Queues are lists of discussions that only your support staff see. Customers never know a discussion is in a queue, so you can use them however suits your team: by topic ("Billing", "Bugs"), by priority ("Key accounts"), or by who should look at it. A discussion can be in any number of queues, and each queue can email the supporters who follow it.
Categories are the other way to sort discussions, and customers do see those: see How do I create additional categories?.
Creating a queue
In your dashboard, open Discussions and click Manage Queues under Organize in the sidebar, then + Create a queue. Give it a name and click Create queue.
Click a queue's name to edit it:
- Notify support staff: tick the supporters who get an email each time a discussion is added to this queue.
- GitHub repository: if you've connected GitHub, pick the repository whose issues belong with this queue. When a supporter attaches a ticket to a discussion in the queue, that repository is offered first. See How do I integrate my Tender with GitHub?.
Click Remove beside a queue on the Manage Queues page to delete it. Its discussions stay as they are.
Managing queues needs full admin access. Every supporter can add discussions to queues and read them.
Adding a discussion to a queue
On the discussion's page, click Add to Queue in the staff toolbar above the first message (it shows how many queues the discussion is in), then click a queue. Click it again to take the discussion out. A system note in the discussion, visible only to staff, records each change.
With more than ten queues, Add to Queue opens a search box instead: type part of a queue's name and press Enter to add the discussion to the highlighted queue (or take it out), or click queues to change several at once, then Done.
To queue many discussions at once, tick them in a dashboard list and choose a queue from Enqueue (or Dequeue) below the list.
Reading a queue
Your queues are in the dashboard sidebar. My Queues are the ones you're notified about, Other Queues are the rest, and Not queued lists the discussions that are in no queue. The number beside each one counts its open discussions (and ticketed ones, if you use a ticket tracker).
On the Pending and other dashboard lists, a discussion's queues are shown before its title, and the Queue menu above the list shows one queue at a time.
Pinning a queue
The pinned queue is always one click away, at the top of every dashboard page (and of your site's pages while you're logged in as staff): Pinned with its count. Click it to see that queue's latest discussions, and pick another queue from the menu at the top to pin that one instead.
You can also pin a queue from a discussion's Add to Queue menu: click the pin beside the queue's name.
Assigning a discussion to a supporter
Every supporter has a queue of their own. To hand a discussion to someone, pick them under Assigned to in the discussion's sidebar. It then shows under Assigned to me in their dashboard, and under Supporters in everyone else's. Click Remove beside their name to unassign it.
You can also assign many discussions at once with Assign to below a dashboard list.
Getting email about a queue
Each supporter can choose their own queues: click your name at the top of the page, then Account settings, and under Email notifications tick "when discussions are added to the … queue" for each queue you want, then Save notifications. This is the same list as the queue's Notify support staff. Your own queue is ticked to begin with, so you hear about discussions assigned to you.
Filling queues automatically
Two kinds of filters add discussions to queues for you, under Account & Settings › Settings:
- Discussion Filters act on new discussions: for example, add anything that mentions "invoice" to the Billing queue. See How do I use discussion filters?, and, to route by your own data about the customer (their plan, say), Creating advanced discussion filters using Extras hash.
- Activity Filters act on discussions that have gone quiet: for example, add anything with no activity for a week to a "Follow up" queue. See Automatically processing stale discussions with Activity Filters.
Reports › Queue History shows how many discussions in each queue were opened and resolved each week.