We’ve recently started using the chat feature in the Help Desk, but one challenge we’ve encountered is forgetting to update our availability status when stepping away—whether for meetings, lunch, or at the end of the day.
Since I’m involved in multiple projects and not working full-time in the Help Desk, I often forget to manually change my status. The current “Working Hours” feature doesn’t solve this, as it would set me as available even when I’m away during those hours.
It would be incredibly helpful to have an automation feature that can:
Check user activity in HubSpot (e.g., every 5 minutes) and automatically change status to “Away” if no activity is detected.
Optionally, allow users to schedule specific times when their status automatically switches to “Away” (e.g., end of the workday).
This functionality would improve efficiency and ensure a better experience for customers, as they wouldn’t have to wait for a response when the user is actually unavailable.
We have the same issue and would love the functionality you’re describing. We have to regularly remind our support team to check their availability setting around meetings, lunch breaks, etc., but since chat is fairly new for us, it’s taking time to learn the habit, resulting in some frustrated customers.
It’s also an issue when a team member is out of office unexpectedly (illness, etc.) and can’t sign on to update their working hours or toggle to ‘Away’. In those situations, we rely on someone with access (usually me) to manually update their availability setting, which can’t always be done in time (especially if I’m also away…). If a team member doesn’t sign into HubSpot at all, they should automatically be considered ‘Away’.
Additionally, it would prevent us from having to edit standard chat hours on days when our support team is unavailable for extended periods, such as when everyone is off-site for a corporate event. Alternatively, having a ‘blackout dates’ feature built into chat hours would be helpful, as it would mitigate the risk of forgetting to edit standard chat hours.