What is a Call Queue?
A Call Queue provides voice-centric call center features such as voice queues, skill-based routing, real-time monitoring, analytics, and reporting. It is suitable for customers who need streamlined voice queue capabilities rather than a full contact center solution.
This guide is for configuring the Call Queue features of Daisy Hosted Voice (DHV).
Call Queue functionality is included with the Webex Calling professional license. However, for more advanced contact center requirements, consider Webex Contact Center or Webex Calling Customer Assist for more lightweight agent and supervisor experiences in the Webex App.
Features
Voice Queues — Configure skills-based routing, enhanced queue policies, customer callback, and other queue behaviours.
Call queue analytics — View metrics such as top queues, top agents, and live queue status.
Call queue reports — Access detailed reports including queue status and agent status.
Agent experience in Webex App — Agents can change queue status and join or leave queues from the Webex App.
Multi-call window — Quick view of call statuses and access to common calling controls.
Call integration within Microsoft Teams — Teams users can access call queue features directly from Microsoft Teams.
Voice Queues
Voice Queue (formerly Group Call Management) is designed to handle high call volumes and team-based call handling. It is recommended for call queues with up to 50 agents and includes features for callers, agents, supervisors, and administrators.
For callers:
Welcome greeting
Comfort greeting
Request callback option
Enhanced routing policies for night service, holidays, and forced forwarding
Auto Attendant (interactive voice response menu) features such as call whisper and comfort bypass
For agents:
One-step login and logout of queues
Personal readiness status management
Multi-queue operations
Intuitive User Experience (UX) for deskphones and the Webex App
For supervisors and administrators:
Monitor, coach, barge, and take over active calls
Agent status management
Reporting and analytics dashboard
Assign staff and skills-based routing ratings per queue
Create and manage a Call Queue – Overview
Call queues route callers to appropriate agents and hold calls when agents are unavailable.
Calls are distributed according to the routing settings you configure. When a call from a queue is delivered to an agent, the agent-level call-forwarding setting does not apply.
You can create multiple call queues to provide automated answers, comfort messages, or hold music when agents are unavailable.
Key behaviours and administrative tasks:
Configure routing settings, greetings, hold behaviour, and callback options.
Assign agents and supervisors to queues and set skills or weights when required.
Monitor queues in real time and use analytics to tune performance.
Use launch kit materials to prepare teams before deployment.
Call Queue capacity guidance:
Maximum number of queues per location — 1,000
Maximum number of agents per queue — 1,000, but limited to 100 for Weighted Routing and limited to 50 for Simultaneous Routing
Maximum queue size — 250 calls
Maximum number of agents a supervisor can manage — 100
Create and manage a Call Queue – Step-by-Step
Sign in to Control Hub.
Go to Services, then Calling, then Features.
On the Call Queue card, click Add new.
On the Basics page, enter the following information, then click Next:
Location — Select a Location from the dropdown.
Call Queue Name — Enter a name for the Call Queue.
Phone Number and Extension — Assign a primary Phone Number and / or an Extension. If the Extension field is blank, the last four digits of the Phone Number are used.
Allow agents to use call queue number as Caller ID — Enable this functionality to allow agents to present the call queue number as their outgoing Caller ID. For locations in India, the call queue and agent locations must share the same PSTN provider, country, and zone for this to work.
Number of calls in queue — Set the maximum calls the queue can hold (1–250). Do not set to 0.
Caller ID — Assign the Caller ID for the queue (mandatory to proceed).
External Caller ID phone number — Choose one:
Direct Line — The call queue’s primary number and extension.
Location Number — The main number of the assigned location (appears only if the location has a main number).
Other number from organisation — Choose any assigned or unassigned number. Callbacks to unassigned numbers will not be answered.
Note: Selecting a number from another location requires the same PSTN provider, country, and zone for both locations in regions where this restriction applies (for example India).
Direct line Caller ID name — Choose Display name or Other direct line caller ID name (custom name; Unicode up to 128 characters).
Dial by Name — Enter a dial-by-name identifier (ASCII only).
Language — Select the call queue language from the dropdown.
On the Call Routing page, choose one of the following routing option before clicking Next:
Priority-based (choose one):
Circular — Cycles through agents after the last agent who took a call; sends calls to the next available agent.
Top Down — Sends calls through the agent list in order, starting from the top each time.
Longest Idle — Sends the call to the agent who has been idle the longest; if no answer, proceeds to the next-longest idle agent.
Weighted — Routes calls to idle agents based on assigned percentage weights (up to 100%).
Simultaneous — Rings all agents in the queue at once. (If using Simultaneous Routing with bounced-call settings, see documentation for enhancing distribution of unanswered calls.)
Skill-based:
When skill-based routing is selected, calls route by skill level first. If multiple agents share the same skill level, the configured routing pattern (Circular / Top Down / Longest) resolves contention.
Skill-based routing supports Circular, Top Down, and Longest Idle patterns.
Capacity limits:
Priority-based Circular / Top Down / Longest Idle — up to 1,000 agents.
Priority-based Weighted — up to 100 agents.
Priority-based Simultaneous — up to 50 agents.
Skill-based Circular / Top Down / Longest Idle — up to 1,000 agents.
Note: By default, calls are not routed to agents in the Wrapping Up state.
On the Overflow Settings page, configure overflow behaviour and agent notification tones before clicking Next.
Overflow treatment options:
Perform busy treatment — Caller hears a fast, busy tone.
Play ringing until caller hangs up — Caller hears ringing until they disconnect.
Transfer to phone number — Enter a destination number for overflow calls.
Additional overflow treatment options:
Enable overflow after calls wait X seconds — Enter a wait time (seconds) after which overflow treatment will be triggered.
Play announcement before overflow processing — If disabled, callers hear hold music until answered.
Notification tone for agents — Choose organisation defaults or define custom tones for Monitoring, Supervisor Barge-in, and Coaching.
Default — Use the organisation’s default settings. To customise for this queue, select Define custom notification settings and enable the notification types required.
On the Announcements page, choose the messages and music callers hear while waiting, then click Next.
Available announcements:
Welcome Message — Plays when callers first reach the queue; can be mandatory or optional.
Estimated Wait Message for Queued Calls — Announces estimated wait time or position; plays after the welcome message.
Comfort Message — Plays after the welcome message and before hold music (e.g. promotions).
Comfort Message Bypass — Plays a shorter message for calls expected to be answered quickly.
Hold Music — Plays looped music while callers wait.
Call Whisper — Plays a message to the agent immediately before connecting the call, announcing the source queue.
On the Select Agents page, click Add User or Workspace or Virtual Line and select entries to add to the queue.
Agent configuration:
When using skill-based routing, assign a Skill Level per agent (1 is highest and 20 is lowest). The default Skill Level is 1.
You can choose whether or not to enable Allow agents on active calls to take additional calls.
You can choose whether or not to enable Allow agents to join or unjoin the queue.
For Weighted routing, assign percentage weights to agents.
For Circular or Top Down routing, drag-and-drop agents to set your queue order.
Note: If an agent has only an extension, ensure their location has a main number; otherwise calls to the queue won’t route to extension-only agents.
On the Review page, verify all call queue settings are correct. Then click Create, and then click Done, to confirm the Call Queue.
Now that the Call Queue has been created, you can use the Enable Call Queue toggle to turn the queue on or off.
Turning the queue off presents a busy status to callers and prevents new calls from entering.
Disabling the queue resets routing allocation (for example, Circular Routing returns to the first agent in the list).