Automatic assignment

Tickets are not yet handed out to agents one by one. The Auto-assignment page saves your round-robin settings now, and they start working once the assignment engine is switched on for your helpdesk; the page says so at the top until then.

Three things already put tickets in the right hands:

1. Rules send new tickets to a team, or to one agent, the moment they arrive.

2. The first reply takes the ticket: when an agent replies to a ticket nobody holds, it becomes theirs.

3. Views such as Unassigned, or a view you build for each team, let agents pick up the next ticket themselves.

Route new tickets to a team with a rule#

Do this first. Round robin, when it arrives, shares out tickets that already belong to a team, so every team needs a rule that fills it.

1. Create the team, if you have not: Settings > Teams > Create team, then add its members. See Teams.

2. Open Workflows > Rules and press Create rule. Admins create and edit rules.

3. Name it so its job is clear in the list, for example "Route: wholesale to Wholesale team".

4. Under When, choose A ticket is created.

5. Under If, add the conditions that pick the team's tickets, such as Channel is Email and Tags includes any of wholesale. To leave out tickets your own team starts, add Started by an agent is No.

6. Under Then, choose Add an action, pick Assign to team and choose the team. Use Assign to agent instead to send the tickets to one person.

7. Save the rule and check it is on.

Rules run from the top of the list down, so when two routing rules match one ticket, the one lower in the list has the last word. The Send urgent tickets to a team template is a ready-made routing rule to adapt. For every condition and action, see Rule conditions and actions.

The first reply takes the ticket#

An agent who answers the customer on a ticket nobody holds becomes its assignee. Internal notes do not count. Replies sent by rules, integrations, the AI agent's account or an observer never take a ticket, and tickets copied in from another helpdesk keep the assignee they had.

The Auto-assignment settings#

Open Workflows > Auto-assignment. Admins change these settings; other roles can read them. Press Save changes at the bottom when you are done.

Per team#

The Teams table lists every team with its number of members:

• Round robin: on by default. Turn it off for a team whose members prefer to pick tickets up themselves.

• Open tickets per agent: a limit for that team only, from 1 to 500. Leave it empty to use the agent limit above.

Use Manage teams to add teams or change who is in them.

Who counts as available#

Round robin will only consider agents who are available. Agents switch Available on or off in their account menu at the bottom left of the screen. The helpdesk does not yet mark anyone away on its own after a stretch with no activity. See Agent availability and statuses.

Until round robin is on#

• Give each team a view of its own open tickets, sorted with the oldest or most urgent first, and ask agents to work from the top.

• Keep the Unassigned view near zero during working hours; anything there has no owner.

• Use Assign tickets to agents and teams to move tickets by hand, one at a time or in bulk.