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Agent Workspace Structure

The Agent Workspace is part of the Control Panel and is the main working area of the agent, through which he directly interacts with visitors. The Agent Workspace can be accessed from the main page of the Control Panel: for this purpose, a special Agent Workspace button is provided in the page header. The Agent Workspace displays all incoming requests from users, to which the agent responds directly on this page, as well as all other chats that are relevant to this agent. You can read more about how to start working in Agent Workspace in the article Getting Started in the Agent Interface.

Agent Workspace Description

If you receive a large number of requests, some of them may be hidden by the system for a while to reduce the load on the servers. You can read more about this here.

The exact list of available sections depends on the account settings, and their contents depend on the agent viewing them (they will look different for different agents).

  • Waiting for a Response: chats of the current user that require a reply first are displayed here. If auto-assignment is enabled, a chat is received here if it is assigned to the current agent and is in the queue (regardless of whether it is online or offline). If auto-assignment is off, the chat is received here if the visitor is online, the chat is in the queue and is not assigned to anyone.

  • In Chat with You: chats of the current user that the agent has already connected to are displayed here, even if the agent has not written anything in them yet. The timer in the upper right corner of the chat card shows how much time has passed since the last unread message of the visitor. The timer is reset when the agent opens the chat.

  • Offline requests: chats in which the visitor is currently offline and not assigned to anyone are displayed here. Thus, chats can move freely between this and other sections (you can read more about this here). The timer in the upper right corner of the chat card shows how much time has passed since the visitor's first message to the chat.

  • General Queue: appears only if auto-assignment is enabled. Chats that have not yet been assigned are displayed here because all agents are busy (the limit of chats assigned to them has been filled). Offline chats and the Common Queue can be hidden by technical support from agents (parameter hide_common_queue), administrators, and supervisors will still see them. You can also read about the shared queue here.

  • In Chat with Others: chats to which other agents are currently connected (no difference if the visitor is online) are displayed here. In older versions, if auto-assignment is turned off, this section is called Other dialogs. This feature is available for supervisors and administrators; for other agents it is available only if the Hide other agent's chats option in Advanced Features is turned off.

  • Invited: chats initiated by an agent are displayed here (it does not matter whether there were chats with this visitor before or not). They can be transferred to other agents, but not to other departments. They are not visible to other employees.

  • Closed dialogs: can be enabled by technical support at the client's request (parameter show_closed_by_operator_chats). In this case, chats closed by the current agent (closed_by_operator) are displayed here until finally closed.

  • Recent dialogs: can be enabled by technical support. In this case, this section contains the last chats closed with visitors, provided that visitors are not on the site and they no longer interact with it in any way. From the technical point of view here are chats in the statuses closed_by_operator and closed. In fact, there may be more such chats, and this limit is the number that are displayed in this section in Agent Workspace on the current account. When editing special system settings (account config), you can specify the desired limit (number of chats) in the shown_closed_chats_limit parameter. An agent can send a message to a closed chat that appeared in this section regardless of whether the visitor is online or not. In this case, the chat will be moved to the Invitees section, but will have a new number. If the chat has been superseded by other chats, it can be found in Chat History.

  • Other: this section is present if tracking is enabled (this can be done by the Rox.Chat manager). It displays here:

    1. Visitors who do not open a chat room, but are just on the site;

    2. Visitors who have previously spoken to the agent and are now on the site.

    If tracking is turned off, there is another section - Previously in chats. Visitors who have previously talked to the agent and are now on the site will be displayed there (this is because tracking is in any case enabled at the beginning of a chat and is not disabled after the chat is finished). Thus, with tracking enabled, Recent Dialogs will only show chats with visitors who have recently spoken to the agent and left the site, while Other Dialogs will show chats with those visitors who are currently on the site (both started and potential chats with visitors). Regardless of which of these two sections is active, technical support can hide it at the client's request (with the hide_others parameter). In addition, if the Closed Dialogs and/or Recent Dialogs sections are disabled, the corresponding chats are received here.

While the Waiting for Answer, In Chat, Invited sections display only chats of a given agent, the Other, Common Queue, In Chat with Others sections contain chats not assigned to this agent. The number of chats displayed in Agent Workspace in these sections may not coincide with the actual number of chats in a particular category (the number of chats displayed in Agent Workspace may be limited). Accordingly, their numbers may not match the corresponding metrics on the Dashboard.

If the visitors_subsections system parameter is set to true, then within sections, chats will be split into subsections according to the department to which the chat was directed. By default, this option is disabled.

History of Chat with the Visitor

This part of Agent Workspace displays the entire history of the visitor's interaction with the agent (if any), correspondence, informational, hold messages, and more.

Once sent, a message is marked with one checkmark if it is delivered and two checkmarks if it is read by the recipient.

In addition, a number of actions are available to the agent and the visitor in requsts from the site, which they can perform on their messages. When you move the cursor over messages, several icons with various functions appear in the upper right corner of the message:

  • - quote message. You can reply to a visitor's message as well as your own. When you click on a quoted message, the chat scrolls to where the message is located in the history.

  • - edit message. If a message has been edited, it will be marked edited in the lower corner of the message, and in the chat history it will be marked with the icon . If the message was quoted before the edit, the message will not be updated in the quote after the edit.

  • - delete message. Deleted messages disappear from the chat in Agent Workspace and from the visitor's widget, but are displayed in the message history with deleted.

Availability of these functions in communication channels depends on each specific channel:

Channel Quotation Editing Deletion
Telegram At the agent: yes
At the visitor: yes		 Agent: yes, but the agent's edited message will not be marked as edited in Telegram
Visitor: yes		 Agent: yes
Visitor: a visitor can delete his message only in his chat room, it will not disappear from Agent Workspace
Viber Agent: none
Visitor: none		 Agent: none
Visitor: none		 Agent: none
Visitor: A visitor can delete a message in Viber, but it will not be deleted in Agent Workspace
Facebook Agent: none
Visitor: none, Agent Workspace receives the text that the visitor typed in response to a message, but the message is not quoted		 Agent: none
Visitor: none		 Agent: none
Visitor: a visitor can delete a Facebook chat message, but it will not be deleted in Agent Workspace
WhatsApp (через Infobip) Agent: none
Visitor: none, Agent Workspace receives the text that the visitor typed in response to a message, but the message is not quoted		 Agent: none
Visitor: none		 Agent: none
Visitor: A visitor can delete a chat message in WhatsApp, but it will not be deleted in Agent Workspace

Icon to Go to the Page with Agent Workspace

This icon is always located in the Control Panel header and helps to go to the Agent Workspace page from any other Control Panel page.

Switch Between Visitor Chat and Agent Chat

When you toggle this switch, the chat window with visitors and information about them will change to the chat window with agents. The sidebar with Agent Workspace sections will remain, so all new messages will be immediately visible. You can read more about agent chat in the article Chat between agents.

Visitor Information

This area of the Agent Workspace displays all known information about the visitor. If there was a request from him, the chat number will be listed there, as well as the visitor's contact information, if he provided it. If true is specified in the value of the show_visitor_change_info parameter of the account settings (account config), the agent will be able to edit the visitor's data or enter additional information obtained during the chat. To do this, it is necessary to click on the Edit visitor information button and fill in the necessary data in the window that appears. The agent can also enter the information about the visitor if it is missing.

Whether agent-entered visitor data or data obtained from other sources (such as the client system) will ultimately be displayed and transmitted depends on the visitor-fields-priority set.

Entry Point

In this area of Agent Workspace you can see all the information about the visit: visitor's location, OS, IP address, browser, page from which he wrote to the chat. For chats in the status In chat, Waiting for reply and for visitors whose chat has not been started but who are currently on the site, a timer counting the amount of time spent on the site will also be displayed.

Visited Pages

If the visitor is currently on the site with the widget, the page address will be displayed with a timer counting the amount of time spent on the page.

Agent's Comment

Here the agent can leave a comment on this chat (remarks, wishes, etc.). If a visitor leaves a request again, the agent's comment will also be uploaded along with the chat history.

Block for Entering a Response to the Visitor

The Agent Workspace area through which the agent interacts with the visitor:

In addition to sending text, there are many features built in, which are displayed as icons (pictograms). Using them, the agent can use various functions:

Besides, the agent can use canned responses as a response, enable/disable spell checking.

If you have set up integration with Zendesk, a Zendesk button will appear on the panel, which sends chat information to this service.

When the agent works with requests from Apple Messages for Business, in this area of Agent Workspace he/she will have an additional panel with functions applicable only for Apple users. These can be found in the instructions for the channel.