Busy is not “offline”
Busy means “I am here, but do not give me anything new right now.” You are on a call, or finishing something. Your own customers still reach you — you are simply out of the rotation for new people. This is the distinction people get wrong. Going Busy does not hand your existing customers to somebody else. Only being Off can do that, and only if your workspace has Redistribute chats when the agent is offline turned on.Busy takes you out of the rotation in every workspace, whether or not it distributes to
Ready agents only. It is an agent saying “not this minute”, and that is honoured
everywhere.
Idle
If you are Ready but do not touch anything for a while, you are marked idle automatically. The threshold is a workspace setting. Idle is about reporting honesty — so “Ready time” in reports reflects time actually working rather than a tab left open overnight. Idle does not take you out of distribution. You keep receiving new chats exactly as if you were active — idle is a reporting mark for the admin, not you saying “not right now”. If you want to step out of the rotation, use Busy. Longer inactivity can sign you out entirely, and there is a grace period before an agent who drops off is treated as offline, so a brief connection blip does not shuffle their chats away.Where it is configured
Agents set their own state from the header. Admins configure the thresholds under Settings → Inbox → Agent presence:- How long before Ready becomes idle
- How long before an inactive agent is signed out
- The grace period before an offline agent counts as gone
If chats are queueing
When Only distribute to Ready agents is on and nobody eligible is Ready, chats wait rather than being assigned. They are handed out the moment somebody becomes Ready. If a queue is building, check that:- Someone is actually Ready and not Busy. (Idle does not matter — idle agents still receive chats.)
- Their role covers that chat’s channel.
- Their role receives auto-distribution — not a manager or admin role.
- They are under the workspace’s customer limit, if one is set.