The information about a Queue can be viewed by clicking on Edit on the table row which contains the Queue of interest. To edit one parameter, simply click on its Value.
General Settings
Name: the Queue Name
Music on Hold: it allows the choice of different tunes (previously loaded in the audio section) to entertain the caller during the waiting time. The default one is loaded into the Music on Hold Asterisk configurations.
Strategy: the distribution policy for inbound calls
Ringall: it contacts all Agents until one answers;
RRMemory: one of the most used round robin memory. It resumes from the agent succeeding the one contacted during last call;
Least recent: it contacts the Agent that has recently been less involved in the queue;
Fewest calls: it contacts the Agent who has recently answered to the minimum number of calls in the queue;
Random: it randomly routes calls to agents;
Linear: it contacts the agents according to their order of login;
Wrandom: it randomly routes calls to agents͘
Timeout: the time interval (in seconds) over which the agent is considered unavailable to take charge of a call.
Max Len: it specifies the maximum number of calls on hold. If equal to 0, this number is unlimited.
Retry: time interval (in seconds) expected from the system before re-contact all the agents in the queue in object.
Wrapup Time: minimum time interval (in seconds) to contact an agent between two different calls.
Weight: it defines a priority queue. If the agents are multi-skilled, inbound calls will be routed preferentially to the queue with the highest priority.
Joinempty: this setting check if callers can join an empty queue empty, without available agents. In this case there are possible choices:
- yes: callers can enter on an empty queue or on a queue where agents are not available
- no: callers can’t get on an empty queue
- strict: callers can’t enter on an empty queue or on a queue where agents are not available
- loose: as strict, but the agents on pause on a queue are considered as available
- paused: an agent is not considered available when paused
- penalty: an agent is not considered available if his penalty is less than QUEUE_MAX_PENALTY
- in use: an agent is not considered available when he is calling
- ringing: an agent is not considered available if his phone is ringing
- unavailable: if the agent is part of the queue in question but it is not logged in then it is not considered to be available
- invalid: an agent is not considered available if the device status is “invalid”
- unknown: it not consideres a member as available if it is unable to determine the current state of the device agents
- wrapup: an agent is not considered available if it is currently in its wrapuptime after a call
Leavewhenempty: it works on calls already in the queue.
- yes: if the queue is empty or agents are not available, the caller leaves the queue.
- no: callers remain queued even if the queue is empty or agents are not available.
Announce: you can choose different tunes (previously loaded in the Audio section) that will be heard by the agent before talking with the customer. An agent that operates in multiple queues is able to quickly understand what kind of call is and answer appropriately.
Announce freq.: it sets how often (in seconds) a caller will hear an announcement that indicates its position in the queue or the estimated waiting time. If it’s equal to 0, this function is disabled.
Announce Round [s]: it’s the level of rounding for the announcements of waiting times. If 0: minutes are considered and announced, without seconds. The possible values are 0, 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30. For example, when the value is set to 30, the waiting time 2:34 will be rounded to 2:30
Announce Hold Time: it indicates whether the estimated wait time will be announced after the information of the position in the queue. The possible values are “yes”, “no” or “once”
Periodic Announce: you can choose different tunes (previously loaded in the Audio section) to be played to the caller periodically.
Periodic Announce freq.: it sets how often (in seconds) a caller will hear a periodic announcement.
Please note that during the annoucements play the call is not routed to the Agent!
Note: The system won’t play the periodic announcement and the position of the queue if there are free agents. If all the agents are busy on the phone, then it will play the periodic announcements. The announcements and the position will be played in case of available free agents, just after the Queue Timeout (see please Timeout parameter inside the Queue configuration)
Advanced Settings
Autopause: it indicates if an Agent that wasn’t able to answer is automatically paused or not. Yes: it sets Autopause on the selected queue All: it sets Autopause on all Queues
Ringinuse: it indicates that queue’s calls have to be forwarded to the agents which have devices in use.
Member delay: it indicates the interval of silence (in seconds) that the caller hears before being connected to an agent.
Timeout restart: it indicates if the response timeout of an agent is reset after a busy signal or congestion. This can be useful for agents who are authorized to refuse calls.
Service level: it sets the threshold of service level; for example it sets the maximum wait time for callers. This is very useful for statistical analysis (for example to answer the question “How many calls were answered within the service level threshold for x seconds?”).
Recording: here you can set if the Queue Calls will be recorded or not and on which format (.gsm, .wav49 or .wav).
You will find the recorded calls in the Recordings section. If you select the .gsm and .wav49 format you can only download the audio files, if .wav you can also hear a preview.
Monitor Join: it combines files -in and -out of the audio recordings in a single file. Values: yes or no (default).
Events when called: it sends events to the Asterisk Manager about the states of the agents before, during and after the call.
Events member status: it sends events to the Asterisk Manager about the states of the agents in the queue (default “yes”).
Report hold time: it indicates the possibility to announce the caller’s waiting time to the agent. The possible values are “yes” and “no”.
Set interface var: If set to yes, just prior to the caller being bridged with a queue member the MEMBERINTERFACE variable will be set with the interface name (eg. Agent/1234) of the queue member that was chosen and is now connected to be bridged with the caller.
Context: it indicates the context in which it’s passed the call if the caller presses a key combination while waiting in the queue. This combination is considered as an extension of Asterisk and the call is then removed from the queue and routed to the internal in this context.
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Phonebar Popup Color: Here you can define the color of the popup displayed when receiving a call on the xCALLY Phonebar
Smart ACW: Smart After Call Working - Yes|No; if enabled, it puts automatically the Agent on pause (AFTERCALL status on the xCALLY Phonebar and ACW status on the logs) on all his queues, when he ends a call. The Agent won’t receive calls until he resume his queues or the timeout expires.
Smart ACW Timeout (Seconds): The time, in seconds, during which the Agent is automatically set into the ACW status (where he can’t receive calls) after the end of a call.
Smart ACW
When an agent complete a call on a queue where the ACW is set (e.g. with a timeout of 20 sec), the agent goes to ACW status and he cannot receive new calls. When the timeout expires, the agent back automatically to ready status.
In any moment before the timeout expiration, the agent can manually back to ready by pressing the pause button of the phonebar.
In a multiskill environment, the agent status log will show ACW status only for the defined queue, on the other queues the agent status will be “UNAVAILABLE BY ACW”. Thanks to this different log management, it is possible to report about the ACW time for each queue.
Example, the agent John Doe belongs to the queues Sales and Support. These queues have the ACW set to ON with different timeouts (15 and 20 sec).
The detailed report for agents status show the correct information:
In this example, the agent John Doe has taken two calls, one on the Sales queue and one on the Support queue. At the end of the first call he went to ACW status for 15 seconds only for the related queue (Sales) while his status went to UNAVAILABLE BY ACW on the other queue (Support). Same thing for the second call on the Support queue.
NOTE: to use this feature the option After Call Work under the agents settings must be disabled. Adding the variable HANGUP-HANDLER is not needed anymore and the Asterisk settings (queues.conf) “shared_last_call” must be set to NO.