Call Queues

Call Queues

A queue holds inbound callers in line — with hold music and optional position announcements — and dispatches them to your available members one at a time, according to a ring strategy. Use queues for higher-volume lines (support, billing) where ringing every phone at once doesn’t scale.

Nova PBX → Call Center → Queues lists every queue with its strategy, member count, ring timeout, and status. Search filters by name.

Video

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Screenshot

Note

A queue holds the caller and rings one member at a time; a ring group rings everyone at once and the first answer wins. Queues for volume, ring groups for shared lines.

Queue vs. the Rest of the Call Center

Queues are one part of the Nova call center. The related pages each have their own docs:

Page	Purpose
Agents	Manage the agent roster, availability, and skill assignments.
Skills	Define the organization-wide skill catalog for skills-based routing.
Wallboard	Fullscreen live queue status for a wall monitor.
Reporting	SLA, agent performance, and queue statistics.

Creating a Queue

1. Click Add queue (top-right).
2. On the General tab, give it at least a Name and pick a Ring strategy.
3. Click Create queue — you land on the editor’s Members tab to add members.

The full field-by-field reference for the three-tab editor (General / Members / Announcements) is on Creating & Editing Queues.

Ring Strategies at a Glance

Strategy	Behavior
Ring All	All available members ring; first to answer takes the call.
Round Robin Memory	Cycles through members in order, remembering position across calls.
Least Recent	Rings whoever has gone longest without taking a queue call.
Fewest Calls	Rings the member with the fewest completed calls.
Random	Random pick per call.
Linear	Strictly first-listed first; later members only when earlier ones are busy.
Weighted Random (Skills)	Random among members whose skills match the queue’s required skills, weighted by penalty.

Most teams use Round Robin Memory or Fewest Calls for fair distribution.

Editing and Deleting

Click a row to open the three-tab editor. To delete, use ⋯ → Delete on the list — the confirmation dialog reminds you that the queue and its member assignments are removed permanently, and any inbound routes or IVR keys targeting the queue must be repointed.

Live Stats

Waiting-caller counts, agent availability, and answered/abandoned figures are live values reported by your PBX node — they appear on the Wallboard and in Reporting, not on this list. On a freshly provisioned system (or before any calls have hit a queue) these read zero/empty; they populate as soon as the node starts handling queue traffic.

Note

Queue changes are staged on your PBX configuration — click Apply Changes in the banner at the top of Switchboard to push them live to your phone system.