Queues & Routing
The queue said eleven open tickets. There were actually twenty-six. Six were assigned to Priya, who had been on leave since Monday. Five were in a status called Pending that nobody had looked at since spring. Three had been moved to the facilities department by mistake and were being ignored there with great consistency. One was assigned to a technician who left the company in the summer and whose account still, technically, held tickets. The dashboard was telling the truth about the list it was showing. It was just not the whole list. Tickets do not get lost. They get filed somewhere nobody is looking.
This series is about the somewhere. It covers what a queue is for and the standing views every desk needs. It covers team queues versus personal queues and the rule that unassigned means the team's. It covers round-robin, skill-based routing and plain claiming, and why claiming suits a small team. Then come the mechanics of routing by department, form and mailbox. It covers the four places tickets hide and the two-minute daily look that finds them. And it covers a weekly queue-hygiene routine with a card to pin up. A queue is a shared promise about what is waiting. The work is keeping it honest.
Articles in This Series
- What a Queue Is For: One Honest List of What Is Waiting
The queue as the shared truth about what is waiting; one list versus many; and the unassigned view. Covers what a hidden ticket looks like, why 'my tickets' is not the queue, and the standing views to set up. - Team Queues vs Personal Queues: Who Owns the Waiting Work
Ownership versus visibility, the rule that unassigned means the team's, the hoarding problem, how many tickets one person should hold, and a queue ownership policy. - Round-Robin vs Skill-Based Routing vs Just Claiming
The three routing models in plain words, fairness versus load, why claiming suits a small team, how first-reply-claims works, the collision case, and a decision table. - Routing Tickets by Department, Form and Mailbox
One department per mailbox, the form picks the department, the catch-all default, chat and API bound to a department, moving a misrouted ticket, and a routing rules table. - Keeping Tickets From Hiding: The Four Places They Go
The four hiding places: wrong department, assigned to someone away, parked in a waiting status, filed under the wrong requester; the counters that catch them; and a sweep checklist. - Queue Hygiene: A Weekly Routine That Keeps the List Honest
The daily glance, the weekly review of unassigned, oldest and waiting tickets, the monthly routing review, one week worked through, and the routine card.
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This series is part of the QuerySolv helpdesk topic library. It covers the foundations, processes, communication, knowledge, tooling, metrics, classic ticket domains, people and strategy behind a support desk that works. The library pairs well with the software we build: QuerySolv. It is a self-hosted help desk that runs as one Windows service on your own network. It is licensed once per installation, not per agent per month.