Cirrus Connect supports the use of Park Hold.

What is Park Hold?

It's useful to explain what Park Hold is, because it's a ‘classic’ telephony feature.

Park Hold is a useful feature when you need to put a caller on Hold for an extended period of time. It means that the agent's status is released, and they can handle other phone calls before returning to the caller. It's also possible for other members of the same team to retrieve a call which has been parked. This is useful when a caller would like to wait for a specific agent.

For the caller, the experience is the same as being put on Hold.

Park hold locations are sometimes called slots, locations, or orbits. This terminology is from hardware systems where there was a limited number of resources available for this functionality.

Licensing

Park Hold does not require any additional licensing.

Configuration

To utilise Park Hold, a Router or Routers need to be configured. Park Hold can be configured on a Group basis. For example, when the Service team puts a call on hold, it does not need to be seen by the Bookings team. Therefore, we can create separate Park Hold Routers for each team.

The agent visibility of Park Hold Routers is based on the Agent Group, which is associated with the Router.

If you assign multiple Park Hold Routers to an agent, they will have visibility of all assigned Park Hold Routers.

In this example, we'll create a single Park Hold Router.

In Administrator > Routers, create a new Router; in this example, it's called Park. If you're going to assign multiple Park routers, then you might want to name them for each department.

The router needs the following parameters set;

• Is Operator Queue = Yes
• Operator queue type = Park
• Specific media only = Yes (optional - Park can be used for calls or emails)
• Media = Phone/Email (if Specific media only is configured)
• Music on Hold

Assign the Agent Group which needs access to the Park Hold Router.

Set the Activation Delay value to higher than default. This timer is used to control how long the call can stay in the Park Hold Router before it tries to deliver it back to an agent. If left set to zero, it means as soon as the agent becomes free, it will try and deliver back to them. This is probably the opposite of the desired behaviour. This timer can be used as a kind of ‘recall’ timer to prevent callers from being forgotten on Park.

When a Park Hold Router is assigned, the Park and Private Park controls are available

When you Park a call, it appears in the Queue against the Park Hold Router. It can be retrieved by double-clicking, or selecting Retrieve Call option from the vertical ellipsis.