Create a Message Queue

A message queue pools a set of agents so that conversations arriving on your message channels are distributed among them instead of landing on one person. This spreads the workload and shortens the time customers wait for a reply. Follow the steps below to build a queue and add its agents.

Limits

How many message queues you can create, and how many agents each one holds, depends on the number of extensions on your system:

Extensions (N)	Message queues	Agents per queue
N ≤ 50	16	25
50 < N ≤ 200	32	60
N > 200	64	120

Before you start

Your system must be running firmware 84.20.0.21 or later.

Create the queue

1. Sign in to the PBX (Private Branch Exchange, your hosted phone system) web portal and open Messaging > Message Queue.

2. Click Add.

3. In the Name field, enter a name that makes the queue easy to recognize.

4. Under Chat Assignment Mode, choose how sessions are handed to agents.

   

   Mode	What it does
   Manual Pickup	Every agent can see and reply to messages until one agent clicks Pick Up to take ownership of the session.
   Auto-Pickup	Every agent can see the messages, and the first one to reply automatically takes the session.
   Disable Pickup	Every agent can see and reply to messages, and no one can take ownership of a session.

   Tip

   Before you turn on Auto-Pickup, let everyone in the queue know how it works. Because the first reply claims the session, agents who are not expecting this can end up picking up chats by mistake.

5. In the Agents section, move the extension users you want on the team from the Available list into the Selected list.

   

6. Click Save.

Every extension user in the Selected list is now an agent of the queue.

What to do next

Note

Building the queue and adding agents does not route anything on its own. Incoming chats reach the queue only after you set it as a channel number’s inbound message destination, as described below.

Point a channel number at this queue so its incoming messages are delivered here. Open Messaging > Message Channel, click the edit icon next to the channel, go to Messaging Settings, and set the queue as the inbound message destination.