With Routing App by Playlist, you can automatically distribute tickets to agents using round robin, or let agents pull tickets on demand with the Playlist Button. No dev work or consultants required — complete setup in minutes.
How it works
Round robin runs on a schedule — every minute, Routing checks your queues and assigns tickets to available agents in rotation. Agents must be Online to receive tickets.
Example: You have a queue of 10 unassigned tickets and 3 online agents — Alex, Sam, and Jordan. Routing assigns tickets equally across all three, respecting each agent's inbox limit and daily limit.
Setup
1. Install from Marketplace
Install Routing from the Zendesk Marketplace. Use code TRIALWOCC at checkout to start a 14-day free trial without entering a credit card.
After installing, enable group restrictions to control which agents have access to Routing. This also ensures you're only billed for agents that actually need the app.
2. Authorize API access
Go to Routing Setup and click Authorize to grant Routing API access to your Zendesk account.
3. Enable Round Robin
Go to Routing Setup > Round Robin > Settings and click on Enabled.
Once enabled, a few settings will appear:
Batch Size — the maximum number of tickets assigned to an agent per batch job. Applies to Round Robin only, not Least Active or Skills-Based routing.
Inbox limit — the maximum number of open tickets an agent can have before round robin pauses assignments to them. Once they respond and drop below the limit, they become eligible again.
Daily limit — the maximum number of tickets an agent can receive per day overall. Learn more.
Automatic idle — automatically sets an agent to Away after a period of inactivity, ensuring tickets are only assigned when agents are actively working. Learn more.
4. Create your first queue
Go to Routing Setup > Round Robin > Queues > Add queue.
Type — select Scheduled (default). For most use cases this works best. If you need to assign tickets immediately, see real-time routing.
View — select a Zendesk view to serve as your queue.
Group by — choose a field to group tickets before sorting. For most use cases, leave this blank.
Sort by — choose which field to use when prioritizing tickets in the queue at the time of assignment, independent of how the view itself is configured in Zendesk. Use Ascending or Descending to set the sort direction.
| Sort by | Direction | Result |
|---|---|---|
| ID | Ascending | Default. Assigns oldest tickets first. |
| SLA | Ascending | Assigns tickets closest to breaching SLA first. |
Routing model — choose how tickets are distributed:
| Routing model | Description |
|---|---|
| Round Robin | Default. Distribute tickets equally to agents in a circular fashion. |
| Least Active | Route to the agent with the fewest open tickets first. |
Limit per agent — optionally cap how many tickets can be assigned from this queue per agent per batch job.
Daily limit per agent — optionally cap how many tickets an agent can receive per day from this queue. Learn more.
Frequency — control how often tickets are assigned from the queue. Options: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour.
Schedule — restrict the queue to specific hours. Requires Zendesk Professional or Enterprise. To set schedules per agent, see schedule-based routing.
Rotate between — choose who receives tickets from the queue:
| Rotate between | Description |
|---|---|
| Agents | Manually select specific agents to receive tickets from this queue. |
| Group members | All members of selected groups will receive tickets. Learn more. |
Click Create queue, then select the agents or groups that should receive tickets and save.
5. Managing agent status
Go to Routing Setup > Round Robin > Team to manage agent status as an admin or supervisor. Click an agent's status in the Status column to change it, or bulk update multiple agents at once. Agents can also update their own status from the agent status dropdown in the left navigation.
Team dashboard:
Agent view:
That's it — there are more advanced settings to explore, but this is everything you need to get started.
6. Prevent assignment loops
In rare cases, existing Zendesk triggers can conflict with round robin assignment — for example, triggers that remove or reassign the Assignee may create a loop with Routing's batch job. Review this article to make sure your setup is conflict-free: Avoiding assignment loops with Round Robin.