What are Queues in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM) and Should I be Using Them?

By Liz McGlennen | July 2, 2019

If you’re a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM) user and are wondering what queues are and why you should use them, continue reading to find out!

Queues in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement are most often used to manage and route work items, such as when a customer service team is working on many different projects and tasks at once.

The ‘Service’ hub provides two default entities, Cases and Activities, that are enabled for Queues.

In Queues, you can change your view from either ‘Items I am working on’ or ‘Items available to work on’. And a ‘Tier 1 Queue’ provides all of the items that are available to be worked on.

After viewing your cases, you can ‘Pick’ an item to indicate to other team members that you have chosen to work on this item. Once the item is picked, a window will pop open asking whether the item should be removed from the Queue or not. Removing the item from the Queue will allow other team members to see that you have picked this item and it will disappear from the list of items that need to be worked on. Your ‘picked’ case will now show up in ‘Items I am working on’ 

Any time a record enters a queue a record called the ‘Queue item details’ will be created. ‘Queue item details’ tracks all information on the queue such as which queue it is in, who is working on it, when the queue was entered, and when it was last modified. This feature is excellent for tracking information on cases. 

A useful feature that Queues offers is that queues can be associated with certain mailboxes, so that any incoming emails going to that mailbox can automatically create email activity that goes into that queue instead. 

One of the best features of Queues are the routing rules. Routing rules move can be set up to move items, such as a case or activity, to another queue automatically. The routing rules can also automatically route items from a queue to a certain user or team. If you’re familiar with Advanced Find, the condition configuration of routing rules is similar and fairly easy to set up. 

What really makes Queues special compared to any other native option within CRM is that it is the only place in CRM where you can have a list with multiple different records or entity types all compiled into one list, such as cases, emails, tasks, or any other different type of activity. 

Queues may also be enabled for custom or other out-of-the-box entities, but once it is turned on, it cannot be shut off. To do so, go to the ‘Entity Metadata’ and enable ‘Queues for Quotes’. An advantage of this is that other types of records can be routing to the queues, such as a quote in a queue. 

Common Complaints in Queues:

• Queues doesn’t have auto-refresh, so you must manually refresh to see the most recent items.
• Queues can be overkill. A view and an owner can be used to accomplish something very similar, but only if the list includes one record type.

Queues are largely underutilized by most CRM users because they are either unaware of the benefits, or they don’t know how to use them. Hopefully, this blog post has been helpful in familiarizing yourself with Queues so you can begin to incorporate it into your daily work life. If you are looking for more information on queues, or you would like more help with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, contact Stoneridge Software.

Watch this video on Queues for even more information:


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