This article includes the following topics:
Understanding and configuring basic notification routing options
There are two options for how notifications for incoming chat and messaging requests are sent to your agents:
- Broadcast: All agents are notified of all incoming requests, and the agent has to click on Serve Request to start serving the request. This is the default setting.
- Assigned: Online agents are evenly notified of incoming requests, so only one agent is notified of each incoming request at any time.
Note: Messaging request notifications are only sent to agents who are included in any routing-related Support triggers, which fire before Chat routing rules are applied. See About routing in messaging for information.
Requests are added to a queue in chronological order, based on time of ticket creation. Incoming requests received while agents are offline are sent to the Unassigned tickets view or the agent’s Group view. Offline requests can be assigned to agents as part of triaging, or they can be manually picked up by agents themselves. Agents will receive a notification when messaging conversations are assigned to them.
In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, incoming live chat and messaging request notifications appear in the top-right corner of the workspace, in the Accept button.
If you do not have the Agent Workspace enabled, assigned live chat requests appear at the bottom of the Chat dashboard:
- From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Routing > Settings tab.
- In the Chat Routing section, select a notification routing method.
- Click Save changes.
Configuring chat limits
Chat limits allow you to cap the number of notifications assigned or broadcast to each agent, based on an agent's workload. You can adjust these limits to help your agents better manage the volume or complexity of service requests.
An agent's workload is determined by the number of active live chat or messaging requests assigned to them. A request is considered active if it has received a response in the past 10 minutes.
- Broadcast: When agents are at the specified limit, they will no longer be notified of incoming requests, and they will not be able to serve requests through the Serve Request button.
- Assigned: Agents will be routed incoming requests only up to their chat limit.
- Account: Set one limit that applies to all agents in your account.
- Agent: Notification limits are configured in each agent's profile. You can specify that only admins can edit agent limits, or alllow agents to set their own limits.
To enable notification limits
- From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Routing > Settings tab.
- Next to Chat Limit, select On.
- Next to Limit Type, select Account or Agent.
- If you selected Account, enter a value in the Maximum chats field.
- If you selected Agent, limits are configured in each agent's profile:
- With the Assigned routing method, select the Personal Limits check box that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- If you're using the Broadcast routing method or using Assigned but don't select the Personal Limits check box, set a chat limit for each agent's profile. Select an agent to edit under Manage > Agents and enter a value in the Chat limit field.
- With the Assigned routing method, select the Personal Limits check box that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- Click Save Changes.
Understanding Assigned notification routing behavior
When Assigned routing is enabled, incoming chat and messaging notifications are routed as follows:
- First, to the agent currently online who's been available (i.e., not serving another request) for the longest time.
- If all agents are actively serving requests, the notification is assigned to the agent currently serving the fewest requests.
- If multiple agents are tied for the fewest number of current requests, the notification is assigned to the agent with no missed assignments.
- If more than one of these agents has no missed assignments, or if all agents have a missed assignment, the notification is assigned to the agent with the oldest chat ended time.
- If all agents have not served any requests, the notification is assigned to an agent randomly.
If an agent does not serve an incoming request before it is reassigned, it will not be routed to them again until an attempt has been made to route the request to all other eligible agents. Additionally, enabling Hybrid Assignment mode changes assigned notification behavior.
When all eligible agents are offline, notifications are not sent. If incoming requests are later assigned as part of manual request triaging, agents will receive a notification when a request is assigned to their them or their group.
Configuring additional settings for Assigned routing
If you selected Assigned routing method, there are additional settings you can configure. Some of these settings are only available for incoming live chat requests, which is indicated in the sections below.
Configuring skills routing (live chat only)
Configuring Hybrid Assignment Mode (live chat and messaging)
This setting applies only if notification requests are Assigned and limits are enabled.
Hybrid Assignment Mode gives agents the option of serving additional requests once they've reached their set limits. Agents will have the option of clicking the Serve Request button to pick up additional requests. If this option isn't enabled, agents can see incoming requests but aren't able to click on the button.
To enable Hybrid Assignment Mode
- Go to Settings > Routing > Settings tab.
- In the Hybrid Assignment Mode section, select the Allow Hybrid Assignment check box.
- Click Save Changes.
Configuring reassignment (live chat and messaging)
This setting applies only if you're using Assigned routing.
With this option enabled, if an agent doesn't respond to an assigned request for a set period of time, another agent is automatically notified of the request. If this option is not enabled, (if Reassignment is set to Off), once a notification is assigned to an agent, it is not automatically reasssigned to another agent.
- Go to Settings > Routing > Settings tab.
- Next to Reassignment, select On.
- Enter a number of seconds in the Reassignment timeout window. For example, if you want notifications to be reassigned after 15 seconds with no response, enter 15.
- Click Save Changes.
Configuring automatic idle settings (live chat and messaging)
This setting applies only if you're using Assigned routing and have enabled Reassignment above.
Enable this setting to automatically set chat agents' status to Away or Invisible after a specified number of notifications are automatically reassigned. Agents are notified when their status is changed.
To enable automatic idle status
- Go to Settings > Routing > Settings tab.
- Next to Automatic Idle, select On.
- Enter a value in the Chats Reassigned field.
- Select a status option next to Idle Status.
- Click Save Changes.
Monitoring live chat routing data in Analytics
- Acceptance: the percentage of assigned chats that were served by agents out of all the chats routed to the agent
- Capacity (beta): The estimated amount of chats that can be served by the account in a given period of time. The capacity is a function of 1) the number of agents logged in, 2) the average chat duration of an account and 3) the chat limit set by the agent.
4 Comments
This article had a large change. It used to say that if an agent did not accept an incoming chat assignment, the system *would not* try to assign it to them again:


Now, it says it will keep trying them after trying everyone else:
I've been trying to get help for months now (and keep having my tickets silently closed out without assistance), because I was seeing agents being "retried" for the same chat, when this article still said that was not the expected behavior.
Was the behavior of the tool actually changed a month ago, or was it doing round robin and re-trying agents who did not pick up the first time, again, this whole time? I've opened and had 3 tickets closed without any comments from Zendesk about this at this point, and I just want to confirm what the behavior is currently, and what it was historically, to troubleshoot related issues.
Hi, @CJ Johnson. The update was made at the request of one of our Chat product managers. I don't recall if it was a change in behavior, or a correction/clarification of the description of existing behavior.
I'm sorry your tickets weren't addressed. I can't help with that, but I hope you've gotten some assistance now.
Is there a way to enable a notification for when a chat ends?
I'm afraid it's currently not possible to set up a notification in the UI for when a chat session/conversation ends. This is not something that's in the roadmap, but I recommend that you start a thread about this here to engage with other users looking for a similar functionality. Specific examples, details about use cases, and how you currently handle things are helpful for our product teams to understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for roadmap planning.
Thanks Jess!
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