These tools keep the daily work of agents fast and measurable: macros fill in standard replies and actions, tags and statuses sort conversations, SLA policies and business hours set response deadlines, surveys ask customers for a rating, and custom attributes store extra details. Each one is set up in the panel admin and described in its own section below.
Macros
A macro is a saved reply, a set of actions, or both, that an agent applies in one step. Create them under Admin > Productivity > Macros (permission Manage macros):
- Name: how agents find the macro;
- the response field (Response to be sent when macro is used (optional)): text that goes into the reply editor;
- actions: Assign team, Assign agent, Set status, Set priority, Add tags, Set tags, Remove tags;
- Visible when: offered while Replying, Starting conversation or Adding private notes;
- Visibility: All agents, one Team or one Agent.
A macro needs a response or at least one action, and each action can appear in it only once. In a conversation the agent opens the command bar (Ctrl+K, or Cmd+K on a Mac) and picks Apply macro. The response appears in the editor, where it can still be changed, and the actions run when the reply is sent. Each action needs the agent's own permission for it: an agent who may not assign teams cannot do it through a macro either, and if one action is not allowed, none of the macro's actions run. The response can use the expressions from Email templates, such as the customer's first name.
Tags
Tags are short labels for conversations, such as billing or bug. Manage the list under Admin > Conversations > Tags (permission Manage tags). A tag name has at least 3 characters; deleting a tag also removes it from every conversation. Import takes a CSV file with one column, name.
Tags are used in several places:
- agents add them in a conversation, and AI can propose them with Suggest tags;
- the inbox setting Prompt to tag before replying warns an agent who replies to an untagged conversation;
- rules and macros add, replace and remove tags;
- conversation views filter by tags, and Reports shows the Tag distribution.
Statuses and priorities
Every conversation has a status. The built-in ones are Open, Snoozed, Resolved and Closed; they cannot be renamed or deleted. Under Admin > Conversations > Statuses you add your own with a Name and a Category: Open, Waiting or Resolved. The category tells the platform how to treat it: only conversations in the Open category are handed out by auto-assignment, shown as an agent's workload and counted toward the team's auto-assignment limit, and the Resolved category ends SLA tracking. A status that some conversation still has cannot be deleted.
Priorities are fixed: Low, Medium and High. Agents and rules set them, and higher priority conversations are handed out first. See Agents and teams.
Snooze
Snoozing hides a conversation until a set time. In a conversation, choose the Snoozed status or Snooze in the command bar and pick 1, 3, 6 or 12 hours, 1, 2 or 3 days, 1 week, or Pick date and time. At that time the conversation becomes Open again. If the customer writes earlier, it reopens at once. Rules can snooze too, with a duration such as 3h.
SLA policies
An SLA policy sets how fast conversations must be answered. Create one under Admin > Workspace > SLA policies (permission Manage SLA policies) with a Name, a Description and at least one target:
- First response time: until the first reply to the customer;
- Resolution time: until the conversation is resolved;
- Next response time: for each later customer message.
Write times as 1h, 30m or 1h30m; the minimum is one minute.
Under Alert configuration, Add warning alert warns ahead of a deadline by the Advance warning time, and Add breach alert reports a missed one, either Immediately on breach or After specific duration with a Follow up delay. Each alert has Alert recipients (Assigned user or chosen agents) and an SLA metric: All or one of the three targets. Alerts arrive as notifications and emails, see Notifications and the EPAV mailbox.
A policy applies to a conversation in two ways: a team's SLA policy is applied when a conversation is assigned to that team, and the rule action Set SLA applies one directly. Missed deadlines also show in the Supervisor panel.
SLA deadlines need business hours and a timezone, taken from the conversation's team or else from Admin > Workspace > General. A new platform comes with an SLA policy named Default (first response within 1 hour, resolution within 24 hours, no alerts), already set for the First line team, so conversations handed to the team get deadlines and the response time figures stop showing zero. The team also gets your browser's timezone and business hours of Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00. Change the policy or add alerts under Admin > Workspace > SLA policies, or pick another one for the team. Conversations the assistant answers on its own, and every conversation in AI chat without agents, never reach a team, so they have no SLA and no response time.
Business hours
Business hours tell the platform when your team works. Create them under Admin > Workspace > Business hours (permission Manage business hours): a Name, a Description, and either Always open (24/7) or Custom business hours with opening and closing times per day. Add days off with New holiday.
Choose the schedule in a team's Business hours and Timezone, or as the default under Admin > Workspace > General, which applies to conversations without a team and to teams that lack either setting. SLA deadlines then count only working time and skip holidays. The same schedules show office hours in the chat widget and decide when the Telegram away message is sent; see Live chat widget and Telegram.
CSAT surveys
A CSAT survey asks the customer to rate the conversation after it is resolved. Switch it on per inbox: open the inbox under Admin > Channel > Inboxes and switch on CSAT Surveys. The survey goes out when the conversation gets the Resolved status, at most once per conversation. For more control, leave it off and send it with the rule action Send CSAT.
How it reaches the customer depends on the channel:
- Email: an email from the CSAT request template with a link to the rating page; skipped when the contact has no email address.
- Live chat: a rating form right in the chat.
- Telegram: a message with rating buttons. Set your own text in the inbox field Survey message; left empty, a standard text goes out in the customer's language.
- WhatsApp: a survey template approved by Meta with a rating button. Without it, a link in the customer's language while the 24-hour reply window is open; otherwise the conversation gets a note that the survey was not sent.
Ratings appear under Reports in Customer satisfaction and in the AI assistant's CSAT average and CSAT positive figures. In an inbox set to AI chat without agents the bot never resolves conversations, so it sends no survey.
Custom attributes
Custom attributes store extra details about a contact or a conversation, such as a plan name or a contract number. Create them under Admin > Conversations > Custom attributes (permission Manage custom attributes):
- Applies to: Contact or Conversation;
- Name, Key and Description; the key cannot repeat a built-in field;
- Type: Text, Number, Checkbox, Date, Link or List, with List values for a list;
- optional Regex and Regex hint to check what agents type.
Agents see and fill the attributes in the conversation sidebar. Contact attributes can also be asked for in the chat's pre-chat form and tested in automation rules, see Automation rules.