Should I use the department, department status, or visitor department condition in my Chat trigger?

Question

What is the difference between department, department status, and visitor department in the Chat trigger conditions?

Answer

These Chat trigger conditions refer to the department feature in Chat. You can add agents to specific departments based on their skills and specializations. Visitors can select to chat with a specific department or be assigned to chat with the department that includes the appropriate agents who can help.

Determine the correct department condition for your Chat trigger:

• Department
• Department status
• Visitor Department
  

Department

Department is the name of the department a visitor chooses on the pre-chat form. It refers to the chat-related information that is selected by the visitor. The visitor can choose to chat with a specific department on the pre-chat form.

• Require visitors to select a department on your Chat dashboard under Settings > Widget > Forms > Pre-chat forms. Select Require department.
• Department is only available if you've selected Run trigger: When a visitor requests a chat.

The department condition will cause the trigger to fire if the department selected by the visitor satisfies the condition. For example, your trigger will fire if a visitor selects department 1 from the pre-chat form and your trigger condition is Department | Equals | department 1.

For advanced customizations, see the article: Can I hide the department field on the pre-chat form?

Department status

Department status is determined by the availability of agents. It refers to the online, offline, or invisible status of any agent in that department. The department status condition will fire the trigger if any agents match the selected agent status in the specific department.

Visitor Department

Visitor department is set by trigger actions or Javascript API. It refers to the department automatically assigned to the visitor without the visitor knowing of this assignment. The visitor department condition will fire a trigger only if:

• The visitor's department is previously set by another trigger.
• Javascript API is used to assign a visitor to a department based on other characteristics of the visitor.

To automatically set the visitor department with a trigger, see the article: Automatically route chats to departments.

See the below considerations when using these conditions:

• Proactive Chat triggers bypass the pre-chat form on your site. As a result, the visitor would not have a chance to select the department they wanted to chat with. If you frequently use proactive Chat triggers, remember that triggers with the department condition will not fire on proactive chats.  
• The department status and visitor department conditions can fire a trigger before the live chat starts with the customer. The department condition relies on the customer to select a department and then start a chat.

• If your chats are routing to the wrong department, see the article: Department routing is not working correctly in chat.

For more information, see the article: How do I set or change the department of a chat?