Create and manage queues for cases
Important
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Tip
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In Dynamics 365 Customer Service, queues are containers used to store anything that needs to be completed or requires an action such as completing a task or closing a case. Queues help you to organize, prioritize, and monitor the progress of your work.
Queues can be useful in:
Having a centralized list of pending work that needs attention.
Sorting tasks by type, or by people assigned to complete them.
Types of queues
By default, a queue is created for each user and team in Customer Service. You can use this default queue to track all your work items, or you can set up queues to reflect your organization's structure, business processes, or both. For example, you can create separate queues for first tier and second tier product support teams that reflect their differing levels of expertise, or Gold and Silver queues to reflect differing priorities based on service contracts that customers have with your organization.
You can use queues to prioritize your activities and cases, and categorize them based on:
products or services
subscription levels (regular, premium customers)
activity categories
geography
You can create both basic and advanced queues (for unified routing). More information: Create and manage queues for unified routing
Based on who can view the queues, you can create:
- Public queues To let everyone in the organization view the queue and its work items
- Private queues To let a small group of members view the queue and its work items. Private queues display work items for members of that queue and help remove clutter from other users' views. Private queues don't restrict access to the records they contain. Therefore, to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data, ensure that you set up security models based on your organization needs. More information: Dynamics 365 security model
Note
- You must manually add new team members as members of private queues.
- You must manually add new Microsoft Entra ID team members to the team's default queue.
Prerequisites
Make sure that you have the Sales or Marketing Manager, Customer Service Manager, System Administrator, or System Customizer security role or equivalent permissions.
Check your security role
Follow the steps in View your user profile.
Don’t have the correct permissions? Contact your system administrator.
Create a queue
Go to one of the admin apps, and perform the following steps:
In the site map, select Queues in Customer support.
On the Queues page, select Manage for Basic queues.
To create a queue, select New. To edit a queue, select the queue in the list of queues, and then select Edit on the command bar.
Enter the following information in the Summary tab:
In the SUMMARY section, do the following:
- Name: Enter the name of the queue.
- Type: Select whether the queue is a private or public queue. If you’re creating a private queue, you’ll need to add members to this queue manually. In the Members section, select Add to add members to the queue. Only these members will be able to work on the items in this queue.
- Incoming Email: Enter the email address that'll receive all messages sent to the queue.
- Description: Enter a description.
In the EMAIL SETTINGS section, you can do the following:
- Select a value in the Convert Incoming Email To Activities dropdown list to set the type of messages that you want to track as activities.
- Set the email signature template. This signature is added to the email by default when you send messages from a queue or reply to messages sent to the queue. More information: Add a default signature for a queue
In the Omnichannel section of the Conflicts Tab, you can do the following:
- Set Automatic work distribution to No (default option), and then select Save to create a basic queue.
- Set Automatic work distribution to Yes to enable unified routing, and then select Save to create an advanced queue.
Important
You can update a basic queue to an advanced queue and enable it for unified routing by setting Automatic work distribution to Yes. However, once set, you can't revert the advanced queue to basic queue. You'll need to create a basic queue, and set the Automatic work distribution to No.
After you have saved the queue, the following changes happen in the SUMMARY tab:
In the Mailbox field of the EMAIL SETTINGS section, a mailbox record for the queue is automatically created and selected. To update the mailbox, select the mailbox name More information: Create forward mailboxes or edit mailboxes
If you selected the queue type as private, the MEMBERS section appears.
- Select Add Existing User. Only those users that you add can work on the items in this queue. If you add a team as a member, only the existing team members can access the queue. New team members must be added manually to the queue to be able to access it.
- The QUEUE ITEMS and RECORD CREATION AND UPDATE RULES sections appear.
Set up default views for routing dialogs
To optimize agent efficiency, you can set up custom views that contain a filtered list of queues. These queues are relevant to the type of cases that the agents handle. You can then set the view as the default from which agents can pick a queue or user to route the work items.
In the Customer Service admin center app, go to Customer support in the site map and select Queues.
On the page that appears, select Manage for Routing dialogs.
On the Queues > Routing dialogs page, do the following:
- Add to queues: Set a default view that'll appear for the agents when they open the Add to Queue dialog to route a case from the case page.
- Route queue item: Set a default view that'll appear for the agents when they open the Route Queued Item dialog to route a case on the Queues page,
Save and close.
At runtime, your agents will see the views that you have set for them.
For information on how to create custom views, see Create and edit public views.
View queue items for a queue
The QUEUE ITEMS section lists all activities that are either routed automatically by the routing rules or manually assigned to the queue.
Set up rules for creating or updating records automatically
In the RECORD CREATION AND UPDATE RULES section, you can create rules for automatically creating records for cases from incoming emails. More information: Automatically create or update records
Route items to basic queues
For all cases that are automatically created from incoming email and social posts, create routing rules to route the cases to queues. Then, assign the items in the queue to appropriate agents. More information: Create rules to automatically route cases
Alternatively, you can manually add cases and activities to queues. More information: Add a case to a queue
Assign items to agents
Queues share cases or activities as a group until they're removed from the queue or accepted by a customer service agent who assumes responsibility for handling them. Agents can pick the items for themselves, or a customer service manager can manually route these cases to the agents, or to other queues, users, and teams.
To assign items in the queue to agents, select Assign after selecting one or more items in the queues grid. In the Assign Queue box, you can choose to assign to other users or teams.
Note
- When two agents simultaneously add cases to the queue, the system creates two queue items instead of a single queue item.
- If you've created workflows or used custom API to assign cases to agents and if the same case is assigned to two agents at the same time, then the system creates two queue items instead of a single queue item.
- When an agent picks a case created by another agent and releases it from the queue, the case gets assigned to the queue owner and not to the agent who created the case.
Create a queue in legacy Service Management
To create or edit a queue
Make sure that you have the Sales or Marketing Manager, Customer Service Manager, System Administrator, or System Customizer security role or equivalent permissions.
Check your security role
Follow the steps in View your user profile.
Don’t have the correct permissions? Contact your system administrator.
Go to Settings > Service Management.
Select Queues.
To create a new queue, select New. To edit a queue, select the queue from the list of queues, and then select Edit on the command bar.
Enter the following information in the Summary tab.
In the SUMMARY section:
Name: Enter the name of the queue.
Type: Select whether the queue is a private or public queue. You can use a private queue to allow only a specific set of people to work on activities in this queue.
Incoming Email: Enter the email address that'll receive all messages sent to the queue.
In the EMAIL SETTINGS section:
Convert Incoming Email To Activities: From the dropdown list, select a value depending on the type of messages that you want to track as activities.
Mailbox: A mailbox record for the queue is automatically created and selected as soon as you save the queue record. To update the mailbox details, select the mailbox name. More information: Create forward mailboxes or edit mailboxes
In the Record creation and update rules section, add a Record Creation and Update Rule record. By using these rules, you can automatically create or update system or custom records with incoming activities such as emails, social activities, or other custom activities. More information: Set up rules to automatically create or update records
Important
- This is a central place to manage rules across all supported activities including out-of-the-box and custom activities associated with the queue.
- The Record creation and update rules section displays rules using the Email Activity Conversation Setting or Social Activity Conversation Setting and that have the same queue ID as the queue.
- Multiple rules with the same source type and same queue can exist. So when you select Email Activity Conversion Settings or Social Activity Conversion Settings, the rule with the latest Last Modified On date is applied.
Select Save.
See also
Work with queues in Omnichannel for Customer Service
Add a case to a queue
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