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:
22 comments
Zachary Hanes
The definition of "away" in this article is different from what is shown in-product, and is pretty confusing.
In the product it's defined as "Can't receive work, but work is added to the queue." That's very different from "Only Support tickets can be routed to the agent." I assume the version in the product is the correct one. Am I right about that?
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Romona
Hi Zachary,
The difference between the typical Away status before in Agent Workspace before Unified Agent Status, only applied to Live Messaging/Chat conversations. And while in Away status, agents could only work on tickets they were previously assigned and or Help Center/ Web Form and Email tickets. But were no longer routed Live Messaging/Chat conversation tickets. And instead they are added to a Live conversation queue for Online agents to work from.
The new Away status in Unified Agent Status applies to being Away in Messaging/Chat and Talk tickets. That leaves Email and Help Center/Web Form which can still be worked or routed because they do not require an immediate response. And those Live Messaging/Chat conversations will still be added to a queue for Online agents to work from. I hope that helps
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Monica
I also find it confusing and it would be better served by some renaming. Examples that need work, but the idea: Online to Online - All channels and Away to Online - Support/Email tickets.
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Shaun Luong
The article says:
Which one is it? Offline? Away? They're 2 different statuses. There are 3 scenarios, so which status applies to which scenario?
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Tobias Hermanns
Hi,
would it be possible to set a manual reason?
Like: "AdHoc" selection, then Agent need type in doing step?
Thanks.
Tobias
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Jacquelyn Brewer
Shaun Luong Good point. There is an admin setting in the Routing configuration that enables them to choose whether the agent status is changed to offline or away. I've updated the article to clarify this.
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Ashley Caputo
Is there an update on the timeline for when this will be supported?
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Shawna James
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Ashley Caputo
Hi Shawna, It's not product feedback, I'm just curious about the timeline for one of the limitations described in this article. Thanks for taking a look!
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Daniel Codesal
Hello,
I have a question about the new ‘reassignment of reopened tickets’ feature within omnichannel routing. I have created a custom agent status called ‘Annual leave’ for when our team are away on holiday and set it as the status for the new ‘reassignment of reopened tickets’ feature hoping it works the same way as the out of office app. See screenshot below.
Our agents have been changing to this status at the end of their shifts before going on holiday, however the following morning the system has automatically changed the annual leave status to offline. Therefore, their reopened tickets are not reassigning to agents in the same group.
Is there a way to stop the system automatically changing a custom status to offline? Or are there plans to prevent the system from automatically changing a custom status to offline after inactivity time? I’m not sure why we would be able to set a custom status to use this feature, but then Zendesk overrides it?
Any help much appreciated.
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Johannes Garske
We have the same problem Daniel Codesal
Do you hear anything?
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Daniel Codesal
Hi Johannes Garske
Barry Neary was able to help me with this and changed a setting for us. You need to be excluded from the disconnection service. We opted for this now and it's working great for us.
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Johannes Garske
Thanks a lot Daniel Codesal
Barry Neary Could you please also change this setting for us?
Thanks a lot!
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Shai Eyal
Barry Neary Please exclude my workspace and sandbox from the disconnecting service.
I raised a ticket with support but they are not resposive. This is really crucial for our team…
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Pascal Turmel
Same for us. Agents experience random disconnection to offline mode after a while from any Agent Status. A ticket has been logged and Support does not seem to be aware of the Disconnection Service: Could someone in Product Management expand and possibly add us for testing?
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D.Fitz
We're seeing agents dropping offline and are trying to understand why. Does Zendesk consider tabs in collapsed Groups in Chrome to be ‘closed’?
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Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi D.Fitz
It doesn't. As long as the tab is active in the browser, even if it was added in Chrome groups, it should still count as an active session. Try checking out if your team has idle timeout enabled.
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D.Fitz
Thanks Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana but we've found that Idle timeout doesn't work with our custom statuses. E.g. if agents are in meetings or on lunch, we don't want the Idle timeout to kick in.
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Leo Ostigaard
I'm confused about the custom status option for email:
If we set the email channel to “Away” while creating a custom agent status, isn't that the same thing as setting email to “Online”? If they're away for email, shouldn't they not get routed email tickets? If those options are the same, then why is the “Away” option there? Very confusing indeed.
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Tommy
Is it possible to sort statuses? I created a custom online status, and it is at the bottom of the list, but I need it at the top.
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Cedric Varin
Hi Barry Neary,
Can you please help us as well to remove the disconnection service? We raised a ticket to the customer service, but they don't manage to do it.
This rule creates a lot of issues for us, as we can't control when emails get re assigned with this automatic offline status system.
0
Sam
Barry Neary – Plus 1 to Cedric Varin ‘s request to remove the disconnection service. If “Idle timeout” can be set to allow agents to be changed to Away so that they can receive Email tickets (AKA form-based or email-based requests, which aren’t chat, so naturally aren't expected by the end user/requester -or- the management team to have as immediate response like a chat), it does not make sense to automatically set these individuals to Offline if their computer falls asleep, or in the event of a network outage which might even be imperceptible to them if their connection recovers and they were perhaps reading the ticket itself! They'd have to realize and then reset themselves to Online, which is cumbersome and takes them away from their ticket, or they may stop receiving work altogether. This whole section reads very confusingly and counterintuitively if the Idle timeout has been specifically set to something other than Offline:
![](/hc/user_images/01JFHRS1WNCNE1Z43724PG941W.png)
We have been receiving numerous complaints and reports about this, and it's hindering people's desire to continue using the system. If an admin, and the workflow management team determines that “idle timeout” should set to Away versus Offline, this should apply to all forms of timeout.
CC: Kylie Diemer Danny Flynn
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