When your widget is offline, visitors can leave a message with their contact information in the offline form.
This article discusses the following topics:
Editing the offline form message
By default, this form is enabled with the message shown "Sorry, we aren't online at the moment. Leave a message and we'll get back to you." You can edit the message that appears or disable the form completely.
The process for setting up the offline form is the same for both Chat Standalone and integrated Chat + Support accounts; however, if you are on an integrated account, the offline form is disabled automatically if you are using the contact form in the Web Widget.
To edit the offline form message
- In your Chat dashboard, go to Settings > Widget and click the Forms tab.
- In the Offline Form section, make sure the form is enabled by toggling it On.
- Edit the text in the Offline Greeting field, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
To disable the offline form
- In your Chat dashboard, go to Settings > Widget and click the Forms tab.
- In the Offline Form section, click Off, then click Save Changes at the
bottom of the page.
Enabling messaging channels
If you want to link out to your social messaging channels when the widget is offline, you can toggle on the following channels:
- Facebook Messenger
- Twitter Direct Messages
Facebook Messenger
To add your Facebook account, you will need to specify your Facebook username or page ID. We recommend using the page ID because it is constant whereas you can change your username.
To get your page ID
- Open your Facebook page and click on the About tab.
- Scroll to the bottom of the More Info section and you will see the specific Page ID. Copy and paste that number into the offline form settings page.
Twitter Direct Messages
To add your Twitter account, you will need to specify your Twitter User ID.
To get your Twitter User ID
- Log in to your Twitter account.
- Go to Your Twitter Data page.
- Under the Username field, copy and paste the User ID number into the offline form settings page.
When turning on Twitter Direct Messages on the widget, you will want to ensure that you have turned on "Receive Direct Messages from anyone"in your Twitter account.
31 Comments
Is there a way to integrate the offline form into a native mobile application (iOS/Android)?
Hi Alejandro,
Offline form is supported in our mobile SDKs, the docs can be found here:
https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/ios-chat-sdk/introduction
https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/android-chat-sdk/introduction
Thanks,
Ramin
We have our internal users logged in through SSO, so they don't have to "introduce themselves". More precisely. we don't want them to be able to change the personal details as this creates major issues on the backend. How can I still use the offline form, but not have the requester be able to change the contact details?
@Mirjam I have answered your question in your other post: https://chat.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/217777858/comments/360001287648
@Ramin Thank you I just thought to ask here too just in case. thank you.
Hello,
I am trying to understand what triggers offline form - no agents online or the office hours? Is there a way to set up the offline form to always appear outside the office hours, even if some agents are online? We use the mobile app and sometimes we forget to switch it off for weekends etc., but we don't want to confuse our users and give them an impression we are ready to attend them.
Thanks
Marta
Hi Marta,
If you are using operating hours, it enforces the agent status (except the logins from the mobile apps). To ensure the widget is set to offline on the weekends while using the mobile apps/operating hours, you will want to use the setStatus API to force the widget to offline on the weekends.
You can learn more about the setStatus API here: https://api.zopim.com/files/meshim/widget/controllers/LiveChatAPI-js.html#setStatus
Thanks,
Ramin
Is there a way to adjust the system notification email when the offline form is filled out so that all the agents are Bcc'd the email, not just added as To ??
Or is there way to admin who gets the offline notification at all, with all the agents getting the same email, the chance for duplicate responses is high
I tested it and the email notification gets sent to every agent and all their emails and names are visible? we have compliance rules that this conflicts with, so for now I have to disable the feature entirely?
From: Zendesk Chat <noreply@zopim.com>
Date: 9/15/19 9:43 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: msimpson@rpost.com, wgrote@rpost.com, jchatelain@rpost.com, jmenzin@rpost.com, nvillacarlos@rpost.com
Subject: Offline Message : testing - please respond to whoever sees this.
Hi William,
Currently, there is no setting to change the to/bcc logic and we have no immediate plans to change this. The offline message notifications is mostly beneficial for smaller teams/businesses and we recommend larger businesses to use Chat to Support ticket creation instead.
Creating tickets will help solve the agent conflict problem you described because you can see who is reading/updating tickets inside the Support interface.
If you have compliance requirements to follow, your best bet is to get your agents to disable the offline message notification setting or consider moving to the Support product and use ticket creation instead.
-Ramin
Hi there, a couple questions:
1. How do I ensure that the offline form goes out on weekends?
2. How do I create a notification to our internal team that an offline form has been filled out and needs follow up?
Thank you!
Hi Krysta,
You'll want to set up your operating hours under Settings>Account>Operating Hours. You can exclude weekends from here so the offline form is displayed instead.
Each agent can navigate to Settings>Personal>Profile where then can enable the Offline message notification under Preferences.
Let me know if you run into any issues getting this up and running.
Thanks!
Hi,
is there any way to "force" show the offline form during the opening hours?
My scenario is: I need to reduce the pressure from the chat but only from specific page.
We activate the chat with javascript call ":$zopim.livechat.window.toggle()"
Is there anyway to call the offline form directly ? or some similar workaround?
Thanks in advance
Hello Donato,
The only way to accomplish this natively would be to have all agents go offline. I'll share your question with the rest of our community in our weekly digest and see if anyone can suggest a workaround.
Best regards.
Hello Devan - Community Manager
thank you for your prompt reply.
The thing is that I need to stay online for other services as I use the chat in different point.
Hoping to see some workaround from the community
Thanks in advance
Hello Donato
A couple work arounds that may be helpful:
If you'd like, you can use our Web SDK to build a custom chat widget that is more customizable. I expect with that you could create the form you want and have it show up selectively on the pages you prefer. Or, you could create clones of the custom chat widget with and without the form and put different ones on different pages.
Another alternative (if you also have the Support product) would be to use the Web Widget instead of the Chat Widget. The Web Widget allows you to have custom forms, and you can use the "suppress" function of the web widget API to selectively suppress the form on certain pages and show it on others. You can see more detail on that here: Can I disable some Web Widget features on specific pages.
I hope that helps!
I have run a small ecommerce site shopatvescape.com and have Zendesk installed. I am the only "team member". I have an offline form setup and turned on the widget settings. I then set my status dropdown to "Away" when support hours are over. For the last month no matter what I do the Chat on the site never shows me being offline. So no matter what I do or what I search on the chat helpmate here, I can't get my site chat to go offline. Can you please point me in a direction here?
Thanks in advance for the help.
Josh
Hello Josh Arnold
It sounds like this is a quick fix! When you set yourself to Away that does not actually put your account offline. The Away status makes it not possible for things to be routed to you automatically, and lets your colleagues know you're not accepting chats, but it still leaves your account online for people to request a chat. What you'll need to do is set your status to Offline. This actually does turn off your account, stop offering chat to customers, and shows the offline form. You can read more about the different statuses in this article: Configuring your chat availability settings.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you continue to have trouble.
Elissa,
First, thank you for your response. That makes a lot of sense. Here is the problem. I am not seeing "Offline" as an option. I may be staring directly at it, but I can't find anywhere where I can set my status or the account status to offline. I have read through the article linked to and I can't find it there where I can set it to Offline. Maybe I am having a permissions problem where it doesn't show it as an option. Can you please tell me where the "Offline" option should be? I am the only team member and when logged in the online place I can edit is on the profile page. On the Team Member page I am listed as administrator so I am at a loss here. One more thing. I do have the Zendesk chat app on my phone, and use it along with my computer browser together to handle chats. Maybe one is conflicting with the other. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Josh
Hello Josh Arnold
I'm so sorry for the mistake there. The status is actually called "invisible". That "invisible" status puts you offline as an agent. If everyone is invisible or logged out, then your account is offline.
Good catch on the mobile app as well. You are correct that this can cause trouble. You want to make sure that your mobile app is always set to "invisible" status when you want to be offline. If you close the chat app while it is set to "online" or "away" that will be your account status.
Sorry again for the mistake!
Thank you SO MUCH. That solved it! I am thrilled. I read through so much documentation and never understand specifically how to take the chat offline. This solved it. Thanks so much for the help.
Josh
Hi Josh Arnold
You're so very welcome! I'm glad you were able to get it sorted out after all!
Thank you also for pointing out this is not really covered in our documentation. I'll work on getting a quick article up just to let people know their chat mobile app may be causing status issues. Thanks again!
We are having a problem with the offline form. After the customer submits the form, they get an automatic reply stating something like somebody will get back to them shortly. Unfortunately, "shortly" sets an expectation that is not always accurate due to our business hours. I am not seeing anywhere where we can change the wording of that reply.
Hi Smith,
If you are on a Team, Professional, or Enterprise plan, you can edit the message as described in the article above under "Editing the offline form message". If you are on an Essential plan, you will not be able to edit this message.
How do I make sure that I have different translations for the Offline form text ? The default text is 'Sorry, we aren't online at the moment. Leave a message and we'll get back to you' but we have visitors from all over the world.
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