Salesforce Queues prioritize, distribute, and assign records used by teams that share workloads. Use Queues in Salesforce for managing cases, leads, tasks, contact requests, orders, service contracts, knowledge articles, and custom objects.
This guide will cover how Salesforce queues work, and provide step-by-step guidance for setting up your first queue.
What Are Salesforce Queues?
As mentioned above, Salesforce Queues prioritize, distribute, and assign the records used by teams sharing workloads. Queues act like holding areas in your CRM, where records wait for someone to pick them up, and assign the record owner either as themselves or another user.
Queues bring together a group of users. The main benefits:
- Make managing a shared workload easier, especially where every user’s capacity fluctuates.
- Create visibility into what needs to be done – in other words, it’s a useful way to notify all queue members. This is especially useful when team members are sick or on vacation.
How Do Queues Work in Salesforce?
Queues in Salesforce act like a user record; instead of a user being the record owner, the queue is the record owner while the record is pending someone to work on it.
There are multiple parts that make up a Salesforce Queue:
- Queue members
- Queue email (optional)
- Record assignment rules
- Quick actions
Who Can Join a Queue? (Queue Members)
An admin can add users to a Salesforce Queue – these are known as queue members. Members of the queue can accept records owned by the queue (note that users higher in a role hierarchy can also take ownership of records in a queue).
Queue Members can be added in the following ways:
- Individual users (one by one)
- Roles, roles and subordinates (multiple users at once),
- Public groups (multiple users at once).
Note: We will address the optional “queue email” during the tutorial later in this guide.
How Can I Add Records to a Queue? (Record Assignment Rules)
The queue shares the same characteristics as a record owner – therefore, to add records to a queue, you only need to update the record owner! There are two ways this can be done:
- Automatically: “Assignment rules” add records to a queue when they are created, based on specific record criteria. For example, a lead assignment rule can add leads from France to a “New Leads – France” queue, and leads from Germany to another user/queue.
- Manually: From the record page, the record owner can be updated to be the queue, e.g. change the “Lead Owner” of a lead to the “New Leads – France” queue.
Queues vs. Groups in Salesforce
What is the difference between queues and groups in Salesforce? As queues are described as a group of users, this can be confused with “groups” – another way to share records in Salesforce.
- Public groups are the most widely-used type of group in Salesforce (other less common ones are personal groups and manager groups).
- Public groups (the most common) are created by Salesforce Admins. These can contain individual users, other groups, or users in a particular role or territory. Groups enable record visibility to be extended to multiple users at once. They don’t allow users to change the record owner of those records*, whereas queues do.
- You can base queue membership on a public group (i.e. all users in the public group will have the ability to view the record and change the record owner.
*If Enterprise Territory Management is enabled.
**Users in groups could have the permission to change record owners with a combination of a profile (or permission set) with the “transfer records” and edit access, granted via the role hierarchy or a sharing rule.
Creating a Salesforce Queue: Lead Queue Example
Lead queues (as well as case queues) are the most common ways to use Salesforce queues. An organization could ask their admin to create a lead queue to distribute to each regional team. We’re going to create a queue for the EMEA Leads.
Here’s an interactive tutorial
** Best experienced in Full Screen (click the icon in the top right corner before you begin) **
Step 1: Create a Queue
From Salesforce Setup, use the Quick Find box to search for Queues → click Queues → click New.
- Enter a label. We’ll use “EMEA Leads” in this example. The queue name will automatically populate.
- [Optional] Add a Queue Email. An email notification will be sent to this email address whenever a new record is added to the queue – ideal for shared team inboxes.
- [Optional] Click Send Email to Members. This means that all queue members will receive email updates (not only the address entered in the Queue Email box).
- Scroll down to the Supported Objects section. Find Lead in the list of available objects.
- Click Add to move Lead into the selected objects column.
Scroll down to the Queue Members section. Remember that queue members can be individual users (add one by one), public groups, roles, and roles and subordinates (to add multiple members at once).
- We’ll Add a user, e.g. “Barry BDR”, as a queue member.
- Switch from the “Users” view to Public Groups, Roles, or Roles and Subordinates.
- We’ll add the Role and Subordinates: Director, Direct Sales. This means that any users with the role “Director, Direct Sales” and users lower in the hierarchy will gain visibility into the queue.
- Then click Save.
Step 2: Create or Edit Assignment Rules
Automatically add records to a queue when they are created, based on specific record criteria using Lead Assignment Rules.
Remember: Queues share the same characteristics as a record owner – therefore, to add records to a queue, you only need to update the record owner!
- Use the Quick Find box to search for Lead Assignment Rules. You’ll land on a page that lists the rules you have created and whether they are active. We would like to include the EMEA Leads queue within the Standard rule.
- Note that it’s easy to set up a new Lead Assignment Rule too!
- Find the entry you want to change. I have a rule entry that assigns any leads that are not from the US. For the purposes of this demo, I will just use the “when country is not equal” rule entry.
- Click Edit.
- Change the filter from User to Queue.
- Type EMEA Leads (or a few characters) in the box. You can use the Assignee Lookup (opens a new window) to ensure you find the correct queue.
- [Optional] Choose an email template that is sent to the record owner when the lead is assigned.
- Finally, click Save.
Step 3: Test It Out
It’s time to test.
- Go to the Leads tab and click on the List View dropdown.
- Click EMEA Leads (note that all queues automatically create a list view).
- You will find that the list is empty. Create a test lead with the correct criteria for the assignment rule to fire. Then check the list again to see if the new lead record has appeared.
- Finally, if you selected the Send Email to Members checkbox (so that all queue members will receive email updates), check that the notification was sent to the recipient’s inbox/es.
How Does a User Pick Up Records to Work On?
When viewing the Queue list view, the user can edit the Assigned To field on the record, therefore changing the record owner from the Queue to themselves.
Alternatively, a custom action could call automation, for example, a Flow, which would lower the number of clicks the user is required to make. Just ensure that assignment notifications are added to your Flow.
Reporting Tricks for Queues
Records assigned to Queues should not be actioned until a user assigns themself to work on the record. This way, you can attribute that user’s efforts to the correct team member.
However, there isn’t a way to prevent a user from working on a record when it’s still assigned to the Queue. For example, you don’t want users to change a Task’s status if it’s still assigned to the Queue.
So, how do you prevent this?
You can create a validation rule which will prevent the Task status from being marked as completed if the owner is still owned by the Queue. The user will be forced to update the Task owner (to themselves) in order to mark it as complete. Knowing Salesforce Prefixes is useful here – you can see this in action below:
Alternatively, you can create a custom action thatcalls automation, for example, a Flow, which would mark the Task as complete, and also change the Task owner automatically to the user who triggered the action.
More Salesforce Queue Examples
You can use queues in Salesforce for managing cases, leads, tasks, contact requests, orders, service contracts, knowledge articles, and custom objects.
Here are some examples of how you can extend the wonders of queues to more teams in your organization:
- For Cases: Create a “High Priority Cases” queue for service agents.
- For any custom objects: For example, “New Projects” that require a specific skill set.
- For Tasks: A “Webinar Follow-up” queue of call tasks.
How Many Queues Can You Have in Salesforce?
Good news – you can have as many queues as you’d like! Just don’t overload your users – after all, you want this to be one of their ‘go-to’ lists for picking up records to start working on. Speed, efficiency, collaboration… all the good stuff!
Summary
In a nutshell, Salesforce Queues allow users to prioritize, distribute, and assign records – ideal for teams that share workloads. Queues bring together groups of users to help manage shared workloads, while increasing visibility into what needs to be done (even if team members are out sick or on vacation).
Queues are a smart way to work, so consider how you can extend queues to other teams in your organization – after all, you can have as many as you’d like!
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