This post is part of my MB2-714 exam series of articles and contains my notes relating to queue management in CRM 2016 which is an important element of the MB2-714 exam for CRM and which can be one of the more difficult elements to grasp in it’s entirety.

This post covers the following required areas –

• Understand system queues and personal queues
• Create and maintain queues
• Add cases and activities to queues
• Work with queue items
• Implement case routing

Understand system queues and personal queues

This section in particular had me confused for some time as it can be difficult to grasp the functional difference.

There are two separate types of Queue –

• Personal Queues
• System Queues

Personal Queues are linked to either a user or a team in CRM and are used to route activities to individuals. Every user of CRM has at least one personal queue created for them which handles emailing and the likes.

System Queues aren’t linked to any individual and are used as containers for cases and activities by default, although other entities may also be configured for use with Queues. System queues are ideal for managers as you can see at a glance who is working on what items.

System queues may be either private or public, private limits visibility of the queue to only specified members, whereas public makes the queue available to all users in the system.

Note: Queues found in settings relate to the Queues themselves, whereas the Queues option found in the Service section actually show Queue items even though there is no obvious indication in the navigation.

Create and maintain queues

New queues are created in Settings > Service Management > Queues.

Once a new queue is created and saved it is immediately active and ready to use.

Queues can only be deleted if they have no related Queue Items, as such any Queue items have to either be reassigned or deleted before the Queue can be deleted.

Queues may also have an Incoming Email attached which allows information to be routed directly to the queue. When an incoming email address is entered a mailbox is also created.

Mailbox

The related Mailbox record controls how incoming & outgoing emails are handled and although this is useful to understand it is out of scope of this exam.

Add cases and activities to queues

Cases and activities can be either automatically added to queues or manually entered I’ve covered both methods below.

Automatically adding records to queues

Notes on this in ‘Implement case routing’ section below.

Manually Adding records to queues

To add a case or activity to a queue simply enter the relevant record then select Add to Queue in the command bar.

Then search for the Queue the item is to be added to and click Add.

An item can only ever be in a single queue, adding an item to a queue when it is already in a queue deletes the original queue item.

Work with queue items

Queue items are a separate record of an existing item, so for example a Case and a Queue Item relating to that case are actually two separate records. As such assigning a case has no effect on the ‘Worked By’ column visible in a queue, as it is the Queue Item that must be assigned.

The ‘Worked By’ field can be modified by going to the relevant record and selecting QUEUE ITEM DETAILS in the command bar. Then changing the value of the ‘Worked By’ field.

Implement case routing

Case Routing is used to automatically move cases around different Queues, the example I read about was moving High priority cases to a special high priority issue Queue. Although it could easily be used for automatically moving cases around depending on the project if for example there was multiple support teams. Similarly, it could be used to move between front-line support and specialists etc.

Although this is primarily used for the service desk it can also be used for other purposes, again the example I read was ‘assigning new leads to a special new leads queue for further action’.

Cases and any entities enabled for queues can be routed to any type of queue.

CRM’s auto save does not activate case routing, user must select SAVE & ROUTE in the command bar.

Image – Alberto G.