Teams

What it is

A team is a named group of office agents. You build teams under Settings›People›Teams. The page is headed Office Agent Teams (if your company renamed "Office Agent" to something like "CSR" or "Dispatcher", the heading uses your word instead).

Teams do exactly one job in Joby: they decide who a waiting caller is offered to. When a call flow parks a caller in a queue, you pick which teams that queue belongs to. Only office agents in those teams see the call in the Queue tab of the phone and get the chance to pick it up.

Teams are not permissions and they are not job assignment. What someone is allowed to open or edit comes from Team Roles, and who owns a job comes from the job itself. Adding someone to a team changes nothing except which waiting callers they are shown.

When to use it

• You have more than a handful of office agents and you do not want every one of them interrupted by every call.
• You run separate phone lines for separate work — new sales on one number, existing customers or warranty calls on another — and different people should answer each.
• You run two brands or two locations from the same Joby account.
• You want after-hours or overflow calls to reach a small standby group only.

You do not need teams if everyone answers everything. Leave Assign to Teams empty in your call flow and the queue is offered to every office agent — that is the simplest setup and it works fine for small offices. You still need at least one team to tick off the Create a team step on the Setup checklist.

Teams are also not how you point a phone number at a destination. That is Call Groups and Visual Call Flows. Teams only decide who inside the office gets offered a queued call.

Before you start

• You need to be an owner or admin. The Teams page sits behind the same gate as the rest of Settings. If your login does not have it, the page bounces you back to the Dashboard.
• Add your office agents first. The member list on the Teams page only offers people who already exist. Invite them under Team Members in the left menu (or Settings›People›Team Members) before you start grouping them. Field workers are not offered here — teams are office agents only.
• Have a call flow to attach the team to. A team on its own does nothing. You will finish the job in Settings›Channels›Visual Call Flows.
• Decide the split before you create anything. Two or three teams that match how your phone is actually answered beat ten teams nobody maintains.

Step-by-step

Create a team

1. Open Settings›People›Teams. (There is a search box at the top of Settings if you would rather type "Teams".)
2. Click Add Team in the top right.
3. Type a Team Name. This is the only required box — the example text shows "Sales Team". Say what the group answers, not who is in it: Inbound Sales, Service & Warranty, After Hours.
4. Add a Description if you want. It shows in the list so the next person knows what the team is for.
5. Leave the Active switch on. Off means the team stays on the page but stops being offered when you set up a call flow.
6. Under Members, tick every office agent who should answer these calls. The counter on the right shows how many you have ticked. Everyone in your account is listed; people who are switched off carry an Inactive tag.
7. Click Add Team at the bottom of the window.

Members are part of the same window — there is no separate step and no separate button for adding people.

Change who is on a team

1. Open Settings›People›Teams.
2. Click the pencil button in the Actions column of the team's row. The window reopens as Edit Team with the current members already ticked.
3. Tick people to add them, untick people to remove them.
4. Click Update Team.

The same window is where you rename the team or edit its description. Renaming is safe — call flows keep pointing at the same team.

Send a queue to a team

This is the part that actually changes what rings.

1. Go to Settings›Channels›Visual Call Flows.
2. Open the flow that answers the number you care about, or click Create Flow.
3. Click the Wait for Office Agent step on the canvas. A Step Settings panel opens on the right.
4. In Assign to Teams, tick the teams that should be offered this call. The line underneath tells you what you have chosen: either "All office agents will see this queue" when nothing is ticked, or "Only office agents in selected teams (2) will see this queue".
5. Check Timeout (seconds) while you are here — that is how long the caller waits before the flow gives up on your team and follows the timeout path (voicemail, a forward, whatever you connected).
6. Click Save Flow.

Retire a team

You have two options, and they are not the same thing.

• Deactivate — the button next to the pencil. The team stays on the page, keeps its members, and the Status badge turns to Inactive. It stops being offered in Assign to Teams when you edit a call flow. Click Activate to bring it back.
• Delete — the red bin button. A Delete Team confirmation appears warning that every membership for that team is removed too. There is no undo.

How to check it worked

• Saving: a short confirmation appears — Team created successfully, Team updated successfully or Team deleted successfully. If the name box was empty you get Team name is required instead and nothing is saved.
• Membership: the Members column on the team's row shows the new head count next to a people icon. Reopen the pencil window and the right people are ticked.
• Status: the Status column reads Active in green or Inactive in grey.
• The call flow: the wording under Assign to Teams should name the number of teams you ticked, and the step on the canvas should list the team names instead of "All office agents".
• The real test — make a call. Ring the number that uses the flow. On a member's screen the phone widget's Queue tab gets a count badge and the waiting caller is listed. On a non-member's screen nothing appears at all.
• Setup checklist: once you have at least one switched-on team, Create a team under Your Team on the Setup page turns green, and so does the Teams tile in Settings.

Common mistakes

• Expecting teams to hide leads, jobs or messages. They do not. Teams only affect who is offered a caller waiting in a queue. Use Team Roles to control what people can see and open.
• Ticking every team on every queue. That is the same as ticking none, with more upkeep. If everyone should answer, leave Assign to Teams empty.
• Looking for field workers in the member list. Only office agents can be team members, because only they answer queued calls in Joby.
• Renaming teams every few months. Call flows survive a rename, but your staff and your training notes may not. Pick names tied to the work, not to a person.
• Hunting for a team on a long list. The page shows 50 teams at a time and has no search box — use the paging control at the bottom.