Create and manage queues for unified routing

Completed

When a customer sends a chat message or a case is created in Dynamics 365, that work item needs to reach someone who can resolve it. But a contact center rarely has just one team handling everything. You might have a billing team, a technical support team, and a general inquiries team, each with different skills and capacity.

Queues are the containers that organize this division of work. Each queue represents a logical group of work items destined for a specific set of service representatives. Unified routing evaluates classification rules to enrich each work item, then applies route-to-queue rules to send it to the correct queue. Once in the queue, an assignment method selects the best available representative to handle it.

Think of queues as the connective tissue between customer need and CSR (Customer Service Representative) action. Without them, every work item competes for attention in a single undifferentiated pool.

Choose the right queue type

Before you create a queue, you choose its type. Dynamics 365 Contact Center supports three queue types:

• Messaging: Routes conversations from live chat, SMS, Microsoft Teams, and social channels.
• Record: Routes Dataverse records such as cases and emails.
• Voice: Routes inbound and outbound calls.

Queue types prevent cross-channel assignment errors. A chat conversation can only be assigned to a messaging queue, and a voice call can only reach a voice queue. This separation keeps your routing logic clean and your CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) focused on the channel they're configured to handle.

When you create workstreams and route-to-queue rules, only queues of the matching type appear as available destinations. The same type enforcement applies when a supervisor manually transfers a work item.

Create a queue

You create and manage queues in the Copilot Service admin center.

1. In the site map, select Queues under Customer support.
2. Select Manage for Advanced queues.
3. Select New, then enter the following details in the Create a queue dialog:
   • Name: A descriptive name for the queue (for example, "Billing Chat" or "Premium Voice Support").
   • Type: Select Messaging, Record, or Voice.
   • Queue priority: Enter a number to set the relative priority of this queue. Lower numbers mean higher priority—a queue with priority 1 is assigned work before a queue with priority 2.
4. Select Create.

After the queue is created, you add users and configure its behavior, including the assignment method, operating hours, and overflow conditions.

Tip

You can copy an existing queue to reuse its settings. Select the queue, choose Copy from the command menu, then update the name and any settings that differ. This shortcut is useful when setting up queues for multiple product lines with similar configurations.

Add users and select an assignment method

A queue is only useful if service representatives are members of it. Select Add users on the queue page to add one or more representatives. Members of the queue are eligible to receive work items from it if they have the right presence status and capacity.

Next, choose an assignment method. This setting determines how the system selects which representative gets the next work item. The available out-of-the-box options are:

Assignment method	How it works
Highest capacity	Assigns to the representative with the most available capacity who matches the required skills and presence.
Advanced round robin	Distributes work in rotation, first based on the order representatives were added to the queue, then based on the representative's last assignment time stamp in the queue.
Least active	Assigns to the representative who has been idle the longest. Available for messaging and voice queues only.
Create new	Lets you define a custom assignment method using your own prioritization and assignment rulesets.

You explore the details of each assignment method in the final unit of this module.

Configure queue metrics thresholds

Each queue includes a Metrics Threshold section where you define per-queue benchmarks for SLA compliance and abandonment tracking. These thresholds feed into contact center performance reporting and enable consistent KPI rollups across queues.

Two thresholds are available:

• Service Level Threshold: The maximum time, in seconds, within which a conversation must be answered to be counted as meeting the SLA. For example, if your SLA requires conversations to be answered within two minutes, enter 120.
• Short Abandoned Threshold: The maximum time, in seconds, before a customer disconnecting is counted as a meaningful abandonment. Conversations that end before this threshold aren't counted as abandoned, as the customer likely disconnected immediately by accident or changed their mind.

To configure thresholds:

1. On the Queues page, select the queue.
2. In Metrics Threshold, select Add Threshold.
3. Enter values in seconds for Service Level Threshold and Short Abandoned Threshold.
4. Select Save and close.

Thresholds are optional, and queues without them still function normally. However, without consistent thresholds defined across your queues, SLA and abandonment data won't roll up reliably in contact center reporting.

Default queues and fallback queues

Dynamics 365 Contact Center includes three default queues out of the box:

• Default messaging queue: Handles all messaging conversations when no other queue is assigned.
• Default entity queue: Handles record routing.
• Default voice queue: Handles all voice calls.

Every service representative with the Omnichannel agent role is automatically a member of these default queues. The default queues have limited configuration options; you can update the assignment method, but most other settings aren't editable.

A fallback queue is a different concept. It's a queue you designate on a workstream to catch work items that don't match any route-to-queue rules—for example, when classification or routing encounters an error. You can set any queue, including a default queue, as the fallback queue for a workstream.

Important

The fallback queue overrides overflow settings. When a work item is routed to the fallback queue because of an error or unmatched rules, overflow conditions for that queue are ignored and the work item is assigned directly. Always add users to your fallback queue to avoid abandoned work items.

As a best practice, create dedicated advanced queues and define your own assignment strategy rather than relying on default queues. This gives you full control over overflow behavior, operating hours, and prioritization.

With your queues created and staffed, the next step is to configure when those queues are active and what happens when they reach capacity or go offline.