Call Queues: Serial Routing, Timeout in seconds, support for Agents in O365 Groups are available

[Marina Kolomiets]

Today, we are pleased to announce that the following new Call Queue features are available to all Skype for Business Online customers with Phone System (formerly CloudPBX) SKU:

• Serial Routing - calls will be distributed to the Call Queue Agents one by one
• Timeout in seconds - Admins can specify a sub-minute value as a max allowed call wait time 
• Agents in Office 365 Groups - Office 365 Groups can be used with Call Queues to add Agents

Serial Routing

In addition to default Attendant Routing, which sends the call at the head of the Queue to all the available Agents at the same time, a new Serial Routing option has been added in Call Queues. With Serial Routing, the call at the head of the Queue will ring Agents one by one, starting from the beginning of the Agent list. If an Agent dismisses or does not pick up a call, the call will ring the next Agent on the list.Note that both Serial Routing and Attendant Routing will not send calls to the Agents who are Offline, or have set their Presence to Do Not Disturb (DND).

Timeout in seconds

For a more granular call flow control in Call Queues, it is now possible to set the Timeout in seconds rather than in minutes. The following timeout intervals can be selected: 0, 15, 30 and 45 seconds.Agents in Office 365 Groups

Admins can now use Office 365 Groups to add Agents to Call Queues. Multiple Office 365 Groups can be added, and a mix of Distribution Lists, mail-enabled Security Groups and Office 365 Groups can be used in the same Call Queue:

For more information on Serial Routing, Timeout in seconds and Agents in Office 365 Groups in Phone System Call Queues and corresponding PowerShell cmdlets updates, please refer to Call Queue documentation here.

[Patrick Bennett]

Is the Opt In/Out feature not being released at this time? Any ETA on that release?

[Nicholas Plant]

Is there a way of controlling the order that agents have calls routed to them in serial routing or is it just alphabetical ordering of the underlying O365 group ?

[Clinton Woodward]

I just tested serial routing and it's always starting with the first person in the distribution list.   This isn't practical as it needs to rotate through the available agents in a fair distribution.  Agent 1 for the first call, Agent 2 for the 2nd, and so forth, then repeat from the start after a call has been sent to the last member.

[Nicholas Plant]

@Clinton Woodward what you describe is what I believe would be called round robbin routing rather than serial routing. However, I do agree with you that there needs to be control over the order in which serial routing works rather than just the order in the O365 group.

[Marina Kolomiets]

Thanks for commenting, @Nicholas Plant! Yes, indeed, we have released Serial Routing in this update, where calls are send to the Agents one by one, always starting at the top of the list. Round Robin Routing (also sometimes called Circular Routing), where a new call rings Agent X+1 if the previous call was taken by Agent X, is also on the radar, as it is also very commonly used in ACD, but no ETAs on this.

@Nicholas Plant and @Clinton Woodward - some time early 2018, we will be sending out customer satisfaction surveys on Auto Attendant and Call Queues to help us stack rank and prioritize features and enhancements. If you happen to receive them from Customer Engineering, we would appreciate if you could fill them out. 

[Urmil Thakkar]

If a user is away, the calling queue still transfers the call to the user.

Is there a way if we can configure the Serial Routing in such a way that if the user's presence is available, then only the call will ring on the user's SFB Client?

Reference:

Serial Routing

In addition to default Attendant Routing, which sends the call at the head of the Queue to all the available Agents at the same time, a new Serial Routing option has been added in Call Queues. With Serial Routing, the call at the head of the Queue will ring Agents one by one, starting from the beginning of the Agent list. If an Agent dismisses or does not pick up a call, the call will ring the next Agent on the list. Note that both Serial Routing and Attendant Routing will not send calls to the Agents who are Offline, or have set their Presence to Do Not Disturb (DND).

[Adrian Mataisz]

Where are this options:

•To offer a new call first to the agent who has been idle the longest (has had a presence of Available or Inactive in Lync Server the longest), click Longest idle.

•To offer a new call to each agent in turn, click Round robin.

And why the call is not skipping users already on the phone ?

[Jörn Quillmann]

Maybe I'm a little late for this, but what is the default time until a call jumps to the next agent in serial routing, if an agent does not pick up?

And more importantly, is it possible to change this time/delay?

I'd like to minimize the duration it rings at specifics agents to 10 maybe 15 seconds to maximize the number of agents called before it hits the global call queue timeout and gets transferred to the voicemail dummy account.

[Deleted]

Any updates as to when round robin will be introduced?  We are using attendant and its so loud when they all go off!

[Deleted]

I'm not seeing any replies to these inquiries, am I missing something? 

I have call center managers who are very upset. With the current design they can not effectively manager their call groups.

[DaveTheTeamsGuy]

Late to the party here.  For serial routing, how do you rearrange the agents when they are a member of a channel so the first in alpha order doesn't always get the call?