What unified agent statuses are

One availability status across every channel. What it drives, and the thing it looks like it measures but does not: how hard somebody is working.

One availability status across every channel. What it drives, and the thing it looks like it measures but does not: how hard somebody is working.

What it does

An agent sets one status, and it applies to messaging, calls and everything else at once. Routing uses it to decide who receives work.

Before unified statuses, availability was per channel, and agents were routinely available somewhere they had forgotten about.

Why it matters for routing

Omnichannel routing only assigns work to agents who are available. A status that does not reflect reality means conversations going to somebody in a meeting, and customers waiting for a reply that is not coming.

The four statuses, and what each one still receives

The second row is the one to say out loud. An agent who sets themselves away for a meeting is still receiving email tickets, which is usually what you want and never what they assume.

You find these under Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Agent statuses. Custom statuses have a ceiling that decides whether they are worth designing around: none at all on Team and Growth, five on Professional, 100 on Enterprise. Where they exist, each one works by picking which of the four defaults applies per channel, so a custom status is a combination rather than a new behaviour. There is also a customisable fallback status, used when agents are idle.

Talk loses its own status controls

Once omnichannel routing is on, voice status can no longer be set from the Talk dashboard, the mobile apps or the Talk API. The unified status is the only place. Worth checking before you switch routing on if anything you built sets agent status through that API.

It is not a productivity measure

Time in a status reflects meetings, training, breaks, and helping a colleague at their desk. Reading it as effort produces the wrong conclusion and, once agents realise it is being read that way, produces inaccurate statuses.

Statuses work because agents keep them honest. Measuring people on them removes exactly that.

Agents have to maintain it

Which only happens if they understand what it does. "It stops work being sent to you while you are in a meeting" is the explanation that makes it stick.

Where it is most valuable

Live channels. On email it matters less, because nothing is waiting in real time.

See also

• Managing the statuses available to agents
• Idle timeout and disconnection settings
• What omnichannel routing is and what it replaces