HubSpot Ideas

ernopyykko

Set chat availability based on user's calendar

 

Would it be possible to get the Messages availability to work in the same fashion as the Meetings integration?

 

A person online/offline status would be toggled on and off based on their calendar. 

 

I would even suggest giving an option, to turn off the Messages from the website when all users are either blocked based on their calendar or offline based on their schedule.

HubSpot Updates
February 21, 2024 10:31 AM

We don't currently have plans to automatically change status in real time based on a user's calendar--there's a similar request for this here. We are looking at how we can allow other WFM integrations to change the user's status, but it isn't a capability with our current calendar integrations.

February 21, 2024 05:17 AM

Good morning, everyone! We are working on building out user working hours, and you can learn more about the upcoming feature here. We anticipate this feature being available for beta in March. At this time, we can't directly integrate calendars and availability status, so once user working hours is released we will consider this request as delivered.

September 23, 2020 05:48 AM

@erica11 The team management feature is now out to everyone. You can find it in the inbox settings. Here are more details about the funtionality.  https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/manage-your-inbox-users

 

For additional availablity features, as the main post mentions, we are currently researching some different options and will share an update in the next few months when we have more details. Thanks!

Being Reviewed
June 01, 2020 01:52 PM

May 29, 2020 12:05 PM

Thanks so much @Herschel for the feedback! This was some of the main feedback from the beta rollout. We are digging into this problem now to understand a couple of different options for more granular controls at the agent level. I would love to reach out over email to chat through some solutions. If you are interested feel free to email me at cdewey@hubspot.com so I can understand a bit more about your usecase and would love to chat through some of the ideas we have around this. Thank you! 

Re: Set Messages availability based on user's calendar - changed to: Idea Submitted
November 28, 2017 11:34 AM

Hi @ernopyykko! We do currently offer the ability to set a schedule in Messages for online/offline time (see https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/messages/how-can-i-set-up-my-availability-for-sales-messages), so we can use this post to gauge interest in incorporating an actual calendar integration that will do that automatically and flexibly for users.

51 Replies
hroberts
HubSpot Product Team

Hi @ernopyykko! We do currently offer the ability to set a schedule in Messages for online/offline time (see https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/messages/how-can-i-set-up-my-availability-for-sal...), so we can use this post to gauge interest in incorporating an actual calendar integration that will do that automatically and flexibly for users.

ernopyykko
Top Contributor

Hi @HR


Thanks for the prompt reply. 🙂

 

Yep, we have that schedule set for our business development team. But would like to expand the messages use for sales and potentially customer success as well. 

 

Sales and customer success have several meetings throughout the day, so it would be good to have an integration for them to get most out of this function as well. Otherwise, they'll keep missing messages. 

 

We also have a few hour gap because of the timezones we work in, so it would be really useful to have all the messages being turned off based on a schedule and or calendar integration. 

 

RyanMurphy123
Member

This would be a great feature to have for my team as well.  Messages linked to calendar just like Meetings is currently.  Online and Offline status or at least outward message availability would be automatically determined based upon meetings scheduled in outlook calendar.

Nwclark85
Contributor

Hi

 

We have just started to use messages and have our office 365 calendars linked to our hubspot accounts. I think it would be great if you could set yourself as 'offline' in messages, if you were 'busy' in your office calendar, in the same way that you can with meetings.

 

This would allow you to have the settings as 'turn messages online/offline based on your schedule' but have that overidden if something in your diary sets you as busy.

 

Thanks Nick

meclark
HubSpot Employee

I think this would be a great thing to explore with our existing calendar integrations. This could hold a lot of water when it comes to last-minute meetings or other circumstances that may cause a discrepancy between the two calendars.

mpike
Contributor

 Yes! We haven't started using this function yet - partly because I'm concerned that it will take us too long to respond to messages if our reps are in the middle of something and have forgotten to go "offline" (we have a fairly small team).

ernopyykko
Top Contributor

@hroberts, how many more votes should we get on this to make it move forward? 😛

brittanyCP1
Contributor

Hello,

It would be awesome if the Messages feature worked similar to the Meetings tool. For example, I would like the Messages tool to automatically make my message bobble pop up depending on what's on my schedule. If I'm [BUSY], it should automatically remove my bubble. If I'm available, it should automatically display me as [AVAILABLE]. I don't want to have to remember to select a switch to make sure it works properly.. It's too much manual work.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions for me.

Thanks
Brittany

amberfernald
HubSpot Employee

This would be incredibly useful!  If the messages tool were to directly reference calendar availability, it would create a better experience for the user and the chatting customer! 

DFerguson
Member | Platinum Partner

There should be a way to integrate your Office 365 calendar into Messages, similar to how Meetings does. 

It would not be ideal to make a calendar in the Availability tab, only to end up in a meeting and miss someone messaging you because you don't have a synced calendar.

A calendar integration feature could make appearing Online/Offline easier, too.

Right now, the only other option to change your status from Online to Offline is to have the Chat tab open in your browser. It is a tedious process to have to make sure that tab is open every time you go back to your computer.

timscales
Member

+1 on this idea!

Carv
Member

We'd like this feature too. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

I think this would be a great feature, especially for international companies working in different time zones.

setheryb
Contributor

@hroberts Has there been any progress on this since the idea was submitted in 2017? If it's a beta feature, we would sign up for that immediately.

YosukeDS
Member | Elite Partner

@hroberts I'm currently working with an international sales team to launch live chat and there's a lot of friction having to manually set availability in between meetings. Since we work across various time zones, I have our group setting based on availability (vs. operating hours). If we get the ability sync availability with the calendar, it'll address both the time zone issue as well as having to set it manually.

 

Please see what you can do to prioritize this request. Although it has lower upvotes, this feature can have a big impact in our sales enablement efforts. In the meantime, can you propose a work-around?

Anonymous
Not applicable

We are also having challenges in utilizing HubSpot's live chat efficiently because of the same problems people describe above. It's a pity that we might need to look for another live chat solution.

DougWillems
Participant

hi, yes please, this world be great timing for our company (so to speak!)

we'd also be interested in testing out a beta version

thanks,

Doug

 

Herschel
Top Contributor

We would very much like to see this rolled out. Our team members often have a lot of meetings with prospects, clients and internal stake holders throughout the day and requiring everyone to manually adjust their inbox availability when they already have their calendars synced to Hubspot is annoying and burdensome. This is particularly an issue as different users not only have dynamic schedules day to day but also different from those of the whole team, so solving this issue using only the existing office hours availability scheduling is not possible.

 

@cdewey22 the new changes to allow admin level user availability control are great, but it would be awesome if individual user's calendars synced to their Inbox availability as well. Any chance this feature can get some love soon?

cdewey22
HubSpot Product Team

Thanks so much @Herschel for the feedback! This was some of the main feedback from the beta rollout. We are digging into this problem now to understand a couple of different options for more granular controls at the agent level. I would love to reach out over email to chat through some solutions. If you are interested feel free to email me at cdewey@hubspot.com so I can understand a bit more about your usecase and would love to chat through some of the ideas we have around this. Thank you! 

cdewey22
HubSpot Product Team