Inbox teams and routing

Inbox routing decides who answers a conversation once it needs a person, for example after a visitor asks for one. Assignment rules pick a team. Within the team, the conversation goes to someone who is online, on shift and not already at their limit.

Routing doesn't change how the agent asks for a person. Hand-off by email and live chat work as before, including the hand-off email when nobody is online. Routing only sets which team and which teammate the conversation belongs to.

Inbox teams and assignment rules are included on Pro and Enterprise. Open them under Settings, Inbox routing. The page has two tabs: Teams and Rules.

How a conversation is routed

1. The rules are checked from top to bottom. The first rule that is on and whose conditions all match sends the conversation to its team.
2. If no rule matches, the conversation goes to the default team, if you set one. Otherwise it stays unassigned, without a team.
3. If the team is outside its shifts, the conversation goes to the team unassigned. See Outside hours.
4. Within the team, the rule's distribution picks the person. Only people who are online, can reply to conversations on that agent and are below their max open can get it.
5. If nobody in the team can take it right now, it waits in the team, unassigned. See When nobody is available.

A conversation that already has someone assigned keeps them. Routing never moves it to someone else.

Teams

A team is the group of people who answer one kind of conversation, for example "Billing" or "German". Someone can be on several teams.

To create one, open the Teams tab and click New team:

• Name and an optional Description.
• Default team: gets the conversations no rule matches. Only one team can be the default; choosing another one switches the old one off.
• People: tick everyone who answers for this team. Only the owner and members who can reply to conversations can be on a team, so viewers can't be added.
• Max open: next to each person, the most open conversations routing gives them. Leave it empty for no limit. Open conversations are the ones assigned to them that are open or pending, plus snoozed ones whose snooze time has passed, on any agent in the account.

Each team on the list shows its people, who is online, its shifts and whether it is on shift now. A person shown with "can't be assigned" has left the account or can no longer reply to conversations. Routing skips them; edit the team to remove them.

A team can't be deleted while a rule sends conversations to it. Change or delete those rules first. Conversations already assigned to its people stay assigned.

Shifts

Without shifts, a team is always on. To limit when it gets conversations, edit the team and switch on Only assign during shifts:

• Timezone: the hours follow this timezone, including daylight saving time. A team set to 09:00 in Europe/Berlin starts at 09:00 Berlin time in summer and in winter.
• Hours per day: up to 6 time ranges a day, for example 09:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 17:00. Ranges can't overlap, and each ends after it starts. A day without ranges is off.
• Past midnight: end the shift at 24:00 (to midnight) and add a range from 00:00 on the next day.
• Holidays: dates with no shift all day, in the team's timezone. Up to 100.

The start of a range counts as on shift and its end doesn't: with 09:00 to 17:00, 17:00 itself is outside hours.

Outside hours

When a conversation reaches a team outside its shifts:

• It goes to the team, unassigned. The next person on the team who is online during a shift picks it up. See When nobody is available.
• With Auto-reply outside hours on, the visitor is told once that the team is outside working hours. Write your own text (up to 1,000 characters), or leave it empty for the built-in message. Your text is sent as you wrote it. The built-in message is in the visitor's language when it is English, German, French, Italian or Spanish, otherwise in the agent's reply language, otherwise in English. In English it reads: "Thanks for your message. Our team is outside working hours right now. Your conversation is saved, and a team member will see it when we're back."
• Hand-off by email keeps working as before: if the visitor asked for a person and nobody is online, the agent can still pass the conversation on by email.

The auto-reply is stored in the conversation as a message from the agent. The chat window shows it within seconds while the visitor waits for a person in a live chat, and otherwise when the chat is opened again. In a Slack or email conversation it is sent in the thread. Conversations through the REST API don't get it. The auto-reply is sent at most once per wait. If the conversation is picked up, or solved, and later reaches the team outside hours again, the visitor can get it again.

Assignment rules

Open the Rules tab and click New rule. A rule has:

• Name.
• Send to team: the team that gets the conversation.
• Conditions: up to 10. All of them must match. A rule without conditions matches every conversation, which makes it a catch-all at the bottom of the list.
• Within the team: the distribution. See Distribution.

Conditions

Within one condition, the values are alternatives: Country DE, AT matches either. Separate conditions must all match.

Order

Rules are checked from the top. Use the arrows next to a rule to move it up or down. Put narrow rules above broad ones: "German visitors on the pricing page" above "German visitors".

Switch a rule off with its switch to skip it without deleting it. A rule whose team was deleted shows "No team: skipped" and is skipped too.

Under the list, the page says where conversations go when no rule matches: the default team, or nowhere.

Distribution

Conversations that go to the default team because no rule matched use Least busy.

Test a rule

While editing a rule, Test this rule checks it against one of your account's 25 most recently active conversations. Pick a conversation and click Test. You see which of the rule's conditions match, which saved rule would win, the team, and who would get the conversation right now, or why nobody would. The test changes nothing.

Test the rules, below the list, does the same with the saved rules only.

The test shows the conversation's channel, country, language, priority and topics, never its messages.

Availability

Everyone on an inbox team sees Online or Away at the top of the sidebar, under the intoCHAT name. Click it to switch. Routing assigns new conversations only to people who are online. People who aren't on any team don't see it.

• Online lapses after 30 minutes. While the dashboard is open in a visible tab, it tells intoCHAT you are active every 5 minutes. After 30 minutes without that, you count as away for routing, even if the toggle still says Online. You count as online again as soon as you're back in the dashboard.
• Away stays away. Coming back to the dashboard never switches you to Online by itself.
• Your first visit to the dashboard after joining a team makes you online.
• Availability is per account. If you work in several accounts, each has its own.
• Only you can change your availability.

This is separate from being online for live chat, which depends on having the Live chat inbox open.

When nobody is available

A conversation that went to a team but wasn't assigned to anyone, because the team was outside its shifts or nobody could take it, waits in the team. Whenever someone on the team switches to Online, or is active in the dashboard while online, intoCHAT routes up to 10 waiting conversations of their teams that are on shift, oldest first, again with the same rules. Whoever the rules pick gets them, not necessarily the person who came online.

• A conversation someone assigned by hand meanwhile, or that was solved, stops waiting.
• Conversations that went to a team with Manual distribution during its shifts don't wait for pick-up: they stay in the team's queue.

Who can do what

• Changing routing is account-wide, so a member limited to selected agents can't change it, whatever their role.
• A member limited to selected agents is only assigned conversations on those agents.
• With custom roles, Conversations & live chat decides: View to see routing, Edit to be assigned conversations, Manage to change it.
• Creating, changing, deleting and reordering teams and rules is recorded in the audit log. Availability changes aren't.

Plans

On Free and Starter, the page says routing is included from Pro, and nothing is routed. After a downgrade, your teams and rules are kept and can still be edited or deleted, but nothing is routed below Pro, and you can't add teams or rules beyond your new plan's limits.

Limits