Every live chat has one owning agent. That agent started the conversation with the visitor and is responsible for it until it ends or is transferred. Join as supervisor lets an administrator or manager step into that chat without taking it away from the owner.

Why an agent can't simply join a chat that is already handled

If a second agent joins a chat that another agent is already working, two people can answer the same visitor at the same time, and nobody is sure who owns the conversation. To keep ownership clear, Velaro does not let an agent join a chat that another agent has already joined.

• Someone has to own the chat. The visitor should always know who they are talking to, and the team should always know who is responsible.
• The owning agent has no way of knowing whether another agent is stepping in as an administrator or just picking up the same chat by accident.
• A chat is started and owned by one person. Anyone else who wants to be in it needs a clearly different role.

Who can join as a supervisor

These roles can use Join as supervisor:

• Administrators
• Site managers
• The manager of the group the chat belongs to

Managers of other groups, and agents without one of these roles, do not see the button.

How to join as a supervisor

1. Open the chat and shadow it. You must be shadowing before the option is available.
2. Click Join as supervisor next to Join Chat, Exit Chat and Force End Chat.

The button appears only while an agent has already joined the chat and the chat is active. If nobody has joined the chat yet, use Join Chat instead.

What happens to ownership

• The owning agent stays in the chat and keeps ownership. Nothing about their session changes.
• The visitor sees that you joined the chat.
• Joining as a supervisor does not give you routing credit for the chat or count as your most recent chat.
• If you leave, the owning agent is not affected.
• If the owning agent leaves and you are still in the chat, the chat stays open and you become the agent handling it.
• A chat with an owner and a supervisor is not automatically re-routed to someone else while both are in it.

How chats and capacity are counted

• A supervisor is not counted as one of the agents handling the chat. The owner stays the handling agent.
• A supervisor's join does not use up one of your concurrent chat slots.
• When the chat is archived and a transcript is emailed, the handling agent is listed first and appears as the sender; the supervisor is listed after.
• The join is recorded in the chat's event history as a supervisor join, separate from an agent join.

Alerts

Joining as a supervisor does not change alert behavior. The new chat alert still goes to the agent the chat was routed to, and joining as a supervisor does not change who owns the chat.

If the button is not available