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Configure idle timeout and disconnection settings to manage agent availability across channels. Set idle timeout to update agent status after inactivity, and adjust disconnection status for network or session disruptions. Customize statuses to suit your team's workflow, ensuring agents are marked as away or offline when needed. This helps maintain accurate agent presence and improves response management.

Location: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Status timeouts

Unified agent status is part of omnichannel routing and provides a way for agents to control their availability for email, voice, and messaging from a single menu. However, there are situations in which Zendesk can infer and automatically update an agent's status, such as lengthy periods of inactivity or a detected disconnection. Admins can use the Status timeouts page in Admin Center to configure the desired idle timeout and status as well as the disconnection status for each unified agent status.

This article contains the following topics:
  • Configuring a status's idle timeout behavior
  • Configuring a status's disconnection behavior

Configuring a status's idle timeout behavior

The idle timeout and disconnection settings can be configured individually for each unified agent status. Idle timeout is turned off by default and must be selected if you want Zendesk to infer agent status based on session activity. For the purposes of idle timeout, inactivity is defined as no mouse or keyboard interactions within the Zendesk tab of a browser. However, even if an agent is idle by this definition, updates to an agent's status by the API cause the idle timer to reset.

In most cases, the default idle status is Keep current status and no idle timeout value, but, if you turned on idle timeouts prior to September 8, 2025, your unified agent statuses inherit a default idle status of Away or Offline and an idle timeout of 10 minutes.
Note: In the event that a disconnection event occurs while an agent is in an idle status, the disconnection status overwrites the idle status. Additionally, if the agent is removed from a group while using a custom unified agent status that is restricted to that group, if they become idle or disconnected, their status is changed to Offline.

Configuring an idle timeout for a status

To turn on and configure an idle timeout for a status, you must change the unified agent status's idle status to anything other than Keep current status.

To configure idle timeout for a status
  1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status timeouts.
  2. In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status you want to configure an idle timeout for.
  3. Select the preferred Idle status. This could be one of the standard unified agent statuses (away or transfers only) or a custom unified agent status.

    Selecting Keep current status turns off idle timeout for the status.

  4. Under Idle timer, enter a value between 5 and 1440 minutes, after which an agent is deemed inactive and their status should be updated to the configured idle status.
  5. Click Save.

Turning off a status's idle timeout

Admins can turn off idle timeout for each unified agent status individually.

Make sure you inform agents if you disable the fallback status for idle agents. They will need to manually set themselves to away or offline when they are unavailable to receive work.

To disable idle status
  1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status timeouts.
  2. In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status for which you want to turn off idle timeout.
  3. Change the Idle status to Keep current status.
  4. Click Save.

Configuring a status's disconnection behavior

In addition to idle timeout, Zendesk can also infer session connectivity based on the following disconnection events:
  • An agent closes the Agent Workspace without signing out (by closing down their computer or browser window or putting their computer to sleep)
  • An agent’s connection is lost due to a network outage
Note: A disconnection event is different from a Zendesk session expiring.

Configuring a disconnection status

To turn on and configure a disconnection status, you must set the unified agent status's disconnection status to anything other than Keep current status.

To configure a status's disconnection status
  1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status timeouts.
  2. In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status you want to configure an idle timeout for.
  3. Select the preferred Disconnection status. This could be one of the standard unified agent statuses (away, transfer only, or offline) or a custom unified agent status.

    Selecting Keep current status turns off the disconnection status.

  4. Click Save.

Turning off a status's disconnection status

Admins can turn off the disconnection status behavior for each unified agent status individually.

To disable a status's disconnection status
  1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status timeouts.
  2. In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status for which you want to turn disconnection status.
  3. Change the Disconnection status to Keep current status.
  4. Click Save.

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