Teams & Routing

Teams & Routing decides who answers new conversations. You group your agents into departments, give each department queues, and IconEngage hands conversations from those queues to available agents. Each department also has opening times, holidays and response targets that the first-response timer is measured against.

Go to Settings › Teams & Routing. The page has three sections: Departments, Queues and Agents.

How routing works

1. A customer messages one of your WhatsApp numbers and a conversation opens.
2. If a queue is the default queue for that business number, the conversation is placed in that queue and its first-response timer starts.
3. The queue's strategy picks an agent from the queue's department who is Available and has room under their maximum. If nobody can take it, it waits in the queue and is offered again as soon as somebody becomes available.

Departments

A department groups agents, owns queues, and carries the opening times and targets its conversations are measured against. The table shows each department's Timezone and how many Queues and Agents it has.

Create a department

1. Under Departments, click New department.
2. Enter a Name, for example "Support" or "Sales".
3. Choose a Timezone. Opening times, holidays and the response-target clock are all read in this zone.
4. Click Create department.

To change it later, open the row's menu and choose Rename or change timezone. Changing the timezone moves the whole department's clock: it opens and closes at the same wall-clock times in the new zone.

To set its opening times, holidays and targets, click the department's name. See A department's page below.

Queues

A queue is where an unassigned conversation waits until its strategy finds somebody. The table shows each queue's department, Strategy, Default for a number, how many are Waiting (and how long the oldest has waited), and Priority.

Create a queue

You need at least one department first.

1. Under Queues, click New queue.

2. Choose the Department it belongs to.

3. Enter a Name.

4. Choose a Strategy:

   Strategy	Who gets the conversation
   Round robin	Each available agent in turn
   Least busy	Whoever is holding the fewest open conversations
   Manual	Nobody is assigned. The conversation waits in the queue until an agent takes it.

5. Set the Priority. Higher is looked at first when a conversation could go to more than one queue.

6. To route a number's new conversations here, switch on The default queue for a business number and choose the Business number.

7. Click Create queue.

To change or remove a queue, use Edit or Delete in the row's menu. A queue with conversations still waiting can't be deleted: route them somewhere first from Team workload.

Agents (the roster)

The roster lists the people routing can give conversations to, with their status (Available, Busy, Away or Offline), their departments and a Capacity meter of open conversations against their maximum.

Add someone to the roster

1. Under Agents, click Add to the roster.
2. In Person, search by name or email. Only active members who aren't on the roster yet are listed. (To invite someone new, see Members.)
3. Set Maximum open conversations. Use 0 to never auto-assign to this person. They can still take conversations themselves.
4. Tick the departments they answer for, and for each choose their role: Member or Supervisor.
5. Click Add to the roster.

To change these later, open the agent's row menu, choose Capacity and departments, make your changes and click Save. Lowering someone's maximum below what they hold takes nothing away. It only affects the next conversation they are given.

Department supervisors see that department on the Team workload board.

Your status

Only you can set your own status. Open the account menu (your name, in the app's navigation) and choose Available, Busy, Away or Offline:

No status hands back the conversations you already hold. Your current status is also shown above the roster. Owners, Admins, Supervisors and Agents can set a status. Setting it puts you on the roster, but conversations only reach you once you're in a department.

A department's page

Click a department's name to open its page.

Opening times

Set the hours the department is open on each day of the week, in the department's timezone.

1. Under Opening times, click Add hours on a day, for example Monday.
2. Enter when it opens and closes, as HH:MM from 00:00 to 23:59. You can add more than one slot per day, for example for a lunch break.
3. Repeat for each day. A day with no hours is closed.
4. Click Save opening times, or Discard changes.

If no day has any hours, the department is treated as open all day, every day. Hours can't overlap or run backwards.

If the department keeps business hours that something else also uses (a WhatsApp number, another department or a live flow), you can't change the department's timezone on its own: the dialog says so. Change the timezone of those hours under Settings → Business hours instead.

Holidays

A holiday closes the department for the whole day in its timezone.

1. Under Holidays, enter the Date and a Name, for example "Diwali".
2. Click Add holiday.

To remove one, click the remove button next to it.

Service level targets

Under Service level targets (How long a customer waits), set how quickly conversations should get a first reply:

1. For the department, and optionally for each of its queues, enter First response (minutes). A queue's target overrides the department's for conversations waiting in that queue. Leave it empty for no target.
2. Click Save targets.

Targets are measured in working time: the clock pauses outside opening hours and on holidays. For example, with a four-hour target and hours of 09:00–17:00, a message at 16:00 is due at 12:00 the next working day.

The target drives the First reply timer in the Inbox and the Near breach and Breached counts on the Team workload board.

Deleting a department

Open the department's row menu, choose Delete, and confirm with Delete. If anything still points at it (a queue, an agent or a response target), move those first.

Related

• Team workload
• Take, give back and hand over conversations
• Roles and permissions
• Agents report