The Out of Office app

Plan requirement

Subscription Any plan
Access Agent

Marking an agent away so work stops reaching them, and one of the most useful free apps there is. Agents need permission to edit ticket tags.

Use it

  1. Install the app from the Marketplace.
  2. For yourself: open a ticket, find the app in the sidebar, click the Availability toggle and confirm with Set as Unavailable. Your own profile, under View Profile, has the same toggle.
  3. For somebody else: only an admin can do it. Click the Out of Office icon in the left navigation for the dashboard, then the Availability toggle beside their name.
  4. Toggle it back on return.

Installing it builds three things for you: a user field that puts an agent_ooo tag on the person, a trigger that acts on that tag, and a trigger that clears it when a ticket moves to somebody else.

Two limits apply. Agents need permission to edit ticket tags, or their own tickets are not updated when they mark themselves unavailable. Where that permission cannot be given, an admin sets the status on their behalf from the dashboard, which works but makes it somebody else's errand. And the app does nothing for side conversations, or when somebody's availability is changed outside the app.

The problem it solves

Tickets assigned to somebody on holiday look assigned. Nothing flags them, no view shows them as unattended, and the customer waits two weeks.

It is the quietest way for support to fail, because nothing in the system raises its hand.

What happens to their queue

Tickets go back to the group so an available colleague can pick them up, and the app setting Force unassign tickets decides whether that happens across the board. Pending and on-hold tickets stay with the person until the customer reopens one, at which point it moves to the group too.

That matters because somebody going away with fifteen open tickets otherwise leaves fifteen customers waiting.

Make it part of leaving

Alongside the calendar entry and the email auto-reply. It takes ten seconds and it is the one people forget because it lives in a different system.

Nothing clears it for you

There is no return date and no expiry: the toggle stays where you left it. An agent who forgets to switch it back receives nothing for a week after coming back, which is a different version of the same problem, so make switching it off part of the first ten minutes of the first day.

Use it for more than holidays

Training, a project, a day of meetings. Anything where somebody should not receive new work is worth marking, and it also makes the schedule honest.

Where you use agent statuses

Unified statuses cover part of this for live channels. This app covers assignment, which statuses do not, so the two complement each other rather than overlapping.

See also

Was this article helpful?

0

Still stuck?

Our support team will take a look with you.

Comments

0 comments

Article is closed for comments.