Queue
Holds the caller until someone on your team is free, telling them where they stand while they wait.
Queue puts the caller in line for your team. While they wait, it plays hold audio and tells them their place in line. When they reach the front and a matching agent is free, it rings that agent. If the wait runs past your limit, the caller leaves by a separate path so you can offer voicemail or a callback instead.
IVR projects only
Queue appears only in the palette of an IVR project.
When to use it
- Route callers to your support team when every agent might be busy.
- Send callers to a specific team or skill, for example billing, after a Menu (voice) choice.
- To ring one fixed number or SIP address, or try whichever agent is free right now without holding the caller, use Transfer. A Transfer to an agent takes its failure path at once if nobody is free; a Queue waits.
- To announce the caller to the agent and let them accept or decline, use Warm Transfer.
Agents must be able to take calls
Only agents with Take phone calls turned on in their Inbox agent settings are rung. If nobody on your team has it on, the panel warns you and every caller waits until the limit. See Assignments and routing.
Settings
Prop
Type
Groups and skills come from your team roster, so you pick them rather than type them.
How the wait works
- Joining. The caller joins the line for the chosen group and skill. If your plan's queue limit is already reached, they are not admitted and leave straight away by waited too long.
- Holding. The hold audio plays. Each time it finishes, the queue checks the caller's position and the time waited, then plays it again. With no hold audio, the queue checks every 5 seconds in silence.
- Announcements. On joining, and then every Announce every cycles, the caller hears their place: "There are 3 callers ahead of you." or "You are next in line." Once your queue has enough call history to estimate, a wait time is added, such as "The wait is about 4 minutes."
- Ringing an agent. Only the caller at the front of the line can be connected, so callers are served in order. The queue rings a free agent who matches the group and skill for up to 30 seconds. If they do not answer, the caller keeps their place and the next free agent is tried. An agent who did not answer is not rung again for that caller.
- Leaving. The caller leaves the line when an agent answers, or when Max wait (seconds) is reached.
Because the queue checks between plays of the hold audio, a long hold clip means fewer announcements and a slightly later check on the wait limit.
Outputs
| Handle | When it is taken |
|---|---|
| connected | An agent answered. The caller is now talking to the agent, not the flow; anything connected here runs only if control returns to the flow after that conversation. |
| waited too long | Max wait (seconds) was reached, or the caller was not admitted because the queue was full. |
When the caller leaves by waited too long, the node writes queueOutcome to state: timeout if they waited the full time, or full if they were turned away on arrival. Branch on {{state.queueOutcome}} with a Router if you want to say something different in each case.
If waited too long is not connected, the caller hears "Sorry, nobody is available to take your call right now. Please try again later." and the call ends.
Example
Menu ("For billing, press 1. For anything else, press 2.")
├─ 1 ─→ Queue (Group: Billing, Max wait: 300, Announce every: 2, Hold audio: hold-music)
│ ├─ connected ───────→ (caller talks to the agent)
│ └─ waited too long ─→ Play Message ("Everyone is still busy. Please leave a message.")
│ → Record (voicemail) → End Call
└─ 2 ─→ Queue (Any group)Tips and limits
- Connect waited too long. The canvas warns when it is missing. Voicemail with Record is the usual choice.
- Long waits are flagged. A Max wait (seconds) over 900 (15 minutes) shows a warning: it usually means a queue nobody is staffing.
- Prefer a longer hold clip. The clip's length sets the rhythm of the checks and announcements. A few seconds of music repeated over and over is harder to listen to than a longer piece.
- You may see "Hold audio plays once and then stops". The queue replays the hold audio itself on every cycle, and the panel has no repeat setting.
- The simulator does not queue. A test call in the simulator does not join the real line or ring anyone. It says "Connecting you to the next available agent." and continues down connected, with
queueOutcomeset toconnected. - The ringing card the agent sees includes how long the caller waited and, if they came through a Menu (voice), the option they chose.