To activate Nmonitoring Queues, certain prerequisites need to be fulfilled:

• The customer's contract includes Nmonitoring Queues, which is not part of the standard licenses.
• A pre-assessment workshop was held to capture all required information for the configuration of:
  • The Skill or Queue Services in the NFON Administration Portal.
  • The extensions that will be members of these services.
• A pre-assessment workshop was conducted to capture all customer requirements in terms of:
  • Historical reporting.
  • Real-time monitoring.

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• The documentation is using the new look/ UI  introduced with the release 23.09. If you are familiar with the UI of previous versions, you can easily switch back to the old design at any time. We advise using the new look while accessing this documentation for assistance and then switching back to your preferred look afterwards.
• If you updated to NMQ from a version released before 23.09, you must manually enable the NMQ Agent page by editing either your User Class or individual User keys. Conversely, if you installed NMQ after the release of version 23.09, the Agent page will be enabled automatically.

The partners can order Nmonitoring Queues through the appropriate channels.

DT-Standard will only add the Nmonitoring Queues value added service to the K account after a partner confirms set ACDs and members have Callcenter Agent enabled.

DT-Standard requires the partner to confirm the completion of setup in specified areas.

In this section, you will find an overview of the various terms and components that will be referenced throughout this documentation.

In the Nmonitoring Queues (NMQ) system, a system user is a set of access credentials that provides different levels of privilege for viewing and/or editing various parts of the NMQ system. These access credentials are defined by user keys in NMQ.

Each system user has a user class, which is usually referred to as such. For instance, a system user with the user class Supervisor is referred to as a supervisor in NMQ.

Most of the access credentials (user keys) are defined by the user's user class. However, an administrator can also add user keys to an individual system user.

When NMQ is delivered, there are standard user classes Administrator, Supervisor and Agent (including Agent RR and Agent SSR) available. However, as an administrator, you can add or remove user keys to those classes. This makes all user classes highly customisable. For example, you can grant supervisors almost all access an administrator has or, on the contrary, reduce the supervisor to having merely more options than an agent. In addition, an administrator can create new user classes or add user keys to individual users.

This manual is based on the standard user classes as they are initially set up for your NMQ system. Thus, the user classes you experience in your NMQ system might differ from the description in this manual (depending on your administrator having customised the user classes).

A queue is a collection of phone calls, inbound or outbound, associated with an ACD Service (Queue or Skill) within your telephone system (PBX).

Usually, queues are configured to consolidate all related calls.

Agents can log in or out of different queues to manage incoming calls directed to these services.

An ACD is a telephony software system that answers incoming calls and routes them to a specific agent or department within a company.

An agent is one class of system users. Other classes are, for example, supervisors and administrators. Therefore, an agent is always a system user, but a system user is an access credential to Nmonitoring Queues and doesn't have to be an agent – it could as well be an admin user or a supervisor.
Keep in mind that not all agents have the same rights and permissions. The agent's focus lies on managing their queues and skills, with the specific options available by the administrator.

An agent group is an attribute that is applied to an agent, which allows to logically divide agents in an efficient fashion.

This is used as a filtering criterion (e.g. "New hires", "Regular agents", "Expert agents“) for reporting and real-time monitoring.

Each agent group can have a different icon that is displayed throughout Nmonitoring Queues whenever the agent name is displayed.

Nmonitoring Queues also allows you to define locations, i.e to divide your agents based on their geographical position.

One of the significant advantages of assigning locations to agents is the ability to use them as filtering criteria in reports and real-time monitoring.

This allows you to label the DIDs associated with a queue.

It allows to provide some more context in the answered/unanswered calls section of certain reports when queues have multiple DIDs attached to them.

Probably one of the most crucial features in Nmonitoring Queues is the ability to generate historical reports on the activities of your PBX. Keep in mind that reports are only accessible from the time of the initial synchronisation of the respective queue/skill.

The solution provides a default report which contains most of the existing data blocks.

Report templates can be edited or new ones can be created, containing only the relevant information (data blocks) the manager or supervisor wants to see.

Reports can also be scheduled to run automatically and attached in an email in CSV, Excel, or PDF format.

There are multiple types of reports:

• Quick activity reports: The quickest way to obtain an analysis is by selecting a queue and the report you want to analyse and then clicking on the appropriate time frame below Quick activity reports on the home page.
• Agent reports: You can run all or a particular report criteria on a single agent to see their performance.
• Custom reports: These allow for more granular reports to be run which contain specified criteria for queues, agents, groups, locations and report data.

One of Nmonitoring Queues main features is its real-time monitoring system which allows call managers and supervisors to keep track of the activities and performance of your telephone system's queues and skills.

The data is constantly updated to give them a real-time view of the general state of their call activities.

The real-time monitoring screen can be filtered by queue, location or agent group to only present the relevant information to the user.

The wallboard feature available in Nmonitoring Queues allows users to create, save and edit multiple wallboards in order to customise monitoring of call activities.

The Wallboard editor is designed to let them create powerful personalised wallboards or dashboards from which they can get a real-time overview of the status of their PBX.

You can add widgets into the panel per drag&drop and create multiple pages with autorotation timers, which makes this feature ideal for showing live-call statistics on a separate monitor.

Nmonitoring Queues features granular access control policies that define multiple access levels. Those levels are based on the user class in which you log in along with any additional rights that may have been individually added to your user account. When NMQ is delivered, there are standard classes Administrator, Supervisor and Agent available.

Once logged in, all users assigned the Agent user key begin on the agent page. In the default configuration, this includes all agents and supervisors. An administrator starts on the home page. More importantly, the login process will define which options for customisation, monitoring, and reporting you have.

In this chapter, you will learn everything about using NMQ as an agent. This includes logging in and out of your queues/skills, setting your status to pause, and possibly some other options, such as defining the nature of your pause status. What options are available exactly, depends on how your administrator has set up your queues and skills.

These basic functions are easy to understand and very straightforward. However, using them correctly is important for NMQ to be an efficient tool. E.g. if you don't set a pause status before leaving for lunch, you might not only miss a call – it will also make the data collected by NMQ less valuable.

Using NMQ as an agent is mostly bound to the agent page, which is also the starting page for all users with the user key Agent. Therefore, the agent page is described in detail in the following sections.

All agents are system users with the user class Agent. As such, they will have the same starting page after logging in and use the same UI. However, the administrator of your PBX can enable advanced options of self-monitoring for an agent. There are 2 standard user classes referred to as agents.

Agents have access to the agent page, can log in and out of their respective queues/skills and can set pauses/breaks for themselves.

Agents with Self Service Report (Agents_SSR) can access the reports of the queues/skills they are assigned to.

In the agents section of this manual, the description focuses on the base functions that are available for all agents. Information which only applies to Agents with Self Service Report are marked as such.

The administrator is a user with the administrator system user class. As an administrator, you usually have access to all sub-pages. This includes monitoring options available to supervisors, as well as customisation, configuration and system data analysis. An exception is the agent page which is not available to administrators in the standard settings.

In the user class management, as an administrator, you can customise the views and rights of all classes. Therefore, you can make all the options described in the administrator section available to other users or user classes. On the other hand, you could limit the access of some administrators, which, for example, can make sense for the system administration.

The standard administrator user class is represented as ADMIN in the user class management.

At the start of most of the following chapters you will find a hint with not only the standard user class that has access to the function described, but also the specific user key granting the access. Use this information to customise the user classes of your NMQ system or to keep track of the access levels of your customised user classes.

Find a full list of user keys for your NMQ system directly at Loway's documentation page.

• Wallboards: Create and manage your wallboards. Unlike real-time monitoring, wallboards are customisable. They allow monitoring under selected viewpoints. You can create as many wallboards as you want. Wallboards are convenient for public display on a common screen.
• Realtime: Real-time monitoring enables the analysis of current queue and agent activities. The presented data reflects the ongoing activity on your PBX and is constantly updated. This page allows you to keep an eye on and administer queues, skills and agents in an open window. The page is static and not customisable.
• Reports: Reports enable you to evaluate queues, skills and agents synchronised with your PBX.
• News: Here you can find the link to the NMQ manual.
• Synchronizer: Use the synchronizer to match the status of queues and skills on your PBX. Synchronisation is necessary whenever you have changed, created or deleted skills or queues within the PBX.
• Settings: Click on the gear wheel icon in the upper right-hand corner to open the Settings menu. It is divided into Configuration, System Administration, and Diagnostics:
  • Configuration: The settings under Configuration represented the core customisation options for your NMQ setup. As an administrator, you can manage the users and user classes, as well as queues, agents, and locations. The option to set the parameters for your reports is also available for supervisors and agents with self-reporting.
  • System Administration: As an administrator, you can access the system file logs, such as View Audit Logs or the Mysql storage.
  • Diagnostics: Advanced diagnostic tools for, for example, RAM caching or data configuration.

The wallboard feature allows you to create, save and edit multiple wallboards for an individually customised monitoring. You can design powerful personalised wallboards for all supervisors or administrators from which they can get a real-time overview of the state of the skills and queues they are monitoring.

You can add widgets into the panel using drag & drop and create multiple pages that will be toggled with autorotation timers and show the wallboards live on a public monitor to your teams or agents.

As an administrator, you can grant the correct permission (user keys) to users, so they can create and modify their own interactive wallboards.

Unlike real-time monitoring, wallboards are configurable and customisable. They allow you to monitor queues and skills under selected viewpoints. You can create and design as many individual wallboards as required.

Wallboards are meant to be customised: You can change colours, set alarms on specific widgets, include text and images and, in genera,l customise them to suit your needs. You can activate the public mode, in which case a wallboard can be shared between different users or can be used on public screens (kiosk mode).

Wallboards are built as a series of rotating views, each of which includes a number of widgets. In a nutshell, wallboards can consist of several pages, where each page can be customised.

On each page, you can add widgets and position or configure them. Widgets are positioned as items on a square grid that is meant to fill the screen, and you can control the number of columns that you want to use. For example, you could add the following widgets to the first page of your wallboard:

• Live Agent Info
• Live Queue Info
• Agents Ready
• Offered Calls
• Lost Calls

On the real-time page, you can monitor the current state of queues, skills and agents in real time. In addition, you can add or remove and pause or unpause agents of a queue or skill.

With the broadcast option, you can distribute important information to agents, queues, skills, and locations.

Nmonitoring Queues collects your PBX call, skill and queue data and generates analytical reports for over 150 metrics which include:

• When was the call received
• Who answered the call
• Who initiated and who processed the call, and in which queue or skill
• Waiting time before the caller is connected to an agent and time it takes to process the call
• Number of attempts the caller made before the connection
• How and why the call ended
• Which number has been dialled
• Number of successful and failed calls
• Maximum, minimum, average and total latency and call processing time
• Breakdown of calls by agent, dialled numbers, internally redirected calls, queues, direction
• Waiting time statistics by connection, agent, country, region, dialling of calling and selected participants
• Agent session start and end times

The synchronizer is a tool to synchronise your PBX with NMQ. You can synchronise all agent and queue changes within your PBX.

Open the settings by clicking on the gear wheel icon in the upper right-hand corner of the home page.
⇒ A blue sidebar opens on the right.

The settings are divided into the following sections:

• Configuration: Contains the core customisation options for your NMQ setup. As an administrator, you can manage users and user classes as well as queues, agents and locations. The option to set the parameters for your reports is also available for supervisors and agents with self-reporting.
• System Administration: You can only access it as an administrator. You can check or edit system parameters, such as View Audit Logs or Mysql storage.
• Diagnostics: Contains advanced diagnostic tools for various parameters, such as RAM caching or data configuration.

Before configuring extensions, make sure the following has been done first.

If there are multiple options, you have to define the primary device for your extension. There are three ways to do it:

• in the Administration portal of your PBX,
• by dialling *55 on the device you want to set as primary device,
• via the user app of your PBX.

For queues configured for NMQ, the following methods to log in and out are compatible with NMQ:

• via the NMQ agent page.
• via the phone,
• via the Cloudya Web app,
• via star codes.

Bear in mind that using star codes will reset penalties for queues.

Star codes for queues:

• *84+nnnn: Become a member of a queue with the service ID nnnn
• **84+nnnn: Leave the queue with the service ID nnnn

For skills configured for NMQ, the following methods to log in and out are compatible with NMQ:

• via the Administration portal
• via star codes (skill levels will remain intact when using star codes).

Star codes for skills:

• *87: Subscribe to a skill set
• **87: Unsubscribe from a skill set

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), or call queuing, provides a way for a telephony system to queue up incoming calls (internal and/or external). The method for distributing calls with DT-Standard is always based on the following rule: First call in, first call out.

An inbound queue is when the telephone system routes incoming calls to deliver those calls to queue members who are shown as ready (or open) in a pre-programmed sequence. In contrast, an outbound queue is formed to collect outbound call statistics for the queue members, to generate call analytics information.

In the member section of the configuration screen, you can configure phone extensions that are part of a queue service:

• Members = agents in Nmonitoring Queues

While both services process calls in the same manner, they differ in ways which may put one as being more desirable than the other.

Queues can be joined by any users on the platform via their phone, star code or the Web app. This may be an issue, as some users may not have the authorisation to be part of certain queues, or they may find it time-consuming to log in and out if they are part of multiple queues.

Membership to a skill service is pre-configured by the PBX administrator and users cannot pick which service they are a member of.

Logging in and out using the star code *87 and **87 allows users to do so for all the skills they are part of and not individual skills.

Another difference between the two is that queue penalties are arranged from 0 to10 in terms of call priority, while for skills, this is called skill level and is inversed from 10 to 0.

Destination on rejection is only used when an ACD service has no members. In this case, should someone call a service, but noone is logged into it, their call will be diverted to a specified destination.

The ACD will call all members seen as available to distribute the next call in line. If a member becomes available after the distribution started, the ACD will not attempt to distribute the call to this member, it will start distributing the next call waiting in the queue to all available members at that time. This can easily lead to queue jumping, particularly if members don’t log off the queue when they leave their desk.

The round robin strategy will distribute the first call in the rotation to the first member in the list, then the second, etc. Subsequent calls will be distributed to the member in the list after the last one who answered.

The ACD will pick a member at random to distribute a call. Bear in mind that the ACD will not try this member again until it has tried to distribute the call to all other agents that are currently available.

Longest pause first means longest idle first. The ACD will select a member that has received a call from this queue the longest time ago. This selection strategy can only work well if members are logging in and out of the queue when leaving their desk. Otherwise, the ACD will constantly attempt to distribute a call to a member that isn’t actually present and will not move on, as this member remains the one who hasn’t recently answered a call.

Wrap-up

Wrap-up time is not measured in NMQ reports.

Pick-up

Refrain from creating pick-up groups for ACD Members: Using *3 to pick up other agent’s calls within a queue will distort call answer statistics in NMQ reports and also defeats the purpose of having an ACD service in the first place.

Call pull / orbit

*8 should not be used to move the call to another device on an agent’s extension. This will cause the call statistics to stop after being dialled as it believes the call was transferred.

Timeout delay

The timeout delay for a skill/queue should not be kept at 0. For correct reporting to occur, the call must
always be able to reach the destination on timeout.

Timeout per member

The timeout per member must always be higher than 0. If an agent is away from their desk but logged in, the call will ring indefinitely. Remember to follow the guidelines. On a timeout of 0, an agent's device would have a built-in timeout to end the call to reduce overhead. This varies by device manufacturer. Thus, it could cause many reporting statistics issues.

Always remember that for every change you make to the setup of extensions and/or queues within your PBX, you must synchronise within NMQ. Synchronising in NMQ is fairly easy (not much more than pressing a button) but you have to do it manually. There is no automated synchronisation. So you have to remember this not only during the initial setup but also for later changes.
If you don't have access to synchronisation within NMQ (usually only administrators do), please contact your administrator.
For more information on how to execute synchronisation, go to Synchronizer.

Licencing allows users to view reports of data that has been processed by Nmonitoring Queues.

• The number of licenses is based upon the number of extensions that have been enabled in the Administration Portal as callcenter agents
• The minimum number of licenses is 5
• There is no setup charge
• Licences are not attached to an individual agent; they are added to a global pool of licences