Forum Discussion
Answering calls when call queue agents are unavailable or away
- Hello,
You will need to create two Call Queues.
The first queue will just have the receptionist in it
Set a Timeout of 30 seconds and a maximum amount of callers to 2 (or however you like)
IF that timeout or maximum callers is reached, transfer the call to the second queue.
Add all remaining phones AND the receptionist into the second queue (in case the receptionist becomes available again) and set the routing style to 'Attendant'.
If the call is still not answered, you can choose to send it to voicemail or a mobile.
You can also add any other user into the first queue and allow users to opt out of receiving calls. That way if the receptionist is on leave, you can simply opt-in to taking calls from the first queue to avoid delays for the caller.
The other way you can achieve this without any 'advanced' routing is to add all users as a delegate to the receptionist. Set the receptionist's call settings to 'Also ring' 'My Delegates'
The other three users will see an incoming call with a banner above it saying 'Call for <name>'
I am struggling a bit. just with the amount of time we are forced to wait. I have two call queues set up. One for my receptionist, and another for the back up group. Teams requires a minimum alert time for the Main CQ of 15 seconds, but then you have to set the time out wait time to be more than the alert time... so you think you are setting it for 15 seconds, but it's really 30. So callers have to sit in the first CQ for 30 seconds if the receptionist walks away and then the get transferred to the Back up CQ for another 30 second window... I need to be able to set the time out time to 16 seconds -- but its only in increments of 15 seconds.
You can still set the CQ Agent alert time as 15 sec and the CQ Time out to 15 sec. It may say it "should" be greater but it will save from my experience.
Also, you could try utilising the fairly new CQ Exception handling section, there you can set a condition to redirect calls if no agents are signed in or have opted-out of the CQ (Agents need to be proactive and set Teams presence or opt-out of CQ when they are unavailable to help this work best).Example:
Ref. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoftteams/create-a-phone-system-call-queue?tabs=call-exception-handling#no-agents-optedlogged-in-set-how-to-handle-calls-when-no-agents-are-optedlogged-into-the-queue
