Unified agent status is part of omnichannel routing and provides a way for agents to control availability for Support, Talk, and Messaging from a single menu. In addition to the standard unified agent statuses available on all plans, admins on Professional plans and above can also define custom unified agent statuses to suit their workflows.
Unified agent statuses are automatically available to accounts that meet the requirements.
About the standard unified agent statuses
Unified agent statuses are used to inform omnichannel routing behavior for tickets from email (including web form, side conversations, and API), calls, messaging conversations, and sometimes Chat. Agents set their unified status manually and need to adjust it throughout the day to accurately reflect their availability to receive work. These standard statuses are the basis for custom agent statuses, too.
There are four standard agent statuses:
- Online - Tickets from email, calls, messaging conversations, and sometimes Chat can be routed to the agent.
- Away - Only email tickets can be routed to the agent.
- Transfer only - Only tickets that have already been reviewed and need to be transferred to the agent can be routed to them.
- Offline - No tickets can be routed to the agent.
Modifying an agent's status
In most situations, an agent's status is set manually by the agents themselves. They are encouraged to change their status to offline before any breaks. However, when one of the following disconnection events is detected, an agent is automatically set to offline:
- An agent closes the Agent Workspace without signing out (by shutting down their computer, closing their browser window, or putting their computer in sleep mode)
- An agent’s connection is lost due to a network outage
Additionally, admins can configure the account to automatically adjust an agent's status to offline or away when they are idle for longer than the idle timeout threshold.
Requirements and limitations of unified agent status
Consider the following requirements and limitations before enabling and using omnichannel routing and unified agent status.
Requirements
- The Agent Workspace must be activated for your account.
- If your account has a Chat subscription, native messaging or Sunshine Conversations must also be activated.
- Limited support for Chat is provided for accounts migrating to Messaging and omnichannel routing.
Limitations
The following limitations currently exist for unified agent status in omnichannel routing:
- Operating hours won't set an agent's status.
- After you turn on omnichannel routing, you can no longer set a Talk agent status from the Talk dashboard, mobile apps, or Talk APIs. Integrations that use Talk APIs to change agent statuses might also be impacted.
- If call forwarding is enabled and the status of an agent is automatically set to offline because the agent has been disconnected, calls to the agent will no longer be forwarded to the agent's phone.
- When omnichannel routing is activated, agents are automatically set to offline across all channels. When this happens, they are prompted to set a new status. Ongoing live conversations aren't interrupted, but calls waiting in the queue will be directed to voicemail.
- Based on your plan, there are limits to the number of custom agent statuses you can create:
- Team and Growth: You cannot create custom statuses
- Professional: 5 custom statuses
- Enterprise: 100 custom statuses
Related articles
See the following articles for more information to help you get up and running with unified agent statuses: