Settings: Keep users Online while respond.io is open
in progress
Sam .
Business Problem:
- As a business relying on agent availability for conversation routing, I want agents to remain Online when they are actually working and have respond.io open, even if they are not actively clicking in the platform
- Currently, agents may be marked Offline when respond.io is open but inactive, minimised, or running in the background. This can cause routing to skip available agents, leading to delayed or missed assignments
- This is especially painful for teams that keep respond.io open while working across multiple tabs, tools, or windows-
Desired Outcome:
Improve Online/Offline status detection so users generally remain Online as long as respond.io is open and connected
Users should only be marked Offline when the connection is lost and the configured inactivity timeout passes, such as when:
- The respond.io tab or browser is closed
- The device goes to sleep or shuts down
- The internet connection is lost
Use Cases:
- Agents stay available for routing while respond.io is open in another tab or background window
- Teams avoid missed assignments caused by agents being incorrectly marked Offline
- Managers get a more accurate view of who is actually available to handle conversations
Current Workaround:
- Increase the workspace inactivity timeout where possible
- Ask agents to keep respond.io active or periodically interact with the platform
- Manually monitor agent availability during busy periods
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
updated the status to
in progress
Amalia Putrieka
Merged in a post:
60 min timeout
P
Pieter De Wet
Every time the user is inactive for more than 60min he is shown offline. This is very problematic as user that does a lot of other work other than just staring at the response screen.
We really enjoy the respond platform, but it has become problematic to us, to a point we are considering other platforms.
is there no way the we can choose our own timeout or better disable it. If logged in is online would be the best solution for us. the blanket rule does not suite every company.
P
Pieter De Wet
The 60 minute time out has also create problems for us, where the users are missing client messages due to the timeout feature.
With this time feature it is not really a messaging platform.
Imagine you had to open WhatsApp the whole time just to make sure you not missing anything, its just not practical.
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Merged in a post:
User Inactivity Timeout is too low
K
Karin Franzi
Hello,
We really like your platform and are thinking about canceling for one reason: User Inactivity Timeout is too low.
Today in our company, our sales team leaves Chrome open and connected to respend.io, and it is common for them not to "switch" (alt+tab) to Chrome for a period longer than 60 minutes, because they are doing other things (word, excel , etc.) and therefore their status goes offline and customers who try to get in touch are left without service, because the customer is not directed to the contact that has become "offline"
Is there no way to resolve this?
If they log in to the cell phone app, would it help to consider that they are ALWAYS online?
Thanks
Francois Goudal
Hello. I also have a need for a manual status. In my case, my agents are not in a call center, they are part of an emergency response team who have duties outside of office hours (over night, and weekends). They are getting a small amount of incoming messages, but when a message comes in, it is very important that an agent who is on duty gets notified right away (push notification on the phone). The agents are not going to have a tab or the mobile app open once every 60 minutes, they, in fact, may even be sleeping and need a notification on their phone to wake them up. We have an internal schedule of who in the team is on duty and when, and it would be up to them to set themselves as active or inactive accordingly.
S
Shi Hui
Hi Francois Goudal, thanks for your feedback. If I understand correctly, you want to be able to assign contacts to the agents based on their business hours (the time that the agent is on duty based on the internal schedule) regardless of their statuses.
In this case, an alternative you can look into is to allocate the agents into different teams (based on their business hours), then build a "Conversation Opened" workflow with "Date & Time" Step to check the current time, and assign to respective team that is on duty. With the correct notification preference set, the agents should also be able receive notification when a contact is assigned to them even though they are offline.
Do let me know if this works for you and do not hesitate to reach out to our support team at https://respond.io/contact if you need further help on this! 😊
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Jerry (CEO)
Hello Sam ., how do you prefer the platform to decide if a person is "Online" or "Offline" if not via the inactivity timeout? Let us know
Sam .
Jerry (CEO): in my case, in my scenario,i prefer to not let the platform decide a person is online or offline. Even for web based usage, once the person switches browser tab, once timeout, person will be off line.
I would say online = sign in, offline = sign out. A "busy" option for inbetween. I guess the time out should result in user status changed to busy, instead of offline?
Jerry (CEO)
Hey Sam .: I am not sure I completely understood your use case.
If someone forgets to sign-out then you would still prefer the platform to consider this person "Online" permanently? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of Online vs Offline?
What are you using this status for? Is it for automatic assignment?
Sam .
Jerry (CEO): yes automatic assignment.
well, in theory, each person signs in at the start of the shift and signs out at the end? just like clocking in and out of work. if the person forgets to sign out, perhaps the person should be set to busy instead?
the issue i am having currently with the auto time out at 60 mins is, the staff has to be on respond.io screen / page at least once every 60mins, in order to stay online, regardless if there is any incoming emails / messages.
once timeout, new incoming message will not get assigned if none of the staff are "online" (they are on shift, but they maybe offline because they might be attending to other issues etc.)
Jerry (CEO)
Hey Sam .: in your experience, would your agents follow this responsibly without fail? Most of our customers have large volumes of messages coming in, so if someone forgets to log-out it would result in many conversations assigned to someone who is not there.
Sam .
the oother option currently is to assign message to even offline users. However, that would also include users that are really offline. I.E. those that are not on shift, not just those who are "offline" beucase the were away from the screen / app for the preset duration.
Sam .
Jerry (CEO): yes. in theory. they have to clock in for work. so part of the new arrangement is they should clock in to the platform too. at the end of their shift, they will clock out, an accordingly, sign out from the app.
If indeed, the agent didn not sign out, and got assigned the message, the agent has to bear responsibiblity.
Which, is probably better than customers not getting connected to anyone i guess?
Jerry (CEO)
Hey Sam .: Thanks for your feedback, we will look into this. We were thinking about changing the way we calculate who is online based on wether they have tab open, rather than by a preset time of inactivity. Do you think that would work better for you?
In other words, as long the user has a tab open it will considered Online even if they haven't been active in over 60 minutes. At the end of the shift, then they would just have to close the tab or shutdown the computer and that would make them "offline".
Let me know if this solves your problem, or your would rather solve it differently.
Cheers!
Sam .
Jerry (CEO): hey, perhaps, maybe allow an option to just be perpetually online?
calculating by tab open. and or app running in the background would be ideal.
as long as the the system does not mark the user offline, because apart from opening respond.io tab, the agent could be on another tab. working on something else. they should probably be still marked as online. just waiting for next asignment.
however, this function is more critical to me on the app. then on the web. most of my agent / staff will be utilising the app on mobile devices.
P
Pieter De Wet
Jerry (CEO) is not possible to add a disable or allow the client to adjust the time limit. this gives us flexibility to to use the product to our needs