Team & availability

Who can do what

The Team page is for admins and supervisors. Admins invite people, change roles, deactivate and remove members, set anyone’s shifts, choose how auto-assignment works, and set chat access. Supervisors see the roster and everyone’s availability, and can set shifts for agents only. Everyone who can be assigned chats switches themselves online or offline from their own account menu. See Roles and permissions.

Where to find it

Settings → Team & Agents. The page has three sections, each closed until you open it. The header of each shows a quick summary:

Section	What it holds	Summary in the header
Team & agents	Who is on the team, their role, invitations	3 active · 1 pending
Availability	Who is online, shift hours, how auto-assignment works	2 of 3 online
Chat access	Which labels each agent is limited to	No restrictions or 1 restricted

Invite a teammate

1. Open Team & agents and click Invite.
2. Enter their full name and work email.
3. Pick a role. A one-line description of what the role can do appears under the picker. An admin can invite supervisors, agents and viewers, but not another admin.
4. Click Send invite.

They get an email to accept the invitation and choose their own password. Nobody else ever knows it.

When an invitation counts as accepted

A teammate shows as Pending until they have set a password. Opening the email is not enough. Hover the Pending chip to see which step they are on:

• Invitation sent. They have not opened it yet.
• They opened the invitation but have not set a password yet.

Once they have a password they show as Active. Only active members can be assigned chats.

Resending an invitation

Invitation links expire after an hour. For a pending member, click the Resend invitation icon on their row. If they never opened the first email, they get a fresh invitation. If they opened it but stopped before choosing a password, they get a password-setup link that takes them straight to that step. Either way you don’t have to remove them and add them again.

Seats

On a self-serve plan, each member takes a seat, and that includes pending invitations. Deactivated members don’t. When every seat is in use, the invitation is refused until you add seats. See Bring your team.

Roles

Every member has one of four roles: Admin, Supervisor, Agent or Viewer. What each one can do is set out in Roles and permissions.

To change someone’s role, pick a new one from the Role column. You can’t change your own role. The change takes effect when they next sign in or their session refreshes, and the confirmation says so.

Deactivate or remove a member

Deactivate (the person-minus icon) is the reversible option, meant for someone who has left or is away for a long time:

• They can no longer sign in, and auto-assignment stops sending them chats.
• Their open chats go back to the unassigned pool. The confirmation tells you how many.
• A session they already have open keeps working until it expires, which is within the hour.
• Nothing is deleted. Their messages and notes stay where they are, and the team report keeps their past numbers.

To switch them back on, click the same icon (Reactivate). Their old chats are not handed back, because someone else has been answering them since. Reactivating needs a free seat.

Remove (the bin icon, offered for agents only) permanently deletes the account. There is no undo. Deactivate instead unless you are sure.

You can’t deactivate or remove yourself.

Teams managed in the Zetta CRM

If your workspace’s team comes from the Zetta CRM, the Team page says so. Change roles there instead. They sync to whatbot within the hour, and edits made here would be overwritten.

Online and offline

Your account menu (click your avatar) has an Online switch. Under it, a line explains what the switch means for you right now: You’ll receive auto-assigned chats, Online, but off shift — not auto-assigned, or Not receiving auto-assigned chats.

A member who has never touched the switch counts as online. You’re online until you say otherwise, so a new teammate can be assigned chats from their first day.

The dot on a member’s avatar shows their state in the Team & agents and Availability sections:

Dot	Meaning
Green	Online, and receiving auto-assigned chats
Amber	Online, but off shift, so not auto-assigned
Grey	Offline

Going offline only affects auto-assignment. An offline member can still open the inbox, reply, and be assigned a chat by hand.

Admins can switch several people at once. In Availability, tick the members you want and click Set online or Set offline.

Shifts

Shifts are the hours someone works. Auto-assignment only sends a member chats during their shifts.

• Admins can set shifts for anyone. Supervisors can set shifts for agents only.
• Shifts are opt-in. No shifts set means any hours: the member is on shift whenever they are online.
• Once at least one day has hours, every day without hours counts as a day off.

1. Open Availability and click Set shifts (or Edit shifts) on the member’s row.
2. Choose Their timezone, or leave it on Workspace default. The drawer shows the current time on their clock and, if it differs, on yours.
3. Switch on the days they work and enter the hours. Use Quick set for a common pattern (Mon–Fri · 9 to 6, Mon–Sat · 9 to 6, Mon–Sat · 10 to 7), Copy to Mon–Fri to repeat a day, or Add a break or second window for split shifts. A day can have up to three windows.
4. Click Save shifts.

A window can run past midnight. Enter an end time earlier than the start, for example 22:00 to 06:00. It is shown in amber as ends next day and counts as part of the day it starts. Each day’s hours are drawn on a 24-hour bar, so a slip like 09:00 to 04:00 shows up as a 19-hour block before you save.

Each member’s row in Availability says where they stand right now, on their own clock. For example: Online · on shift until 18:00 · Asia/Kolkata 14:05, or Offline · off shift · next Mon 09:00 (in 2d 3h). A small O or S badge shows whether an org admin or a supervisor last set the shifts. Hover it to see who and when.

My shifts

Members see their own shifts but can’t change them. The account menu has a My shifts item with a one-line status, such as On shift until 16:40, Off shift · next Mon 09:00 (in 14h) or No shifts set — any hours. Click it to see the whole week, drawn the same way the admin drew it. The same card is on My Profile → My Shifts (View week).

How chats are assigned automatically

whatbot doesn’t auto-assign every new chat. A chat is auto-assigned when one of these hands it to a person:

• a flow’s Assign Agent action, or a Handoff to agent step set to Auto (least-loaded agent). See Flows.
• an AI agent handing the customer to a human.
• a rule’s Assign to the next available agent action. See Automations.

Every time, the pick works the same way:

1. Who can receive chats. Active admins, supervisors and agents. Viewers, pending invitations and deactivated members are never picked.
2. Who is available. Members who are offline or off shift are skipped, depending on the two switches below.
3. Who is least busy. The chat goes to the available member with the fewest open chats. When several are tied, it rotates among them so the same person isn’t always first.

If nobody is available, the chat stays unassigned in the pool, where anyone can claim it. whatbot never assigns a chat to someone who isn’t working.

Assignment settings

Admins see two switches at the top of Availability. Both are on by default:

Switch	When on
Only when online	Skip members who set themselves offline
Only on shift	Skip members outside their shift hours

Turn both off and auto-assignment ignores status and shifts. Every active member is then a candidate at any hour.

Team workload

To see how open chats are spread across the team, admins can click the Team workload icon (the bar chart) above the chat list in the inbox. It lists each person’s open chats, plus the number still unassigned.

Chat access by label

Admins can limit an agent to chats carrying certain labels. Admins, supervisors and viewers always see every chat, so only agents are listed.

1. Open Chat access and click Edit access on the agent’s row.
2. Tick the labels they should see. The labels come from your inbox. If there are none yet, create some there first.
3. Click Save.

An agent with labels set sees the chats assigned to them, chats shared with them, and chats carrying any of their labels, but not the unlabelled pool. An agent with no labels set sees their own chats and the unassigned pool. Auto-assignment follows the same rule, so an agent limited to sales is not handed a support chat.

To give one agent a single chat outside their labels, admins and supervisors can use Share in the chat’s header.

Being rolled out

Chat access depends on permission enforcement, which is not yet switched on in whatbot. You can set labels and share chats today, and your settings are saved. But until enforcement is switched on, they don’t yet change what an agent sees or which chats are routed to them.

Business hours

Business hours are the workspace’s opening hours. Shifts are per person. Set them under Settings → Business Hours (admins): a timezone, the hours for each day, and an optional out-of-hours auto-reply. The page also shows whether you are open or closed right now.

Business hours don’t affect who gets assigned a chat. Rules use them: a rule can act only outside or only inside business hours, and a chat waiting overnight doesn’t count as unanswered until you open. If you have never set business hours, the workspace counts as always open. See Automations → Business hours.