Service queues · members, capacity, hours and required skills
A queue is where tickets and conversations wait for a team. In Settings › Queues you create each queue, add its members, cap open items per person, give it business hours and a default priority, and say which skills it requires before routing work to someone.
What a queue is
A queue is the place where tickets and conversations wait for a team: Tier 1, Billing, Spanish support. Routing rules send work to a queue, the service catalog opens cases in a queue, skill requirements are set per queue and the supervision board is organised by queue. Until you create a queue here, that name is only a text label on tickets (the Group field) and conversations: nobody is a member, there is no capacity and no hours.
Go to Settings › Queues. Only administrators can change queues.
Creating a queue
Click New queue and fill in:
- Name: this exact text is what tickets (Group field) and conversations use to land in the queue. Keep it short and stable.
- Description: what belongs in this queue, for the team.
- Open items per person: how many open tickets in this queue each member can hold. 0 means the queue does not limit. A member's own limit, set in the members table, overrides the queue's.
- Default priority: suggested for tickets that enter this queue without one.
- Position: the order in which queues are listed.
- Business hours: follow the organization's business hours (the same ones the SLA uses, with time zone and holidays) or give the queue its own weekly window. Own hours follow the organization's time zone; the queue has no time zone of its own.
- Active: an inactive queue leaves routing and pick lists but keeps its members and settings.
The list also shows queues seen in traffic and not configured yet: names that already appear on open tickets or conversations without a queue behind them. Create this queue adopts that work with the same name, so members, capacity and hours start applying to it.
Members
Open a queue with Members and skills. Add people from your team; each member has three switches:
- Leader: receives escalations for this queue.
- In rotation: receives new work from routing. Someone out of rotation stays a member, keeps seeing the queue and receives nothing new.
- Own limit: a personal cap of open items in this queue. Empty means the queue's limit applies.
The Load column shows how many open tickets of this queue each person holds right now, and the total for the queue. It is the same count the routing engine uses before assigning, so what you see is what routing applies. When nobody can take new work, the queue shows as full and routing leaves new items unassigned until someone frees up or is added.
A queue with no members does not distribute anything: items routed to it stay unassigned.
Required skills
Under Required skills, pick a skill from your catalog and a minimum level. An item in this queue is only routed to someone who has every required skill at least at that level. Who has which skill, and at what level, is set in Settings › Skills; this screen only shows the requirement. If a queue requires a skill that nobody in it has, the list flags it: that work will sit unassigned until the configuration changes.
Renaming, deactivating and deleting
- Renaming a queue does not rename existing tickets or conversations. They keep the old text and stop matching the queue; the form warns you when the name changes.
- Deactivating is reversible. The queue leaves routing and pick lists; nothing is closed and members stay. This is the safe way to stop using a queue.
- Deleting removes members, capacity and required skills. Tickets and conversations keep the text label and stay open; the confirmation tells you how many open items the queue still has. Prefer deactivating when in doubt.
Related
- Settings › Skills: the skill catalog and the person × skill matrix.
- Settings › Routing rules: how work reaches a queue and moves between people.
- Tickets › Supervision: the live board per queue, with open, unassigned and at-risk items.