User status to busy does not stop inbound Direct Routing calls

[Andy_J_R]

Hi all

I have the situation where Direct Routing calls come through to Teams agents regardless of what their status is set to

Here's the scenario. I have the same agents handling calls for 3 companies, so they need to know which inbound line is calling in order to answer it with the correct "company message". They work different shifts, but need to use Teams even when they are not on shift to take calls.

The problem is that when they are off work or not scheduled to take external calls and set their status to Busy/Away the calls still comes through. They have to fully log out of Teams which is not ideal as we use the platform for internal comms also.

The ideal configuration for this is that the Auto Attendants and Call Queues are all managed externally with the telecoms company/SBC via a Sip Trunk Call Manager (STCM), and the call is finally put through to the agent(s) direct number in Teams. This is better for us, as the call flow is complex with multiple layers of AA and announcements etc and the STCM has some great features and reporting.

Is there a way to force this status back to the STCM, or even just give a 'busy' tone so that the STCM tries the next agent in the pool?

My work around so far is that the STCM manages the AAs for each inbound number, and then passes the calls onto a Ms Teams Call Queue - there is a separate call queue for each company/inbound number so that the agents can see what's ringing.

• Advantage
  • This gets over the Agent Status issue
• Problems
  • I loose the call trace and reporting, as the STCM just sees every call and answered by the Ms Teams Call Queue.
  • I also can't seem to find much information on how multiple call queues are managed in Teams when they all go to the same agents. I.e. are they balanced or does one call queue take priority over the others.
  • There seems to be no way to report on Call Queue volume - how many callers are in each queue at any one time, queue time etc

Any tips or pointers would be greatly apreciated!

Thanks in advance

Andy

[#2]

@Andy_J_R 

In the Teams Phone Queue design, you can set it to only ring an agent if he is at status "Available." The problem here is that Teams doesn't always show a correct status.  The other problem is that users often make calendar appointments as general reminders but they default to a "Busy" status instead of choosing it to be "Free" time which would allow them to be seen as "Available."

So, ringing to only "Available" agents isn't ideal, at least not for my team, so we ring them regardless. 

However, in this case of ringing them regardless of status, it still remains as of 2021-12-03 that the user is still rang even if their Teams' status in Teams "Busy" or "Do not disturb" or "Appear Away" and also rings if their "Out of Office" is set!

In this case, they can opt-out of taking queue calls themselves:  In Microsoft Teams, each agent can at his will go to ... (menu) > Settings > Calls> ..right pane scroll down to Queues and opt out of the queues  -- this will stop their getting rings. 
The problem is that they need to add themselves back in after a meeting or their break. I do not know of any reports (live or manually ran) that would allow a supervisor to see the status of his agent team so he can prod an opted-out agent to opt back into the queue again.

And I agree, I wish there was a LIVE VIEW/Supervisor's view to see # of calls backed up in the queue, average speed of answer, average call duration, agent status, etc.  I am sure Microsoft will add these in the next year or two as Business Voice grows quickly in popularity.

John