The site role decides who can enter the inbox. The Agent only role can tighten each capability further. Seat limits are in Billing & quotas.

Roles & permissions

ConsoleLive chatAgents

• Owner, Admin, and Analyst can handle chats and see every conversation by default. An Analyst cannot export or delete a conversation, and cannot edit the knowledge base.
• A Viewer cannot use live chat.
• An Agent only member sees only the Live chat menus, not analytics. Their default is tight: only conversations assigned to them plus unassigned ones, reports for themselves only, no export or delete.

Saved permission switches apply to online agents immediately. Change the role itself under site members.

In the inbox an agent marks themselves online, away, or offline. Away and offline do not receive new auto-assignments. The display name and signature are what the visitor sees. They can differ from the login name.

Auto-assignment and transfer

ConsoleLive chatChat settingsAppearance

With Auto-assign new conversations to online agents on, Assignment strategy has two options:

• Least load: open conversations divided by Max concurrent chats per agent, and the smallest ratio among online agents wins. A max of 0 means no cap.
• Round robin: agents are taken in turn.

When everyone is at the cap, the new conversation stays in Waiting until someone is free to take it.

Reclaim when owner offline: if the owner has been offline longer than the minutes you set and the visitor still has unread messages, the conversation returns to Waiting. The visitor is not told. 0 turns this off.

To transfer, pick a colleague. You can add a handoff note that only agents see. The visitor sees a system line. The move is on the conversation timeline and in the audit log. If the colleague is offline, they see it when they come online.