Agent availability and "online" status
Every Help Desk agent has two separate things:
- Your status. Available, Away or Offline. Only you change it, from the account menu at the bottom of the Help Desk. It stays as you left it: if you set Away before lunch, the Help Desk shows Away when you come back, even after a reload or on another device.
- Your connection: whether you have AskVault open right now. This is detected automatically from your open dashboard; you don't do anything.
Who counts as "online"
An agent is online when their status is Available and they have AskVault open. The "N online" count in the Help Desk shows exactly those people.
- Closing the tab, closing the laptop or losing the connection takes you out of the count within about a minute and a half.
- Setting yourself Away or Offline takes you out of the count straight away, even with the Help Desk still open.
How it affects handoffs
When a visitor asks for a human, AskVault only tells them someone is coming if a person can actually answer:
- An Available agent with AskVault open counts.
- An agent who set Away does not count, even if their Help Desk tab is still open.
- If nobody can answer, the visitor is offered the "leave your details" option instead and the AI keeps helping.
Auto-assignment already skips agents who set themselves Away.
Related guides
- Alerts for handoffs and replies, so you never miss a handoff.
- Escalate to a human, for how the AI hands off.
- Email when a handoff goes unclaimed, for when nobody is online.