How To Create Lead Queue In Salesforce

Mira Shah is Salesforce CRM Project / IT Project Manager with cross-industry capabilities and specialist skills in CRM, in particular Salesforce.com.

Have you heard about Salesforce Queues? Queues in Salesforce prioritize, distribute, and assign records for teams who share workloads. Queues are like holding areas in your CRM, where records wait for a user to pick them up, assign them to an owner and work on processing them.

You can use Queues for managing cases, leads, tasks, contact requests, orders, service contracts, knowledge articles, and custom objects – just like a List View on that object.

Why Use Salesforce Queues?

I have already mentioned some advantages of using Queues, but here they are summarized:

Manage shared workload easier,
Helpful if you have a user out sick or on vacation,
Access Queues as a List View (we all know how much users like List Views!)

Who Can Join a Queue?

An Admin can choose which users can join Queues as Queue Members. These can be added as:

Individual users (specific users)
Roles/roles + subordinates
Public groups

Members of the Queues are free to accept records from the Queue. The records remain in the Queue until a user accepts them or they are transferred to another Queue. Any Queue members or users higher in a role hierarchy can take ownership of records in a Queue.

How Can I Add Records to a Queue?

You can think of the Queue as a user because it shares the same characteristics as a record owner.
You can add records to a queue:

Automatically: Assignment Rules can add records to a Queue when they are created, based on specific record criteria.
Manually: change the record owner of the record to the Queue (which will appear like a user), eg. change the Lead Owner of the Lead to the Queue.

Quick actions for Task Queues (Summer '20)

Salesforce always gives us great features. In Salesforce Summer '20 release, new cool feature Quick Actions to Assign Tasks to Queues.

Now Sales reps can can assign tasks to a queue via an Activity Quick Action on Lightning record pages or Global Quick Actions, when they create a task.

Learn more about Quick Actions and Global Actions.

Creating a Salesforce Queue: Lead Queue Example

Use case: create a Lead Queue to distribute newly created Leads by region (APEC, EMEA, LATAM, North America, etc.)

Step 1: Create a Lead Queue

Go to: Set up → Enter Queues in the quick find box → Select Queues → Click New.
Follow the screenshots below.

Enter a label for the Queue, eg. North America Leads.
Optionally, you can:

Assign an email address for the queue. This could be a shared mailbox for a team of users, so that users in that queue will receive updates.
Decide if users in that queue will receive updates on actions, such as a new lead getting added to the queue.

Follow the screenshot below.

Select the object that you want to create a queue for. In our case we choose Lead:

Select Queue members. Remember that you can choose individual users, public groups, roles and roles and subordinates. Here I chose Roles and subordinates: VP, North American Sales, which means that the user in the VP of Sales and any other users in roles below them in the hierarchy (which, if role hierarchy best practice has been followed, will include the team/s they manage) will be automatically included in the queue as well.

Step 2: Assigning Rules for Lead Queues

Now it's time to create a Lead assignment rule to automatically assign users to the appropriate regional queue.
Go to: Set up → Enter Lead Assignment Rules in the quick find box → Select Lead Assignment Rules → Click New.

Enter a Rule Name → Check Active → Click Save.

Enter the criteria on which you want the Assignment Rule to apply by:

Find Rule Entries → Click New → Sort Order 1 → Run this rule if the 'criteria are met'
From Field choose Lead: Region, equals North America. (advanced: if you have multiple rules, you have to use Filter Logic).

Select the queue you want the Leads with the above criteria to go to. Select Queue → Find North America → Click Save.

Step 3: Testing

Now, it's time for testing. We can test both the Lead Queue and the Lead Assignment rule at the same time.
The North America Queue List view is empty:

I will create new lead choose the region as North America.

Check the North America Queue List view again, and the Lead should appear there:

Summary

Queues help your teams to manage shared workload easier. You can use Queues for managing cases, leads, tasks, contact requests, orders, service contracts, knowledge articles, and custom objects. Once records are placed in a queue manually or through an automated assignment rule, records remain there until they're assigned to a user or taken by one of the queue members.

Why not create a Queue today in your org? Here are some extra examples of Queues across your org:

New high priority cases for a specific agent skill set
New leads for the EMEA region
New projects (custom object)
Tasks for the Finance Team