Call Queue Agent Selection is the section of Call Queue configuration where you establish how calls to the queue are assigned to your various agents. There’s a lot of flexibility here, along with some ways you can inadvertently cause some issues.

Let’s run through the four routing methods. Note that each one has an information hotspot beside it to help explain what they do.

• Attendant Routing is where a call to the queue rings all of the agents at the same time.
• Serial Routing will ring the agents in your agent list (more on that in a future post) one at a time, from the start of the list down. The next call will start again with the first agent in the list. This is a great option for things like a receptionist who might be away from their desk or on another call. You can have the call move on to the next agent – say someone in accounting – and then have the next call start again with the receptionist.
• Round Robin is similar to Serial Routing in that it starts at the top of the list and moves down, however call assignment keeps moving down the agent list and does not return to the start for each call. This is a great option to spread calls between multiple people in a relatively even fashion.
• Longest Idle assigns the call to the agent who has been available (in terms of their presence) the longest. I feel this option is poorly named. It has nothing to do with a user being idle, but rather the user being available. “Longest available” would be a better name. The term “idle” is also used in Microsoft documentation on presence to refer to how long someone has been inactive on their computer, including when they flip into the “away” state.  Here’s what the information button says about longest idle:

Up next, we’ll cover Presence-based routing, agent opt-out, and agent alert time.