Transfer a call to an agent that is not in 'Available' status

Question

We have a very small office with a very small (5 agents) Connect call center.  Several employees perform different job functions at different times of the day.  We would like to be able to have a Connect agent choose to be 'Available' and receive calls from the queue(s), or choose to only be able to receive calls placed/transferred to them from other agents.  For example, an agent may need to perform some research work and doesn't want to be interrupted by calls coming from the queue, but does want to be available to accept calls/transfers from other agents.  The only ways that I've come up with to do this involve changing the agent's routing profile ad hoc, or creating two agent accounts with different routing profiles and have them log in/log out of the accounts as needed.  Is there another way to do this?  It would be great if this could be done via a custom status or by allowing the the agent to select their queue/routing profile via the CCP.

Answer

Amazon Connect is only providing the contact center functionality, and does not work the same as the legacy PBXs (it does not have the UC side of things). While agents can be targeted directly via personal queues, where calls always take priority over the regular queues, there is no "direct extension" ability in Connect. The only routable state is "Available".
Your two solutions are the only workaround that satisfy your use case, despite the fact that they are not ideal.

Transfer a call to an agent that is not in 'Available' status

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