Running your day
Blocked and test numbers
Your join and booking pages are public, and nobody has to prove the mobile number they type in is theirs. Queue Join watches for that being misused — someone else’s number typed in again and again, or a flood of fake joins — and gives you the tools to deal with it. It also makes sure that you, testing with your own phone, are never mistaken for the problem.
Testing with your own phone
Before you go live you will probably join your own waitlist many times: join, leave, join again, press Alert, book and cancel. To anything watching for misuse, that looks exactly like someone hammering one number. Add your phone as a test number first.
- Go to Location settingsTest numbers.
- Enter your mobile number and choose Text me a code.
- Type in the 6-digit code we text you.
A verified test number gets far higher limits, so you can test as often as you like. You can add up to five — one for each person setting the shop up. Messages to them still count towards your plan’s monthly messages, because they are real messages.
Needs the permission locations.update_all_settings (update all locations settings). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
What Queue Join turns away
Someone joining or booking online is turned away, and asked to speak to a member of staff, when:
- the number is premium-rate, freephone or otherwise not a mobile;
- the number is from a country your location doesn’t take numbers from (see below);
- you, or Queue Join, have blocked the number;
- the same number has joined this location several times today, or joined many different businesses today;
- a lot of attempts are coming from one connection;
- for a booking, the number already holds three upcoming bookings at that location (six if you have served them before).
When one connection is making a lot of attempts, or the location is seeing unusual activity (below), the form may also ask for a security check (Cloudflare Turnstile) before it lets anyone through. Someone who doesn’t pass it is asked to try again.
Someone already in the line who scans your QR code again is just shown their place — that never counts. Regulars you have served before, and test numbers, get higher limits than a number you have never seen.
Anyone turned away can still be served
The visitor is told to speak to a member of staff, and staff adding someone by hand are never subject to these limits — only to blocks.
Seeing who was turned away
Location settingsWaitlistProtection from misuse (and the same section under Bookings) lists the last week’s refused attempts with the reason. Numbers are partly hidden: the list is for spotting a pattern.
Countries
By default a location takes numbers from its own country plus the UK, Ireland, the EU and EEA, Switzerland, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If you regularly serve visitors from further afield, turn on Accept numbers from any supported country in the same section.
Blocking a number
A blocked number can’t join or book online, gets no messages from you, and can’t be added by staff either: adding it to the waitlist or booking it in is refused with “Unblock it in Customers → Blocked numbers to add them.” It doesn’t affect any other business on Queue Join.
From a visit
On a waitlist visit, a booking or a customer’s page, choose Block number. From a visit, the block applies at that location unless you choose All locations. The visit is cancelled without sending them anything, and you can cancel their other active visits and upcoming bookings at the same time.
From the blocked list
CustomersBlocked numbers lists every blocked number, where it applies, who blocked it and why. Block a number there before it ever turns up, change where a block applies, or unblock it.
Needs the permission customers.block (block numbers). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
A team member who only has access to some locations can block and unblock numbers at those locations. A block across all locations is for someone with access to every location to set or lift.
Marking a visit as fake
When an entry clearly isn’t a real person, choose Mark as fake on the visit. It is cancelled without a message, and neither it nor a visit cancelled by a block counts towards your plan’s monthly visits. Anyone who can cancel visits can do this.
Needs the permission visits.cancel (cancel visits). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Unusual activity
If many more people than usual try to join a location online in a few minutes, Queue Join switches on extra checks there for an hour and tells your owners and admins by email and on the dashboard. From the banner you can pause online joining until midnight, or say the rush is genuine, which switches the checks off for a day. Joining is never paused for you, and a pause can be lifted early with Reopen joining on the waitlist.
Pausing online joining needs locations.update_open_close (update open/close). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Saying the rush is genuine needs locations.update_all_settings (update all locations settings). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
When a message isn’t sent
Every message also passes a final check. A visit’s notification history shows Not sent, with the reason, when a message was held back — for example because:
- the customer replied STOP;
- the number is blocked;
- one number has had an unusual number of messages today;
- the number is one of the made-up 07700 900xxx numbers set aside for films, TV and examples, which no real phone has;
- Queue Join support has suspended the account or paused its messages.
Replying STOP to any Queue Join message stops texts from every business, and replying START turns them back on. An unsubscribe or a spam complaint against one of our emails does the same for that email address.
Daily limits on an account
Each account can send a certain number of texts and calls to customers in any 24 hours, and message a certain number of customers it has never seen before. Marketing campaigns don’t count, and messages to your test numbers are never held back by these limits.
- Free: 150 messages, and 25 new customers.
- Paid plans: 5,000 messages, and 500 new customers.
- Enterprise: no account-wide limit.
On the Free plan, customers also stop being texted once the month’s texts are used up; push notifications and email carry on.
Banners on the dashboard
When messages have been held back in the last day for a reason that affects the whole account, a banner across the top of the dashboard says so, with a count:
- Some messages to new customers weren’t sent — the daily limit on new customers was reached. If the business is genuine, contact support and we’ll lift it.
- Customers aren’t being texted — the Free plan’s texts for the month are used up.
- Messages to new numbers are paused — Queue Join has briefly paused messages to new numbers while we deal with a problem. Customers you have served before still get theirs.