Using live dashboards in Explore, you can see which agents are online and which open tickets, conversations or chats, and calls they’re assigned to. This real-time capacity reporting helps supervisors balance availability and workloads across teams, as well as monitor individual agent performance, all from a central dashboard.
The instructions in this article work for the prebuilt live dashboard as well as any live dashboards you create that have reports with drill in enabled.
This article includes the following topics:
- Viewing agent status and workload
- Seeing which open work items are assigned to an agent
- Changing agent status
Related articles:
Viewing agent status and workload
You can drill into a live dashboard to see which statuses agents are in and what their workloads are across the Support, Messaging or Chat, and Talk channels.
If you’ve turned on omnichannel routing, you can also see which custom statuses agents are in and what their workload capacity is across channels.
To view agent status and workload
- In Explore, click the Dashboard icon (
). - Open a live dashboard.
- (Optional) Filter the dashboard based on the specific groups or brands you want to see. You can choose up to five attribute values per filter.
- Click any agent status metric and select Drill in. Agent status metrics
include Agents online, Agents offline, Agents away,
Agents invisible, and Agents transfer only reports for
Support, Messaging, Chat, and Talk, as well as custom statuses created as part
of omnichannel routing.
The Agent workload vs. capacity window opens, showing a list of agents and the following columns:Note: If you drill into a live agent status metric with more than 100 agents, you won't see the list of agents in that status. Use dashboard filters to lower the number of agents that a live metric reflects. When you do, you'll be able to see the list of agents when you drill into the metric.- Status: Which default or custom status each agent is currently in. If you use omnichannel routing, this column is called Unified status
- Time in status: How long each agent has been in their current status
- Emails: How many Support tickets each agent is assigned to
- Messages: How many messaging conversations each agent is assigned to
- Chats: How many chats each agent is currently handling
-
Calls: How many calls each agent is currently
handling
If you use omnichannel routing, hover over the Emails, Messages, Chats, or Calls column to see the number of work items assigned to an agent compared to their set capacity. A dash (-) in the Emails, Messages, Chats, or Calls column means the agent does not have access to that channel (if you're filtering by unified status), or the agent is not in the status for that channel (if you're filtering by a channel-specific status).
If you don't use omnichannel routing, a dash always appears in these columns because capacity information is not available without omnichannel routing.
- (Optional) Click Filter to filter the list by the following options:
- Channel: Includes Email, Messaging or Chat, and Talk.
- Status by channel: Includes the agent statuses that apply to individual channels.
- Group: (Appears only if you filtered the dashboard by group in step 3 above) Includes the groups in your account.
-
Unified status: (Appears only if you use omnichannel routing)
Includes the default unified agent statuses and
any custom statuses you've created.
You can filter by multiple channels and statuses at the same time. When filtering, note that some channel-specific statuses (like Invisible for Chat) are not reflected by the default unified statuses. Additionally, custom statuses can be mapped to different statuses for each channel. If you don't see the results you expect, check the filters to make sure you're not unintentionally excluding agents based on channel or custom status.
Depending on which live agent status metric you drilled into in step 4, filters might already be applied to the list. For example, if you drilled into the Support - Agents online metric, the results are pre-filtered by the Email channel and the Online status.
Tip: If you’ve turned on omnichannel routing, you have access to unfiltered unified agent status live metrics.When you filter by channel, the list shows only the workload columns that apply to the selected channels. For example, if you filter by Talk, you'll see the Calls column, but not the Emails, Messages, or Chats columns.
Note that the Agent workload vs. capacity window doesn't update in real time when it's open and no actions are being performed. When you take an action (such as updating an agent status or changing your filters) or close and reopen the window, the data is refreshed.
Seeing which open work items are assigned to an agent
After opening the list of agents, you can select a specific agent to see which open work items are assigned to them.
To see which open work items are assigned to an agent
- Open the Agent workload vs. capacity window.
- Search for a specific agent in the search bar at the top. Search results are
limited to 50 results. Make sure your search is as specific as possible so you
can find the agent you want.
Use a caret (^) to specify that the agent's name must start with your exact search term. (For example, ^Alex will return "Alex Jensen," but not "Maria Alexander.")
- Select the agent you want to see work items for.
The Agent work items window appears and shows the agent's overall status and status for each channel, along with details about the tickets, messaging conversations or chats, and calls the agent is working on.
The Time in status shown is the time for the channel you selected when you first drilled in. For example, if you drilled into this screen from a Support metric, the time in status shown is the time active for the Support channel.
If you use omnichannel routing, this window also shows the agent’s capacity underneath their status for each channel. See Creating capacity rules to balance agent workload for more information on setting agent capacity.
- (Optional) Use the Filter drop-down to select a channel and see only work items for that channel (Support, Chat, Talk, or Messaging).
- Select a work item to see more details.
For each ticket, the window shows the following details:
- Requester: The user who is asking for support through a ticket
- Ticket ID: The unique ID number of the ticket
- Status: What status the ticket is currently in (New, Open, Pending, On-hold, Closed)
- Account name: The Zendesk account name (described in Branding the agent interface)
- Date requested: The date the ticket was submitted
- Priority: How urgent the ticket is
- Group: What group the ticket is currently assigned to
- Last updated: The date the ticket was last updated
For each messaging conversation, the window shows the following details:
- Requester: The name of the user the agent is messaging with
- Ticket ID: The unique ID number of the ticket
- Originating channel: The channel that the conversation started on. Possible values include Email and Messaging.
- Duration: How long the agent has been working on the ongoing conversation
For each chat, the window shows the following details:
- Requester: The name of the user the agent is chatting with
- Chat ID: The unique ID number of the chat
- Originating channel: The channel that the message came from. Possible values include Facebook Messenger and Chat.
- Duration: How long the chat has been active
For each call, the window shows the following details:
- Caller: The phone number of the caller
- Call ID: The unique ID number of the ticket associated with the call
- Call type: The type of call (described in Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Talk)
- Duration: How long the call has been going on
Changing agent status
From the list of agents, users with permission can change the status of a single agent or multiple agents. To change agent status, you must be a Support admin (all plans) or have a custom role with the Change agent status setting (Enterprise plans only). See Giving users access to Explore.
For example, you might change an agent's status if they completed their shift but forgot to sign out to mark themselves unavailable.
To change agent status
- Open the Agent workload vs. capacity window.
- Select the checkbox to the left of each agent you want to change the status of.
You may select up to 500 agents at a time.
If you search for an agent, search results are limited to 50 results. Make sure your search is as specific as possible so you can find the agent you want.
- In the bottom bar, click Change status and select the status you want to
set for the agent.
To select a custom status, click Other statuses and then select the appropriate custom status.
When you select a status, the agent’s status is immediately updated. You don’t need to save or confirm.