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. 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.
56 comments
Robert Hood
+1 on Lauren Benkov's point. Need a way for Agents to quickly assess who is online and who isn't .
Here's our scenario:
As an Agent, I need to be able to transfer a Talk call to a colleague who is typically in an Agent Group that is in my local office. Transferring calls happens multiple times a day. I would like to have a Live Talk Dashboard that only shows the Agent status and time in status that can be filtered to the specific Agent Groups I need and for the dashboard to retain the last filter I created.
Our current workaround is to use MS Teams to see if another Agent is available for the call
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1
Tobias Hermanns
+1 for Laurens comment
5
Efrat Barak Zadok
Is there a way to present the Agent workload vs. capacity report in the dashboard itself and not only as a drill though?
2
Elaine
I regret to inform you that the mentioned feature is not currently available in the dashboard. I suggest you create a post in our community so that our product managers can review and consider it based on the business need. Your input is valuable, and the community platform is an effective way to communicate feature requests and enhancements.
-3
Efrat Barak Zadok
Elaine OK..
Can you guide me how to create this report from scratch?
It seems I cant see it in the All reports tab
0
Ashwin Kaniyal
Hello
We shared a custom dashboard to few Managers. They are able to drill in and see agents. But unable to change the statuses by check marking the agents from list.
Are there any role restrictions?
1
Steve Lacoss
I found changing role permissions to below allows the checkbox to appear.
Which allows agent statuses to be updated from the live dashboard.
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-1
Agnieszka Czajka
Lauren Benkov thank you for the feedback! We do plan to have the agent list as a separate component that you can add to your dashbord instead of only having it in drill in. Follow these post be up to speed on how it is going.
At the moment we do not plan to introduce option to exclude statuses or any other filters that would allow to exclude values but that is valuable insight. If we plan these in the future we will be posting here as well.
2
Agnieszka Czajka
Hey Ashwin Kaniyal - in first version only users with admin rights can change agent status in Explore. Permissions to include other types of users are coming in next version.
0
Tobias Hermanns
We do plan to have the agent list as a separate component that you can add to your dashbord instead of only having it in drill in.
Yes please +1 we need this too, Drill in daily multiple times isn´t real doable
If you can have more filter i.e. for Brand and have such things saved in dashboard instead of modify drill in always when enter would be a life saver.
0
Arianne Batiles
Right now, only admins can take this action in Explore. However, having this feature extended to other types of users is something our Product team is currently working on. There's no timeline for this yet but please stay tuned for updates.
0
Jahn
Is there a way we can have the drill in function for all live widget and the freedom to select which attribute we want to see for each drill in function?
Hope we can replicate the drill-in function from the old builder.
0
Christine Diego
Currently, we don't have the drill-in feature available for Live metrics related to tickets. This feature is only available for Agents. I would recommend creating a post on our community platform to share your request with our product managers. They can then review and consider it based on the business need. Your input is valuable to us, and we believe that the community platform is an effective way to communicate feature requests and enhancements.
0
Sara Bradley-Bussell
The filtering for the live data set does not allow for much granularity, are there plans for introducing more filters soon, or a workaround to filtering these tiles down further? For example, we have three primary groups in Zendesk with hundreds of agents, but within each group outside of Zendesk, we have separate teams with different managers. Our managers need to see their direct agents live statuses and tickets but they are unable to do so efficiently if they can only filter by Group or a single name. We need a live filter for agent names, tags, etc. that we can group to get this level of detail.
4
AntonMi
Should we expect that `Agent workload vs. capacity` will update in real-time or at least refresh automatically every 10 sec?
0
Shawna James
0
Leslie
Plus 1 for Anton's comment. It's kind of a hassle to refresh the page from time to time just to check the updated status of the agent.
0
Dave Dyson
Agnieszka Czajka hi, is there a rough timeline on when the “next version” that will allow other (presumably custom) roles to change an agent's status?
We have the Admin role locked down to the team that controls the overall setup of our Zendesk instance, but the teams that manage the agents (including monitoring their statuses) is completely separate. So we're in the position of choosing between:
Thanks for any timeline you might be able to provide!
0
Agnieszka Czajka
Hi Dave Dyson thanks for your interest in the feature. We are working on the permissions for changing agent state at the moment and we will allow to extend permissions to other roles without giving them admin rights. That update is planned to release in Q2 - unable to share exact date, but it should be live soon - keep your eyes on our announcements to be up to date. Looking forward to any feedback you may have after go release this enhancement.
2
Dave Dyson
Agnieszka Czajka Awesome, thanks for the update and we'll be looking forward to it!
0
Chris Batt
I know this has been mentioned several times in the comments here, but is there anything on the roadmap for providing the “Agent workload vs. Capacity” as a dashboard without having to ‘Drill in’ to a widget?
The widget (eg “Support - Agents Online”) just gives me a number, and it seems really silly to provide that to other admins along with the instructions “just click the number, then click the “drill in” button that pops up" when that's all anyone wants to see. Is there a way to create this view as a widget? It's so useful, and exactly what we (and apparently others) are looking for, and it's obscured away behind several clicks.
Again, if I'm missing a step where I can display this view another way, or build it myself, I would love to know. Thanks.
0
Rachael Kolman
Agnieszka Czajka has there been any update on when we will see permissions extended to outside of admins? I know the reference was Q2, wondering if there's a tighter timeline on that? Also adding, I agree, having the agent states visible without having to drill into a metric would be very useful.
1
Tommy
I gave out this new permission, but the agent still can't change the status
1
Anne-Flore Caire
Can we expect to have the "Agent workload vs. capacity window" directly in a live dashboard? Some managers would like to see directly the names of agents Online, Offline... (depending on the desired filters)
0
Jimmy Rufo
How does an admin see which status their OCR agents are set to at a given time, if they don't have Explore Enterprise? We have Explore Legacy and can't seem to confirm how to see an agent status, which as a Support Enterprise client, seems wrong. We cannot find any dataset when building a report in Explore that would match up to Omni data. CC Barry Neary
0
Barry Neary
Hi Jimmy Rufo
There is an API that can be used to read the live status of an agent.
0