Departments

A department is a queue of agents with a ring strategy, a timeout, and a failover plan — the backbone of how inbound calls reach the right person.

TL;DR

• What it is — a queue that groups agents into tiers and decides which one rings first when a call arrives. Nine ring strategies cover everything from "ring all phones at once" to "send it to whoever's been idle the longest."
• Who it's for — admins setting up how calls reach the team. Agents simply receive calls dispatched to them by the department they belong to.
• Top outcome — every inbound call reaches the most appropriate available agent within seconds, with predictable failover when the queue drains.

At a glance

How to find it

Sidebar: Settings → Calling → [your account] → Departments.

Direct URL: https://app.lodgestory.com/crm/settings/calling/{accountId}/departments

📸 [SCREENSHOT: departments-landing.png — Departments list with ring strategy, agent count, and live queue depth per card]

What is a Department?

The problem it solves

Routing inbound calls to "the right person" falls apart the moment a team grows past two agents. Ring everyone at once and agents stop trusting the phone — it rings for calls they can't take. Ring them in a strict order and the top of the list being at lunch means nobody answers. A single flat rotation starves your backup staff.

Getting this right needs explicit strategy, tiered seniority, and a clear fallback — the rules that work at fifty calls a day and scale to fifty thousand.

Departments give you that configuration in one place. Pick a strategy. Choose your primary agents and your backup. Decide what happens if the queue overflows. Save. Your next inbound call follows the new rules.

What you get

• Nine ring strategies. From "ring all phones at once" (best for small teams) to "send it to whoever's been idle the longest" (fairness-first, best for larger contact centers). Each strategy is proven industry behavior — nothing home-grown.
• Tiered agents with positions. Every agent sits in a tier (1 for primary, 2 for backup, and so on) and a slot inside that tier. The ring strategy walks tier 1 first; only if tier 1 can't or won't answer does the call progress to tier 2.
• Ring timeout per tier — how long each tier gets to pick up before the call moves on. Configurable 5 to 30 seconds.
• A failover plan — six destinations to fall back to when the maximum wait time is reached.
• Music on hold and queue announcements — upload audio once in your media library, reference it per department.
• Wrap-up time — gives agents a configurable breather after each call before they're eligible for the next one.
• Sticky agent — repeat callers can be preferentially routed to the agent who last spoke to them, within a time window you set. Great for continuity.
• Live queue stats — the admin dashboard shows how many callers are waiting, how long the longest wait is, and which agents are available, updating in real time.

How it's different

• Tiers are first class. Primary, backup, overflow — each is a named tier, not a hack in a flat list.
• Sticky agent that works across restarts. The system remembers who last spoke to a caller and expires the memory cleanly after the window you set.
• Live stats, not polling. Queue depth and agent states update on the admin dashboard within a second of changing.
• Every department is tenant-scoped. No cross-account leakage, no shared config.

Customer scenarios

• Four-agent front desk with one supervisor. A department named Front Desk with strategy "longest idle," tier 1 holding your four front-desk agents, tier 2 holding the supervisor as backup. Ring timeout 15 seconds. Max wait 90 seconds. When the queue exhausts, fall over to a voicemail box with a custom greeting.
• Ring-all urgent queue. A department called VIP Support with strategy "ring all" — every admin's phone rings at once for the 20-second window. If nobody picks up, the fallback forwards to the duty manager's personal mobile so an after-hours VIP call never drops.
• Campaign overflow. An outbound sales campaign bridges answered customers into an existing department's queue — the same round-robin rules distribute those connected callers fairly.

How it fits with Lodgestory Voice

• Phone numbers point here. A phone number's routing can target a department directly.
• Voice menus hand off to you. A caller who presses "2 for Sales" in a voice menu lands in your Sales department queue.
• Failover chains forward. A department can fail over to another department, a voice menu, a voicemail box, an external number, or an AI agent.
• Outbound campaigns bridge in. Campaigns in customer-first mode can bridge answered calls to a department's queue, reusing the same distribution logic.
• Agents become reachable. An agent without department membership can still place outbound calls but won't receive inbound queue traffic.

Core concepts

Ring strategies at a glance

Failover destinations

Quick Start — configure your first department in four minutes

Step 1 — Navigate

Go to Settings → Calling → [your account] → Departments.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-1-list.png — empty Departments list with "+ Add Department" button]

Step 2 — Click + Add Department

A dialog opens asking for a name, ring strategy, ring timeout, wrap-up time, and max wait.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-2-dialog.png — new department dialog with strategy dropdown open]

Step 3 — Pick agents and tiers

Expand Members. Select agents from your account. For each one, set the tier (1 for primary, 2 for backup) and the position within that tier. A common layout: three agents at tier 1 with positions 1, 2, 3, and one supervisor at tier 2 with position 1.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-3-members.png — member picker with agents assigned to tiers]

Step 4 — Configure failover

Expand Failover. Pick a destination — a voicemail box for after-hours capture, another department for cascading coverage, or a hangup message with polite audio.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-4-failover.png — failover picker with voicemail box selected]

Step 5 — Add hold music and announcements (optional)

Upload audio in your media library first, then reference it here. Callers hear it while waiting in the queue.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-5-media.png — media library picker inside department dialog]

Step 6 — Save

The department is live within seconds of saving. Your next inbound call to a phone number routed here follows the new rules.

Step 7 — Test

Call the phone number routed to this department. Watch the admin dashboard show the queue depth change and the agent availability update as the call rings.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-qs-7-live.png — live queue dashboard with one caller waiting and three agents available]

What's next

• Route a phone number to this department — see Phone Numbers.
• Build a voice menu that transfers here — see Voice Menus.
• Launch an outbound campaign that bridges answered callers here — see Outbound Campaigns.

How it works

• A caller dials a phone number routed to this department.
• Lodgestory places the caller in the department's queue with music or an announcement.
• The ring strategy picks the next eligible agent in tier 1. Their softphone rings.
• If nobody in tier 1 answers within the tier's ring timeout, the queue moves to tier 2.
• When an agent picks up, both sides connect and the call is recorded automatically.
• If the queue's max wait is reached before anyone picks up, the failover plan kicks in.

Behind the scenes, Lodgestory handles agent-state tracking, queue fairness, and the transition between tiers — you set the rules in the admin and focus on the conversations.

Features in depth

Department list

Each department shows its name, ring strategy, the total number of members across all tiers, the count of members currently available, the current queue depth (live), and the failover type. Clicking a department opens its detail and edit view.

Create and edit

A full form covers:

• Name and ring strategy.
• Ring timeout (5–30 seconds) and wrap-up time.
• Max wait time — the longest a caller waits before failover.
• Max wait with no agent logged in — a separate, usually shorter threshold for the case where nobody is available at all.
• Music on hold and join announcement — pickers that reference your media library.
• Sticky agent toggle with a time-window setting.
• Failover plan — pick the destination type and target.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-edit-form.png — full edit form with all sections expanded]

Member management

An inline table lists every agent in the department. Add agents with a picker, assign each a tier and a position, drag to reorder positions within a tier, and move agents between tiers with an inline edit. Removing an agent takes them out of the department immediately — they stop getting calls from here but keep any other department memberships.

Ring-strategy picker

Every strategy is shown with a short description and a typical use case. Strategy changes apply to the next call — no downtime.

Live queue dashboard

On the department detail page:

• Current depth — how many callers are waiting right now.
• Longest current wait — the oldest caller's wait time in the queue.
• Per-agent state — a color-coded badge for each agent (Available, On Call, Wrap-up, Logged Out) plus the time of their last state change.

Updates appear within a second of any change.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: dept-live-dashboard.png — live queue dashboard with depth, wait time, and agent states]

Sticky agent

Turn it on and set a time window (typical values are one hour to a full day). Repeat callers within the window are routed to the agent they last spoke to, if that agent is available. If they're not, the ring strategy takes over as normal.

Failover chain

Pick one destination per department. When the max wait expires, the queue moves the caller to that destination. You can cascade — a department can fail over to another department, which can itself fail over to voicemail.

Wrap-up time

Controls how long an agent is given after ending a call before the queue sends them the next one. Tune this to your team's typical post-call note-taking. Wrap-up only affects queue dispatch — agents can still place outbound calls during it.

Roles & permissions

Connections

• Phone Numbers — a phone number's routing can point directly to a department.
• Voice Menus — a menu key can transfer to a department.
• Outbound Campaigns — customer-first campaigns can bridge answered callers into a department.
• Failover target — any department, voice menu, voicemail box, or external number can serve as another department's failover.

Limits a user will run into

Errors & FAQ

How do I change the ring strategy mid-day?
Edit the department, pick a new strategy, and save. The next call uses the new strategy. Calls already in the queue complete under whichever strategy they started with.

What happens when every agent in a tier is busy?
If the tier's ring timeout expires without an answer, the queue advances to the next tier. If the last tier also exhausts, the max wait kicks in and your failover plan fires.

Can the same agent belong to multiple departments?
Yes. Tiers are per-department, so the same agent can be tier 1 in Support and tier 2 in Sales.

Why doesn't sticky agent seem to be working for a caller I expected?
Sticky only fires when the preferred agent is currently available. If they're on another call or on wrap-up, the regular ring strategy picks someone else. The stickiness also expires at the end of the window you configured.

Does wrap-up time block me from making outbound calls?
No. Wrap-up only stops the queue from pushing the next inbound call to you. You can click-to-call out of the CRM at any time.

Can I move an agent between tiers without downtime?
Yes. Edits apply to the next call within seconds of saving.

Troubleshooting

Changelog

• Apr 2026 — General availability with nine ring strategies, six failover destinations, sticky agent, and live queue stats.

Related modules

• Voice Menus — route a menu key to a department.
• Agents — the members of every department.
• Phone Numbers — point a number at a department.
• Outbound Campaigns — bridge answered callers into a queue.
• Voice product hub — the overall picture.