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Queues

Queues hold callers in a waiting line until an available agent answers. Unlike a ring group — which rings everyone at once for a single call — a queue keeps callers on hold (with music or announcements) and pulls them off the front of the line as agents become available. Use queues when you expect more concurrent calls than agents.

Viewing Queues​

Navigate to Queues from the sidebar. The table shows each queue's name, extension, strategy, timeout, and current member count for the selected account.

Creating a Queue​

  1. Click Add Queue.
  2. Enter a Name (e.g., "Sales", "Tier 1 Support").
  3. Optionally assign an extension number so the queue can be dialed directly.
  4. Click Add Queue.

Queue Settings​

Open a queue to edit its settings.

  • Extension — Internal number for directly dialing the queue.
  • Strategy — How waiting callers are distributed to agents. See Strategies below.
  • Max wait (seconds) — How long a caller may wait at the front of the line before timeout behavior runs. 0 means no timeout (callers wait indefinitely until an agent answers or they hang up).
  • Max queue length — Maximum number of callers waiting at once. 0 means unlimited. When the queue is full, new callers are rejected and never enter.
  • Join Empty — Whether new callers may enter when no eligible agents are signed in. See Join / Leave Empty below.
  • Leave When Empty — Whether callers already waiting are dropped when the last eligible agent disappears.
  • Timeout Behavior — What happens to a caller whose Max wait elapses. See Timeout behavior below.

Strategies​

Strategies decide which member to ring next when a caller reaches the front of the queue.

  • Ring all — Rings every signed-in member at the same time; the first to answer takes the call. Best when each call needs the fastest possible pickup and team size is small.
  • Linear — Rings members in a fixed order based on their position value (lowest position first). Use when there is a clear primary, secondary, tertiary, etc.
  • Round robin (memory) — Rings members one at a time in order, remembering who took the last call. The next call starts with the member after the previous taker. Distributes work evenly over time.
  • Least recent — Rings the member who has been idle the longest (longest time since their last call ended).
  • Fewest calls — Rings the member who has handled the fewest calls so far this session.
  • Random — Rings a member chosen uniformly at random.
  • Weighted random — Random with bias: members with lower penalty are more likely to be chosen, members with higher penalty fall through and are tried only when lower-penalty members are unavailable.

Join / Leave Empty​

These two settings control what happens when no agents are available. "Eligible" here means agents who are members of this queue and could in principle take a call.

Join Empty — applies to a new caller arriving at the queue:

  • Strict — The caller is rejected if no agent is signed in.
  • No agents online — The caller is rejected only when zero agents are signed in. Anyone signed-in but on a call or paused still counts as online, so the caller may enter and wait.
  • No agents available — The caller is rejected only when zero agents are available right now (signed in, not on a call, not paused). This is the most lenient option for the caller.

Leave When Empty — applies to callers already waiting:

  • Strict — Existing callers are dropped from the queue the moment no agent is signed in.
  • No agents online — Same threshold as above, applied to people currently waiting.
  • No agents available — Same as above. Most lenient.

A common pairing: Strict / No agents online rejects new callers when no one is signed in but lets existing ones keep waiting through brief gaps in coverage.

Timeout Behavior​

When Max wait is greater than zero and a caller has been at the front of the line that long without being answered, the timeout behavior runs.

  • None — The call hangs up.
  • Ring user — Forwards the caller to a specific user's extension. Use for an "always-on" fallback person.
  • Voicemail — Sends the caller to voicemail. The target can be either a user (their personal voicemail) or a shared voicemail box.
  • Queue — Overflows the caller into a different queue. Useful for tiered escalation (e.g., Tier 1 → Tier 2 after waiting too long). Cycles are detected and rejected — a queue can't overflow into itself directly or transitively.

The Timeout Target picker only appears once a behavior other than None is selected, and only shows targets compatible with that behavior.

Members​

Queue members are the users who answer queued calls. Each member has two numbers attached:

  • Position — Order in which members are tried by the linear strategy. Lowest position rings first; positions start at 1. Other strategies ignore this — set it to anything.
  • Penalty — Lowers a member's priority. Weighted random prefers members with lower penalty; round robin (memory) uses penalty as a tiebreaker. Other strategies ignore it.

When you add a new member at a position that's already taken, existing members at that position and below shift down by one to make room — you never have to manually renumber.

Adding a Member​

  1. Click Add Member.
  2. Pick a user from the picker. Users already in the queue are hidden.
  3. Set Position (defaults to one past the highest existing).
  4. Set Penalty (defaults to 0).
  5. Click Add.

Removing a Member​

Hover over a member row and click the trash icon. Other members keep their positions; gaps are fine and don't affect ringing order.

Renaming a Queue​

Click the queue name at the top of the detail page to edit it inline. Press Enter or click away to save.

Deleting a Queue​

Open the queue and use the delete action from the queue list page. Deleting a queue releases its extension number for reuse and removes all members. Existing call routing rules that point at this queue must be updated separately.