When you're signed into Zendesk Chat, you can configure a number of settings related to your availability to assist customers. The information in this article applies to both Chat Standalone and Chat + Support account agents.
This article includes the following sections:
Understanding availability status options
You can set your status to any of the following:
- Online: Indicates you're available to answer chats.
- Away: Indicates internally to other agents that you're away from your computer. You can still serve chat requests when your status is Away.
- Invisible: Allows you to sign in to the Chat dashboard but not be visible as Online. If incoming chats are broadcast to all agents, invisible agents can still see and accept chat requests. If incoming chats are assigned to agents, invisible agents cannot receive or accept chat requests. If all chat agents are invisible, the widget will not appear online to visitors and chat triggers will not fire. For information on broadcast and assigned chat routing, see Setting up chat routing.
Manually changing your availability status
You can change your status from the Chat dashboard.
- To change your status once you're already signed in, click the dropdown menu in the upper-left corner of the dashboard.
Setting your idle timeout preferences
You can set your status to automatically change from Online to Invisible or Away when you're away from your computer for set length of time. When your status changes, a window appears letting you know:
These settings affect only your status, not other agents' in your organization.
To set up idle timeout
- In the dashboard, select Settings > Personal.
- Select the Idle Timeout tab.
- Select the Enable Idle Timeout check box.
- If you don't want your status to change when you have open chats, select the Ignore if Chatting check box.
- Next to Idle Status, select whether you want your status to change to Away or Offline when you're idle.
- Next to Inactivity Period, enter how many minutes you should be idle before your status changes. The default value is 15 minutes.
- Click Save Changes.
Viewing other agents' online statuses
You can see which other agents are currently signed in to your dashboard and online.
To view other agents' online statuses
- In the left pane, click Team.
- Click View all.
The Agents Signed In window opens, which shows you a list of the agents currently logged in by department, as well as whether they have admin privileges and how many chats they currently have.
27 Comments
Is it possible for an admin to set the availability of other chat agents? Some of our agents often forget to set themselves as available.
Yes! Being able to change another agents status would be very helpful.
Also, what are the parameters for being "idle?" It seems to be logging us off even though we are in the chat module.
Agreed - We are a small team so that capability is very necessary. I can control it in 'Talk' why not in 'Chat'.
+1 for the ability to edit other agents status.
+ 1, it comes up quite often that I'd need to change someone's status.
Is there a way we can add a widget or API that admins will be able to control the status of the agents.
+1 for admins to change agents chat status!
Any updates on this becoming a possibility? It would be a very helpful feature!
It appears that the auto-timeout is based on the Zendesk chat tab in your browser staying as the primary focus on the desktop. Although this functionality is fine for full-time agents, this doesn't work for part-time agents who only occasionally answer chats throughout the day. It would be nice for the inactivity timeout to rely on Windows Screen Saver (or some other system level inactivity indicator).
+1 for the enhancement to bring it on par with talk where we can change agent statuses
+1 for admins to change agents chat status!
This functionality was available as part of the native Zendesk Chat, what is the timing and priority to make this available with Zopim?
Hi Fernando, Admins have the ability to set the status on behalf of agents in the Talk product, but there no announced plans to replicate this function in Chat.
Ben Koehler
Customer Advocate
bkoehler@zendesk.com
We would appreciate if this feature can be enhanced on the chat product, we are a small company as well and this functionality is very crucial to our business.
Hello
Silly question:
I have two agents online. Agent Y and Agent X
Agent Y took the live chat and is chatting to the customer.
Agent X- cannot see the live chat served by agent Y on his own dashboard.
How to change that? I want all my agents to be able too see each other live chats in tabs
thank u
KRis
Hi Krzysztof,
Can you confirm whether or not Agent X's role allows to see all visitors? You can find this option under Settings>Roles and clicking directly on the role to view the permissions set. Screenshot below:
It's possible that their role is set to only show visitors they're personally serving so I would definitely recommend checking there first.
Let me know!
Hi Brett,
Appreciate your help, but unfortunately it doesn't work.
Both Agents Y and X can see the orange "SERVE REQUEST" button.
Once agent X takes the chat agent Y cant see it on his on dashboard
Hi Krzysztof,
I believe it is normal that once a chat request is being served that the bottom navigation is not distracting the remaining agents (that is action-required zone in their mental model). How we monitor ongoing live chats in our organization is under "Visitors" report where an agent may choose to engage site visitors proactively or barge (silently) into ongoing conversation such as Team Leads or similar.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
KT
Hi Kaloyan
thank you. it make sense now.
Best
KRis
Hi there:
1. please escalate the ability to turn agents offline. it is unacceptable that this is not on the roadmap for features. it is essential for support teams. if someone accidentally sets themself as "away" and is unreachable, this creates a terrible experience for customers who queue in chat when there is no one to help them. this in turn hurts our brand's reputation.
2. we need a way to set the *department* availability. currently, we may need to have all agents offline in one department that exists for a brand, but online in another department for a separate brand, during normal business scheduled hours. as it currently stands, there is no way without using code to set a department as offline. either when all agents in a department are offline the department should automatically be offline, or there should be a way to set status by department.
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Montana!
I'll pass this feedback along to the appropriate team so they're aware of the roadblocks you've run into.
Cheers!
Hi Brett,
I have a question about setting up the chat.
I'm using assigned routing and allow 5 chats max per agent at the same time.
When the agent has reached the 5 chat limit, the agent's status is set to Away.
It seems that when a chat has no activity for 3-4 minutes, the chat goes to "sleep" and at the same instant a new chat from a customer who was waiting in the queue comes in. When this inactive chat customer replies again the chat will pop up again without waiting in a queue again- it will make the agents to handle more than 5 chats at the time (sometimes even 10 they say).
Is there a setting that I missed to avoid this situation?
Thank you and kind regards,
Mari
Hi Mari,
Thank for reaching out!
At this time it is not possible to count inactive chats in an agents total assigned. We would typically recommend a workflow where agents are following up with customers after 1-2 minutes of inactivity to make sure they are still actively engaged and chatting.
If there is no response from the visitor, then the agent could end that chat session. If they visitor comes back to chat again it would create a new request and get assigned based on your routing rules.
Let me know any questions you have.
Cheers,
Terry
It's been 3 years that the ability to turn an agent online and offline has been getting requested. Zendesk seems to always want to release new product but not fix what is already out. This feature should be relatively easy as everything is there you would just give the agents section for admins the ability to set an agents status.
Can we get an actual estimated time of this release as countless people are saying it would benefit them. Including myself.
+1 for admins to change agents chat status.
Or even better a function to let the availability be set to Online as a default in the opening hours!
+1 for Admins to be able to update an agents status.
+1 for Admins to be able to set the Idle timeout at the account level vs having agents do this individually.
Send me produk key, please
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