Chat Availability Settings Should Apply to the Bot

[neutsler09]

I set my chat settings so that the chat launcher will hide outside of our business hours. Since I'm using a bot to greet and capture the name & email address of the person wishing to chat - my chat availability settings are being ignored. So I'm getting incoming chats when my sales reps aren't available. I'd like for the bot to hide outside of business hours, just like the chat launcher would IF I wans't using a bot.

[neutsler09]

Hey Everyone, we just rolled out something that should allow you to set specific office hours at the inbox level for your team, ensuring your chatbots won’t be forwarding live chats to agents who have gone home for the day:

1. Display chatbots based on team availability (always on, only on during business hours, or based on the availability status of team members)
2. Use if/then branches to route visitors based on team availability

Go here for more details on how to use these new capabilities

https://www.hubspot.com/product-updates/control-your-chatbot-availability-with-new-custom-settings

[neutsler09]

@SarahN with these changes you will be able to customize messages that bots deliver for different scenarios, including the one you mentioned.

[neutsler09]

Hey everyone,

My name is Jesse and I'm part of the product team here at HubSpot. We've recently opened up a beta to address these issues. You can create bots that truly respect their teams working styles—whether that means creating chatflows that display when their team is online, when their team is away, or conditionally based on specific agent availability. With this beta, you can now:

1. Show a chatflow based on availability
2. Use new a if/then branch type called “agent availability”
3. Handoff bots to agents based on availability

How it works:

1. Showing a chatflow based on availability: Not all of our users want their chatflows live on their site all the time. With this new control, they’ll be able to create chatflows that respect their team’s availability schedule. 

2. New if/then branch type called “agent availability”: When creating or editing a chatflow, users can now route their visitors down different paths based on their agent & team’s availability using the “agent availability” if/then branch type.

3. Bots handoff to agents based on availability: We’ve improved how we handle routing based on availability—taking into account first the team’s general availability settings, and then looking at individual agent availability.  This will result in less chats being missed because of confusion around availability controls.

For example, if you have “During business hours” selected for your team’s inbox availability, and a customer interacts with a bot outside of those business hours, they will not be routed to agents, and instead routed to the “Unassigned” pool in your inbox so that your team doesn’t lose critical conversations.

If you would like early access to the beta, please fill out this form forms.gle/K7cCMUXmFUpVfiKH9

[alyssaomara]

I agreee with this thread, but for the love of whoever, please at least put something in the documentation that tells us that out of office won't be respected when using chatflows!

[Stellaivano]

I totally agree with the thread. Please implement this ASAP.

[Anonymous]

Huge issue for us, we need to be able to hide our bots or at least set salespeople availability based on time and day.

[JoeM]

Yes this limitation has prevented us from using bots to collect some initial information.

[JonathanIneqe]

Hi Everyone,

Came here to check if anyone else is experiencing the same issue, we are!

This needs sorted surely its a bit of coding required? Manually setting the team to away will not work.

J

[jtremblay]

Hey everyone,

My name is Jesse and I'm part of the product team here at HubSpot. We've recently opened up a beta to address these issues. You can create bots that truly respect their teams working styles—whether that means creating chatflows that display when their team is online, when their team is away, or conditionally based on specific agent availability. With this beta, you can now:

1. Show a chatflow based on availability
2. Use new a if/then branch type called “agent availability”
3. Handoff bots to agents based on availability

How it works:

1. Showing a chatflow based on availability: Not all of our users want their chatflows live on their site all the time. With this new control, they’ll be able to create chatflows that respect their team’s availability schedule. 

2. New if/then branch type called “agent availability”: When creating or editing a chatflow, users can now route their visitors down different paths based on their agent & team’s availability using the “agent availability” if/then branch type.

3. Bots handoff to agents based on availability: We’ve improved how we handle routing based on availability—taking into account first the team’s general availability settings, and then looking at individual agent availability.  This will result in less chats being missed because of confusion around availability controls.

For example, if you have “During business hours” selected for your team’s inbox availability, and a customer interacts with a bot outside of those business hours, they will not be routed to agents, and instead routed to the “Unassigned” pool in your inbox so that your team doesn’t lose critical conversations.

If you would like early access to the beta, please fill out this form forms.gle/K7cCMUXmFUpVfiKH9

[SarahN]

I feel like the bot availabilty work around should be that the bot informs them we're closed. If the bot just dumps them into the unassigned pool, the client is likely to feel like they're being ingnored if they're not informed that the office is closed. 

[jtremblay]

@SarahN with these changes you will be able to customize messages that bots deliver for different scenarios, including the one you mentioned.

[SarahN]

@jtremblay Oh! Perfect.

[JonathanIneqe]

Great thats good news!

[MerleS]

Same here!

[jtremblay]

Hey Everyone, we just rolled out something that should allow you to set specific office hours at the inbox level for your team, ensuring your chatbots won’t be forwarding live chats to agents who have gone home for the day:

1. Display chatbots based on team availability (always on, only on during business hours, or based on the availability status of team members)
2. Use if/then branches to route visitors based on team availability

Go here for more details on how to use these new capabilities

https://www.hubspot.com/product-updates/control-your-chatbot-availability-with-new-custom-settings

[Kressie]

Definitely an essential feature that I hope gets implemented soon! I requested access to the beta, hoping this solves our issues. We've had several important chatbot conversations come in outside of our business hours. 

[kbpc]

Apologies to dredge up an old thread - but specific to the "Use if/then branches to route visitors based on team availability" feature - if I choose a team, do all members of the team have to be available to trigger true or is based on at least one member being available?

Based on what I've seen so far, using a team of two members, one that's available, one away, it's not triggering true at all. If I remove the team and just choose the members directly, it seems to work as expected. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be working or if I've missed something somewhere.