Queues in Agent Workspace

Queues play a significant role in the Chat Platform service. Unlike sections, users don't see them directly, but they determine the order of handling inquiries. A general queue for incoming inquiries is displayed in a similarly-named section. This general queue includes various other queues, each consisting of dialogues in either queue or offline_queue status, linked uniquely with department-language-offline status, and not assigned to an agent. In other words, each language in every department has two queues: online and offline inquiries.

With auto-assignment enabled, the system interacts with the queues as follows: every second, it selects the hottest queue (with the oldest first dialogue). It tries to find an available agent to assign it to. An agent is available if they are online, match the dialogue in language and department, and are not busy. An agent is considered busy if they have reached the maximum number of dialogues (max_chats_per_agent). If assigning the dialogue succeeds, the selection of the hottest queue repeats; if not, the current queue is disregarded until some event occurs in the system (obviously, if the first dialogue in the queue can't be assigned, the same will happen with the others). Reopened, transferred, and similar dialogues behave the same way. Note that distribution operates by the creation time of the dialogue, not by the time it enters the queue. A dialogue with an earlier creation time will be distributed first. The presence of web pages in the Priority Pages list may also affect the assignment order. When a dialogue is assigned to an agent, it remains in the same state (until the agent takes it) but no longer enters the queues. However, in the service, it appears as though each agent has their queue of assigned dialogues. All else being equal, the agent with the fewest dialogues is selected; if several agents meet these criteria, one is randomly chosen. However, you can change this. See below.

The same setting as online inquiries determines whether auto-assignment applies to offline inquiries (auto_assign). Still, if you wish, you can contact technical support to configure this behavior separately (auto_assign_offline). The same timeouts apply to them as well, with one exception: the timeout for waiting for an agent's first message doesn't apply to offline inquiries in the queue.

For both online and offline queues, there is a standard limit on the number of chats per agent (defaulting to 5). Agents with the Online status are first assigned chats from the online queue, and chats from the offline queue begin to be assigned if there are no more chats left in the online queue.

Specific settings may influence the auto-assignment operation. To change them, you'll need to contact technical support:

• chat_states_for_count_per_operator — Determines the states in which dialogues are counted towards the auto-assignment limit as assigned to an agent. By default, these are chatting, queue, offline_queue, and offline_process, meaning online and offline inquiries in the queue and under processing.

• auto_assign_to_last_chat_operator — If enabled (by default) and the visitor has previously made inquiries, the new inquiry will be assigned to the same agent as the previous one. If auto_assign_to_last_chat_operator_if_busy is enabled, this will happen even if that agent is busy.

• auto_assign_priority_by_last_chat_assigned_ts — If enabled, a new inquiry will be assigned to the agent who has gone the longest without receiving inquiries.

• auto_assign_priority_by_operator_order — If enabled, a new inquiry will be assigned to the agent with the lowest sorting order, as set in their profile.

• operator_department_prioritization — If enabled, a Departments tab will appear in the agents' settings, where you can specify the departments in which an agent is a member, and set their priority for auto-assignment.