Office hours & away mode

Tell visitors when to expect a reply. Office hours, teammate availability and a few messenger options decide whether the messenger shows you as online or away, and what visitors see in each case.

When you show as online

The messenger shows your team as online only when both of these are true:

1. It's within office hours. If office hours are off, this always counts as true.
2. At least one teammate is available. Their status is set to Online and they've had the dashboard open in the last 5 minutes.

Otherwise the team shows as away. Visitors can still write to you at any time, and conversations wait in the inbox.

Set your office hours

1. Open Settings → Office hours and turn office hours on. They're off by default.
2. Set the hours for each day. The starting schedule is Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:00, with weekends closed. Leave a day empty to keep it closed.
3. Save. The messenger picks up the change on the next page load.

Hours use your workspace time zone, which comes from your browser's time zone when you create the workspace. Visitors always see times converted to their own time zone.

Away mode for teammates

Each teammate sets their own status with the Online / Away switch in the account menu (their avatar at the bottom of the sidebar). Use Away for breaks or when you're done for the day.

• When every teammate is away, or nobody has the dashboard open, the messenger shows the team as away, even during office hours.
• Automatic assignment (round robin or balanced) only picks teammates who are online and active, unless you allow assigning to away teammates in Settings → Assignment. If nobody can take a conversation, it waits in Unassigned.

What visitors see when you're away

• Status line: when office hours are on, the messenger shows “We will be back …” with the next time your schedule opens, in the visitor's language and time zone. Today's times show just the time (“We will be back 9:00 AM”). Later days include the weekday (“We will be back Monday 9:00 AM”). With office hours off, it shows “We are away right now”.
• New conversations open with your away message instead of the usual intro text.
• Hide while away (optional): by default the messenger stays visible and collects messages. You can instead hide it while you're away. It then stays visible only for visitors who already have conversations with you, so they can still read your replies.

When the team is online, the status line shows your expected reply time (below), or “We are online” if you hide it.

Expected reply time

The expected reply time sets the promise shown under “Send us a message”:

Automatic looks at up to 200 of your most recent answered conversations from the last 30 days. A median first response of 10 minutes or less shows “a few minutes”, up to an hour shows “under an hour”, and up to 6 hours shows “a few hours”. Anything slower shows “a day”. Until you have at least 3 answered conversations, it shows “a few hours”.

Away message and automatic replies

• Away message: defaults to “We are away right now, but we will get back to you as soon as we can.” It's the intro of new conversations while you're away. When the away auto-reply is on (the default), it's also posted as a reply to the first message of every conversation started while you're away.
• First reply while online (optional): an acknowledgement posted to new conversations while you're online, such as “Thanks {{contact.first_name}}! We'll be right with you.” It's empty by default.

Your routing rules in Automation → Rules can also use the Team availability (online / away) condition, for example to tag or prioritise after-hours conversations. A chatbot can be limited to run only while you're away.

Collecting emails when you're away

A visitor who leaves an email gets your reply by email when they're no longer on your site (see Email replies). The messenger can ask for an email with the card “Get notified by email when the team replies:”. It's shown after the first message of a new conversation, to visitors who haven't given an email yet. You choose when:

• Only when away (the default)
• Always
• Never

Two other ways to collect details: an optional pre-chat form that asks for name, email and/or phone before the first message, or a chatbot step that asks for an email.

How notifications behave

To control what you're notified about, open Settings → Notifications or your account page. Connect Slack, Discord or Telegram to get new conversations where your team already works.