What are idle queue alerts?

When a conversation is waiting in a team's queue and no agent has picked it up, Velaro can

automatically alert your idle agents so it doesn't sit unnoticed. This is available on the

Professional plan and above.

You control:

• Whether alerts are on — off by default.
• How long a conversation waits before the first alert — 1 to 10 minutes.
• Whether the alert repeats — you can alert once, or repeat every few minutes until the

conversation is picked up.

• The maximum number of alerts per conversation — so agents aren't repeatedly interrupted

by the same waiting conversation forever.

Where to configure it

Go to Settings → Routing & Escalation and open the Idle Queue Alerts section. This sets

the site-wide default. If your account uses per-team routing settings, an individual team can

override the site default from its own team settings.

Schedules and timezones

If you use a Schedule (Settings → Schedules) to define business hours for a team, the

schedule's own configured timezone is what determines when your team is considered "in hours"

or "after hours" — not the timezone of whoever is editing the schedule, and not necessarily your

account's default timezone. When you create or edit a schedule, set its timezone explicitly (for

example America/New_York for Eastern) so your business hours fire at the correct local time

for the team that uses it, especially if you're configuring the schedule from a different

timezone than the team works in.

If you leave a schedule's timezone blank, it falls back to your account's default timezone — the

Schedules page always tells you which timezone is actually being used for each schedule's hours.

After-hours routing in Workflows

The Route to Team, Reroute, and Transfer to Agents workflow nodes all support checking

team availability, which exposes three branches: Available, Unavailable, and After hours.

Connect the After Hours branch to a custom message, a self-service option, or any other action

you want visitors to see when they reach out outside your team's schedule.

Each of these node editors now shows, right on the branch, which schedule is actually governing

it — the specific team and schedule name, or a note that no schedule is attached and the branch

will never trigger. This makes it clear at a glance which setting elsewhere (a team's schedule, not something on the node itself) is deciding when a chat is treated as after-hours.

Missed chat reports now distinguish why a chat was missed

Previously, a chat that ended down a workflow's After Hours or Unavailable branch could go

uncounted in your missed-chat reporting — even though a real visitor reached out and never got a

live response. Missed chats routed through these branches are now correctly tagged with the

specific reason:

• Out of Schedule — the team was closed for the day.
• All Agents Busy / No Agents Available / No Agents Online — the team was open, but no

live agent was able to take the chat.

This means your Reports → Missed Chats breakdown finally separates "we were closed" from

"we were open but understaffed" for chats that pass through a workflow — the same distinction the

Missed Chats report has always made for chats missed through normal live routing. A chat that

ends in a ticket, an AI handoff, or an explicit close is never counted as missed — only a chat that

genuinely goes unresolved down one of these branches is.

Requires the Schedule-Aware Routing capability (the same setting that powers the After Hours

branch itself) to be enabled for your account and turned on for the team.

Tracking a custom condition branch as a missed chat

If you've built your own time-based branching with a Condition node (checking day of week,

time of day, or a specific schedule), you can opt that branch into the same missed-chat tracking.

Open the branch in the Condition node editor and turn on Track as missed-chat reason, then

choose which of the standard reasons it represents. You can also add your own short label (for

example, "VIP after-hours") that shows up alongside the standard reason in reporting. This is off

by default — a custom condition branch could represent anything, so Velaro never assumes.

Seeing which schedule or rule decided a routing outcome

The Routing → History page shows, per conversation, which rule or workflow node actually made

the routing decision — including a clear badge distinguishing a schedule-driven outcome from an

availability-driven one, so you can see exactly what sent a visitor down a given path.

The chat widget can now show a closed message instead of live chat

If your chat window has Hide launcher when unavailable turned on (Chat Window → Appearance →

Offline Status), the chat launcher now shows a proper "closed" state instead of live chat when a

team is genuinely outside its schedule — for example, "We're closed — back Monday at 9:00 AM,"

shown in the visitor's own local time and computed automatically from your team's schedule (never

a hardcoded time or timezone). Instead of a dead or missing button, visitors are offered a

leave a message option.

A message left this way creates a ticket for your team to follow up on — it is never treated as a

live chat waiting for an agent, so it's never counted as a missed chat in your reporting. This is

the same idea as a store that puts up a "we're closed, please leave a message" sign instead of

silently letting the phone ring with nobody there to answer.

If a team is simply busy — open, but every agent is currently at capacity — the widget shows a

softer note instead ("all agents are busy, wait may be longer") and still lets the visitor start a

live chat, since the team is genuinely available, just momentarily stretched.

What this does not cover

The closed-launcher behavior applies to the web chat widget only. SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook

Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, email-to-chat, and API-created conversations will always

accept an incoming message regardless of your team's hours — that's expected for those channels,

the same way a text message or email doesn't "bounce" just because it's sent after hours.

Advanced Routing add-on

Accounts with the Advanced Routing add-on additionally get:

• A live Routing Ops Dashboard showing current queue depth, how many idle alerts have fired

per conversation, and an agent availability breakdown by team.

Contact your account manager to learn more about the Advanced Routing add-on.