The following article is intended for Evolve IP clients implementing a Microsoft Call Queue and/or Evolved Office Hunt Group. The details below note references to Microsoft and Evolve IP documentation on this solution.
Microsoft Call Queues are ONLY managed in the Teams Admin Center. Will provide admins to include greetings that are used when someone calls in to a phone number for your organization, automatically put the calls on hold, or search for the next available call agent to handle the call while the people who call are listening to music on hold.
Evolve IP Hunt Groups routing and configuration is managed ONLY in OSSmosis 5. Distributes calls through a telephone number or extension to multiple users within an organization. Within the hunt group settings Admins can control which line(s) will receive the incoming call and in what order. Similar to a Call Center, Hunt Groups allow users to be grouped together to handle incoming calls received by a Hunt Group's DID or extension (or both). Hunt Groups do not have as many features and options as a Call Center and are limited to a smaller subset of users (usually under 10 users).
I. KEY DISTINCTIONS:
| MS Call Queues |
|---|
Allows for 38 different languages transcribe, prompt and greetings to the caller |
| File formats for greetings WMV, MP3, WAV |
| 2 different levels of routing individual agents and groups - Can route calls to single person(s) then flow to a group as a catch all if none of the aforementioned agents don’t answer the call |
| Presence based routing – Agents only receive calls when in an available state (see Advanced Routing section) |
| Conference Mode for "agents assigned to more than one Call Queue" (see Advanced Routing section) |
| Have an option to force agent to answer or more traditional HG – presented with call first and can decline and have the call move on to next agent |
| Call Overflow handling - redirect or disconnect based on maximum number of calls in Queue reached. i.e. maximum amount of calls set to 50, 51st caller gets redirected or disconnected |
| Call time out handling - max wait time reached i.e. 20 mins, caller can be redirected or disconnected |
| Voicemail to O365 Groups |
| Evolve Office Hunt Groups |
|---|
Allows for 8 language differences |
| Alternate Numbers |
| File format WAV only |
Routing is similar but not limited to groups of 10 |
| No option to force agent to answer |
| HG calls will flow to agents in any other state except DND |
| Calling Line ID Updates |
| Call Forwarding admin settings: Admin and Busy |
| Call overflow only based on timer expiration not specific to max amount of calls reached |
| Call time out is the same as overflow option in Bsoft |
| Routing based on Time Schedules* |
| Routing based on User Priority* |
| Voicemail Management |
II. Routing/Group Policy
Note on Terminology - Regardless of which platform you are setting groups up on, both Cisco & Teams use the same distribution options for getting calls to your agents:
Cisco/Broadsoft | Microsoft Teams | Description |
|---|---|---|
Simultaneous Ring | Attendant Routing | Calls ring all agents at the same time. |
Circular Ring | Round Robin Routing | Calls are balanced so that each call agent gets the same number of calls from the queue, starting where the last call ended |
Uniform Ring | Longest Idle Routing | Calls ring to the agent whose has been idle the longest time receives the next available call. |
Regular Ring | Serial Routing | Calls ring to agents in order one by one. |
III. Advanced Routing Options
A. MS Call Queues
When turned off, calls will be routed to agents who have opted in to receive calls, regardless of their presence state. When turned on, opted-in agents will receive calls only when their presence state is Available.
Presence-based routing 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. Call agents whose availability status is set to Available are included in the call routing list and can receive calls. Agents whose availability status is set to any other status are excluded from the call routing list and won't receive calls until their availability status changes back to Available.
You can enable presence-based call routing with any of the routing methods.
Conference mode significantly reduces the amount of time it takes for a caller to be connected to an agent, after the agent accepts the call. If you have more than one call queue, you can enable conference mode on some or all of your call queues; enabling or disabling conference mode on one call queue doesn't impact any other call queues.
Conference mode is disabled by default but can be enabled at any time if the following requirements are met:
- Agents added to the call queue need to use one of the following clients:
- The latest version of the Microsoft Teams desktop client, Android app, or iOS app
- Microsoft Teams phone version 1449/1.0.94.2020051601 or later
- Agents' Teams accounts need to be set to Teams-only mode
B. Evolved Office: Hunt Groups
Cisco Hunt Groups with Teams Voice
User Priority within Hunt Group
REFERENCES:
Evolve Teams: Broadsoft Hunt Group Scenarios