

  • Person in your company An Online user with a Phone System license and be enabled for Enterprise Voice or have Calling Plans. You can set it up so the person calling in can be sent to voicemail. To do this, select a Person in your company and set this person to have their calls forwarded directly to voicemail.

  To learn about licensing required for voicemail, see Set up Cloud Voicemail.

  • Voice application Select the name of either a call queue or auto attendant that has already been created.

Changing a user's Caller ID for outbound calls

You can protect a user's identity by changing their caller ID for outbound calls to a call queue, auto attendant, or any service number instead by creating a policy using the New-CsCallingLineIdentity cmdlet.

To do this, run:

New-CsCallingLineIdentity -Identity "UKSalesQueue" -CallingIdSubstitute "Service" -ServiceNumber 14258828080 -EnableUserOverride $False -Verbose

Then apply the policy to the user using the Grant-CallingLineIdentity cmdlet. To do this, run:

Grant-CsCallingLineIdentity -PolicyName UKSalesQueue -Identity "AmosMarble@contoso.com"

You can get more information on how to make changes to caller ID settings in your organization in the article How can caller ID be used in your organization.

Want to know more?

You can also use Windows PowerShell to create and set up call queues.

Call queue cmdlets

Here are the cmdlets that you need to manage a call queue.

• New-CsCallQueue

• Set-CsCallQueue

• Get-CsCallQueue

• Remove-CsCallQueue

More about Windows PowerShell

• Windows PowerShell is all about managing users and what users are allowed or not allowed to do. With Windows PowerShell, you can manage Office 365 and Microsoft Teams using a single point of administration that can simplify your daily work, when you have multiple tasks to do. To get started with Windows PowerShell, see these topics:

  • An introduction to Windows PowerShell and Skype for Business Online

  • Why you need to use Office 365 PowerShell

• Windows PowerShell has many advantages in speed, simplicity, and productivity over only using the Microsoft Teams admin center such as when you are making setting changes for many users at one time. Learn about these advantages in the following topics:

  • Manage Office 365 with Windows PowerShell

  • Set up your computer for Windows PowerShell

Related topics

Here's what you get with Phone System in Office 365

Getting service phone numbers

Country and region availability for Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans

New-CsOnlineApplicationInstance