Setting your Talk agent state

Note: If your admin has turned on omnichannel routing with the Agent Workspace, you’ll set your state in a different way. See Setting your agent status with omnichannel routing for instructions about setting your state for multiple channels.

Agents using Talk can set their availability to one of these states:

• Online: The agent is available to take calls. Talk can route calls to the agent. If the agent doesn't answer, Talk waits for 30 seconds, then routes the call to the next online agent.
• Offline: The agent is offline and Talk will not route calls to that agent. Note that Talk does not automatically set agents to the Offline state. However, admins can set an agent to offline in the Talk dashboard (Team and Professional only).
• Transfers only: An agent in the transfers only state is not available to take calls from the current queue. While calls cannot be routed to an agent in the transfers only state, another agent can transfer calls to them. Agents in the transfers only state can make outbound calls. Additionally, this state can only be used for agent to agent transfers and not group transfers.
• Away: The agent is currently not available to take calls; for example, they could be on a break. Talk will not route calls to that agent but will place them in the queue for an agent who is available to answer. The Away state is intended to be used for short periods of time. If an agent is going to be away for a while, they should use the Offline state.

In a scenario where all agents are in the Offline or Transfers only state, incoming calls will be routed to voicemail.

In a scenario where all agents are in the Away state, incoming calls will continue to be queued. The values you’ve set for maximum queue size and maximum queue wait time behavior will be in effect unless the call was manually transferred to a group.

When an agent in the Online state answers a call, they remain in the Online state. Incoming calls continue to be queued.

If an agent shuts down their computer, their agent state is not automatically set to Offline. They must manually set this state before they shut down their computer. Alternatively, an admin can do this from the Talk dashboard.

This article contains the following topics:

• Setting the agent state
• Working with agent states in the Talk Dashboard

Setting the agent state

To set the agent state

1. Click the Talk icon () on the right side of the toolbar.
2. Use the drop-down list in the Talk console to select your state.

   

3. If an agent's state is Away, you cannot transfer calls to them. In this case, you are trying to transfer a call to Liam Fleming. The orange dot next to his name indicates he is away, and you cannot transfer the call.

   

Tip: You can also change your agent state (with the exception of the Transfers only state) from the Settings page of the Zendesk Support Android or iOS mobile apps.

Working with agent states in the Talk Dashboard

With the Talk Dashboard, you can see a breakdown of your agents activities including the time they spent in each state, and the total time they spent online.

Additionally, you can update the state of Talk agents.

For more information about using the Talk Dashboard, see Analyzing call activity with the Talk Professional dashboard and Analyzing call activity with the Talk Team dashboard.