How can we help you?

Auto-Assignment and Load Balancing

Auto-Assignment & Load Balancing

Auto-assignment automatically routes incoming conversations to the best available agent so nothing sits unattended in the queue. Velaro supports three assignment strategies and a set of override conditions that give you precise control over how conversations are distributed.

Assignment Strategies

StrategyHow It WorksBest For
Round RobinConversations are assigned to the next available agent in rotation, cycling through the team in order.Teams where all agents have the same skill level and equal capacity targets.
Least LoadedConversations go to whichever available agent currently has the fewest open conversations.Teams with variable handle times where some conversations take much longer than others.
Skills-BasedThe system matches the conversation to an agent whose skills match tags on the conversation (e.g., "billing", "technical", "spanish").Specialized teams, multilingual support, tiered support queues.

Configuring Auto-Assignment

  1. Go to Settings → Teams → [Team Name] → Assignment.
  2. Select a strategy.
  3. Set the Max Conversations per Agent — agents above this limit are skipped. This is your concurrency cap.
  4. For Skills-Based, configure Agent Skills in Settings → Agents → [Agent Name] → Skills and configure Conversation Tagging Rules to automatically tag incoming conversations.
  5. Click Save.

Availability Requirements

An agent must meet all of the following to receive an auto-assignment:

  • Status is Available (not Away, Busy, or Offline).
  • Current conversation count is below their Max Conversations limit.
  • They are a member of the target team for this conversation.
  • For skills-based routing: they have at least one matching skill tag.

Overflow and Fallback

When no agent is available to receive a conversation:

  • The conversation enters the team's queue and waits for an agent to become available.
  • If the queue wait exceeds the configured Queue Timeout, the conversation can be escalated to a backup team, transferred to the bot, or sent to a leave-a-message form.
  • Configure fallback behavior under Settings → Teams → [Team Name] → Overflow.

Manual Override

Agents and supervisors can always manually reassign any conversation regardless of the auto-assignment strategy. In the conversation view, click the Assign button and select any available agent. The conversation is immediately transferred and removed from the previous agent's queue.

Warm Transfer vs. Cold Transfer

  • Cold transfer — the conversation is moved immediately to the target agent. The originating agent's involvement ends.
  • Warm transfer — the originating agent can add a private note for the receiving agent before completing the transfer. The receiving agent sees the note before joining the conversation.

Supervisory Controls

In Reports → Workload, supervisors can see each agent's current conversation load in real time and manually rebalance if one agent is overwhelmed. Drag conversations from the queue onto an agent's slot to force-assign them.

Was this article helpful?