This how‑to will guide you through creating a Teams call queue, so you can manage incoming calls and route them to the right people.
What are Call Queues in Microsoft Teams?
According to the Microsoft documentation article “Create a Call queue in Microsoft Teams”, call queues route callers to people in your organization who can help with a particular issue or question. Calls are distributed one at a time to the people in the queue, who are known as agents.
Call queues provide:
- A greeting message.
- Music while people are waiting on hold in a queue.
- Call priority routing - in First In, First Out (FIFO) order - to agents.
- Handling options for queue overflow and timeout.
Create Teams call queue in CoreView
- Under “Actions”, select “Management actions”.
- Under the Filter assistant, choose “Teams” and then select “Create Teams call queue”.
Then, complete the steps in the wizard.
Step 1: General
In this section, you will have to fill out the following fields:
- Name: give an appropriate name to your Call Queue
- Resource account: in Microsoft Teams, a resource account is required for each auto attendant or call queue.
- Language: choose as per your requirement.
Resource Accounts are special Azure AD objects (you can think of them as Microsoft 365 User Accounts) that can only be created from the Teams Admin Center or via Teams PowerShell. You can't create these accounts in Microsoft 365 Admin or Azure AD. For more details, please refer to the Manage resource accounts for service numbers in the Microsoft documentation.
Step 2: Greeting
In this section, you can choose one of the following:
- No greeting
-
Play an audio file: upload a file to play (supported formats include
.wav, .mp3, or.wma). - Greeting message: add a text-to-speech greeting message.
Step 3: On hold
This is the music that plays for people while they're on hold. You can either use the default music provided with the call queue, or you can upload a custom .wav, .mp3, or .wma audio file to use as your on-hold music.
Step 4: Call answering
Here, you can add the users and groups who will serve as call agents and receive calls from the call queue. The service will prioritize the users in the list first, followed by the groups. The order of users and distribution groups will be respected by the service, depending on the routing type you choose.
Key terminologies:
- Conference mode: this mode reduces the amount of time it takes for a caller to be connected to an agent after the agent accepts the call.
- Attendant: with attendant routing, the first call in the queue will ring all of the call agents at the same time. The first call agent to pick up the call gets the call.
- Serial: with serial routing, incoming calls will ring call agents one by one. starting from the beginning of the call agent list.
- Round robin: With round robin routing, each call agent will get the same number of calls from the queue.
- Longest idle: if you select “Longest idle” for the agent routing method, presence-based routing will be automatically enabled.
- Presence-based routing: this method uses the availability status of call agents to determine whether an agent should be included in the call routing list for the selected routing method.
Step 5: Call overflow
Here, you can set the maximum number of calls that can be in the queue at once, based on your needs. The limit is 220 calls. Once the maximum number is reached, any additional calls will either be disconnected or redirected, depending on your selection below.
Step 6: Call queue timeout
Here, you can set the maximum wait time. You can also decide if the call will be disconnected or forwarded once this time limit is reached.
Step 7: No agents
Here, you have the power to queue, disconnect, or redirect calls when all agents are away. Use the toggle at the top of the tab to apply settings to new incoming calls only.
Step 8: Authorized users
Here, you can specify the users who are authorized to make changes to this Auto attendant.
