Get alerts if queues become too busy, etc.

Kun slutbruger-hjælpen er for tiden oversat til dansk. Hjælp til installation og administration af Zylinc-løsninger er for tiden på engelsk.

Dette emne er fortrinsvis for administratorer og/eller folk som bestyrer en Zylinc-løsning

If you have administrator rights on the Zylinc solution, you can set up queue alarms. With queue alarms, your Zylinc solution can automatically send out alert messages when a queue becomes too busy, when too few agents monitor the queue, or similar.

The Zylinc solution can send queue alarms as either e-mails, text messages (SMS), or both.

If the system already knows the e-mail addresses or mobile phone numbers for the agents on a queue (which should normally be the case), you can select to send the queue alarms to one or more of the agent groups primary, secondary, or standby (the latter is a special group of agents who are meant to help out on busy queues). This option is simple to use, because you don’t need to enter e-mail addresses or mobile phone numbers for agents who are already known to the queue. It's useful if you have agents who may have forgotten to log in, or have failed to answer an inquiry, and therefore have become unavailable on the Zylinc system.

If the system doesn’t know the e-mail addresses or mobile phone numbers of the agents on a queue, or if you want to send queue alarms to addresses or phones outside of the standard groups of agents, you can specify a list of additional addresses or phone numbers to send queue alarms to. This is useful if you yourself, a call center manager, a general manager, or some other manager or supervisor (but not an agent) wants to receive queue alarms.

You can of course set up thresholds and trigger timers, so that you don’t get spammed with unnecessary queue alarms.

Queue alarms works for voice queues, e-mail queues, and chat queues, and you can set up alarms for the following events:

  • Unmonitored: Sent when an open voice queue, chat queue, or e-mail queue, hasn’t been monitored by any agents for the specified amount of time (in seconds).
  • Max waiting time: Sent when an inquiry has been waiting in an open voice queue, chat queue, or e-mail queue for at least the specified amount of time (in seconds).
  • Max number of calls: Sent when at least a certain number of inquiries are waiting in an open voice queue, chat queue, or e-mail queue.
  • Min number of agents: Sent when less than a certain number of agents monitor an open voice queue, chat queue, or e-mail queue.

To prevent repeating or unnecessary alarms, you can set up a trigger timer and an alert sanity timer.

Trigger Timer (unmonitored) makes the solution wait for a certain amount of time before the unmonitored type of queue alarm is sent. This way you can avoid false alarms, for example if a user logs out and then logs in again shortly after when a computer restarts, or when a user changes client type from ZyDesk (on a computer), to Mobile Agent.

Alert Sanity Timer makes the solution wait for a minimum time after one alert has been sent, before the next can be sent. This way you can avoidt duplicate alarms.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select INSTALL > Portal Configuration

  2. Select Messaging, and click Save

  3. In the Administration Portal menu, select SYSTEM > Mail Accounts

  4. Click Add Mail Account

  5. In Name, enter a name for the mail account, for example Office 365

  6. In SMTP Settings

    1. In SMTP Server, enter smtp.office365.com

    2. In Port, enter 587

    3. Select SSL

    4. In User (default), enter the e-mail address and password for the user account that you want to send e-mails from. Make sure the SMTP account you use, can send on behalf of the agents.

    5. Click Save

  7. In the Administration Portal menu, select NETWORK > Messaging Gateway

  8. In Gateway URL, enter an URL similar to http://<winappserver>:35028/MessagingPortal

  1. In the Deployment Manager menu, select Deployment > Tomcat Services

  2. In Instance, select the instance on port 8080 that already hosts Authentication, Client Manager, and ZyCore ID

  3. In Available Tomcat applications, select Messaging Portal, and click Deploy Services

  1. In a web browser, open an URL similar to http://<winappserver>:8080/MessagingPortal, and log in as admin with the password for Tomcat instance ZyTomcat1-8080-8443 user admin

  2. In the Messaging Portal menu, select TEST EMAIL

  3. In the To Email and From fields, enter the e-mail address of the user account that you want to send e-mails from

    Just use the same address in both fields.

  4. Click Test email

You should see a status message similar to the following:

Test Result:
Response Http Status Code: 200
Result: Email sent successfully
Error Message: No error message
Gateway Response Result: Email sent successfully

If you see an error, you can view information about the error directly on the screen, or you can open the log file for the Tomcat service Messaging Portal and inspect the bottom of the log file for information about the error. To locate the log file, see Open latest log file from specific Zylinc module

Typical errors are caused by wrong SMTP hostname, SMTP port, user name, or password, or a firewall rule that blocks outgoing connections to the specified SMTP server.

Solve any errors and make sure that the Messaging Portal can send e-mails before you continue to the next step.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select INSTALL > Portal Configuration

  2. Select Queue Alarms, and click Save

  3. In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > Queue Alarms

  4. Click Add Queue Alarm Configuration

  5. In Queue to monitor, select the queue for your queue alarm

  6. In Unmonitored, select Send mail

  7. In Unmonitored, Mail subject, enter Queue Alarm: unmonitored queue <name of your queue>

  8. In Unmonitored, Mail text, enter Queue Alarm: No agents are currently monitoring the queue <name of your queue>

  9. In Settings, Mail sender, enter the e-mail address of the account you use to send the e-mail from

  10. In Settings, Additional mail receivers, enter the address of the person who should get the e-mail alert.

  1. Log in to ZyDesk as an agent who subscribes to the queue that has the queue alarm

  2. Call the queue, and click Answer

  3. Click Hang Up

  4. Close ZyDesk

An e-mail that contains the queue alarm should arrive in the inbox of the e-mail address that you specified in Additional mail receivers for the queue alarm.

Queue alarms are handled by a Tomcat Service with the name ZyDataServices, together with a Tomcat service with the name Messaging Portal

  1. Open the log files for those two modules and inspect the log files for errors that relate to queue alarms. See Open latest log file from specific Zylinc module
  2. In the log file for ZyDataServices, it's a good idea to search for the word AlarmHandler, and the words Error or Exception. In the log file for Messaging Portal, there should be a complete log of all the SMTP activity. This log file can be useful to find the source of errors.