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Find out when nobody is available to take contacts during open hours

A queue with nobody free to answer it, while you're open.

This is for admins who want to know when a queue has nobody to answer it during business hours: a shift that didn't show up, or everyone stuck on a break. You'll end up with a rule that pages a daytime rotation, and stays quiet at night.

What Standby can see, and what it can't

The rule watches Amazon Connect's agents available figure: agents in the Available status who could take a contact from that queue right now. That isn't the same as logged in. Someone on a call, in after-call work, or on a break isn't available.

An empty, silent queue reports nothing. Amazon Connect only returns figures for a queue that has some activity. If nobody is logged in and nobody has contacted that queue, there's no reading, and Standby can't tell you. The rule fires when there is a reading: agents are logged in but none is available, or a contact arrives with nobody available.

What you'll set up

A rotation that's on duty during business hours only.
An alert rule on agents available, pointed at it.

Steps

Go to On-call → Rotations and choose New rotation, or edit your daytime one. Under When this rotation is on duty, choose Business hours only, then tick each open day and set its hours. These are set in Standby, not read from Amazon Connect.
Go to Rules and choose New rule. Choose the queue in On which queue.
In Watch for, choose Agents available drops below, and set Below to 1. That fires when no agent is available.
Set For at least to 10 minutes. On a busy queue, everyone being on calls at once is normal for a minute or two.
Under When this fires, choose Push, then call. In Pages, choose the business-hours rotation. Choose Create rule.

Outside business hours, the rule can still fire and record an incident, but nobody is paged because the rotation isn't on duty. Resolve those when you see them.

Try it safely first

Leave the rule Pending for its full 7 days. This rule is the one most likely to be noisy, because "nobody available" also happens when everyone is busy. Choose Review to see how often it would have paged. If it's too often, raise For at least; that restarts the 7 days. When the numbers look like moments worth a call, choose Promote to live.

After it's live, go to Rules → Simulate, choose the queue, Agents available with a value of 0, and At a particular time. Try a weekday morning, then a night. You should see the rotation paged in the morning and nobody at night.

Variations

Every queue at once. Leave On which queue on Every queue. Each queue is judged on its own figure.
Too few, not none. Set Below to 2 to hear about a queue down to one available agent.
Catch the caller instead. Pair it with a rule on Contacts waiting in a queue or Longest wait, which fire whenever someone is actually waiting. See Get alerted when a caller waits too long.