Your status and availability
Set yourself available, away or offline, step away for lunch or a meeting, and what your status changes in the helpdesk.
On this page
Your status tells the helpdesk, and your team, whether you are at work right now. You are always in one of three:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available | At work and taking conversations |
| Away | Stepped away for a reason, such as lunch or a meeting. Some away statuses end by themselves |
| Offline | Not working |
Everyone starts as Available.
Change your status#
Click your initials at the bottom of the navigation panel.
The Available switch at the top turns you available or offline.
Under Step away, pick a reason, such as Lunch (1 h), In a meeting or Training. The menu then shows the reason under Available, and when it ends if it has a time limit.
To come back early, switch Available on again.
You can also set it on Settings > Agent availability, under Your status.
The reasons in Step away are the ones your admins created for your helpdesk. One with a duration, like Lunch (1 h), ends on its own: within a minute of the time, you are Available again.
What your status changes#
Live chat. You count as online for chat only while you are Available and have the helpdesk open in a browser tab. A helpdesk whose chat follows agent availability shows the chat window as live while at least one agent is online, inside business hours. When everyone is away or offline, visitors leave a message instead and get the answer by email. See Chat hours and offline messages.
What your team sees. Your status shows in Settings > Users and Settings > Agent availability, and Analytics > Live view lists every agent's status beside their open tickets. See Live view.
Tickets. Your status does not change who has which ticket today. Tickets assigned to you stay yours while you are away, and nothing assigns new tickets to available agents automatically yet. Before a long break, hand your open tickets to a teammate. See Assign tickets.
Setting someone away after a period without activity is not available; change your status yourself when you step away.
For admins#
On Settings > Agent availability, admins can:
change anyone's status, for example when someone forgot to set themselves away at the end of the day,
create away statuses with a name, a description and an optional time limit, and switch off ones you no longer want offered. People already in a switched-off status keep it.
See Agent availability for the details.
Related articles
- Agent availability and statusesSee who is free to take tickets and chats, set a teammate away when they forgot, and create the away statuses agents choose from.
- Chat outside business hoursWhen the chat is live, who counts as available, what visitors see when nobody is, and how their offline messages reach you and get answered by email.
- Live viewSee what is open right now, how it splits across agents and channels, who is available, and which tickets have waited longest.
- NotificationsThe bell, the emails you can get about tickets and mentions, the daily summary of open tickets, and what admins set for new agents.
Still stuck?
Write to the Growth Dept team and a person answers. Say which helpdesk you work in and what you were trying to do.