Because queues are very important in OTRS, this section tries to explain more detailed the meaning of queues.
On common mail systems all messages are saved into an inbox file. An inbox is a big file where the messages are arranged on to another. New messages are appended at the end of the inbox file. The mail program, which is used to read and write mails, reads the inbox file and presents the content to the user.
A queue in OTRS is some how comparable to an inbox file, but has some more features. It also can store many messages, but the mails are saved in another way. You don't need to know any detail of queues if you only want to use OTRS, the only important thing to know is in which queue a ticket is stored. The users of OTRS, better called agents, can open and edit tickets in a queue and of course they can move tickets from one queue to another. But why should they move tickets?
To explain it more practically, remember Max's company describe in the section about a example of a ticket system . Max' has installed OTRS to get rid of his support chaos. He and his agents are using the system to manage the support requests for the video recorders. One queue that contains all request is enough for this situation. But some times later Max also sales a DVD recorder. Now the customer not only have questions about the video recorder but also for the new product. More and more emails get into the one queue of Max's OTRS and its hard to keep the overview. Some day Max decides to optimize the structure of his support system and adds two new queues, so now three queues are used by the system. Into the old queue (called "raw") all mails are stored if they arrive at the ticket system. The two new queues are one for the video recorder (called "video recorder) and the other one for the dvd recorder requests (called "dvd recorder"). Max tells Sandra to watch the "raw" queue and sort (dispatch) the mails either into "video recorder" or "dvd recorder", depending if a customer asks for support for a video recorder or dvd recorder. John only has access to the "video reorder" queue, Joe can only answer tickets in the "dvd recorder" queue. Max is able to edit tickets in all queues. Because OTRS supports access management for users, groups and roles, it is easy to setup queues that only are accessible for some specific accounts. Max could also use another way to get his requests into the different queues, with filter rules or if two different mail addresses are used Sandra only has to dispatch emails into the two other queues, that can't be dispatched automatically.
Sorting your incoming messages into different queues helps you to keep the support system structured and tidy. Because your agents are arranged into different groups with different access rights onto queues, the system can be optimized even more. Queues can be used to define work flow processes or they create the structure of a company. Max could implement for example another queue called "sales". this queue could contain the sub queues "requests", "offers", "orders", "billing", e.g. Such a queue structure could help Max to optimize his order transactions. The better a system is structured, the less time is needed for the different tasks. That results in less working time that is needed for the different tasks and that saves money. Queues can help to optimize the processes in your company.