Idle Queue Alerts and Schedule-Aware After-Hours Routing

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 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.

Missed chat reports now distinguish why a chat was missed

A chat that ends down a workflow's After Hours or Unavailable branch is now correctly tagged with

the specific reason in your missed-chat reporting:

• 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 Reports → Missed Chats separates "we were closed" from "we were open but

understaffed" for chats that pass through a workflow. 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) enabled for your account and turned on for the team.

You can also track a custom Condition node branch (day of week, time of day, or a specific

schedule) as a missed-chat reason — turn on Track as missed-chat reason in the branch editor,

pick which standard reason it represents, and optionally add your own short label. This is off by

default since a custom condition branch could represent anything.

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

routing decision, including a badge distinguishing a schedule-driven outcome from an

availability-driven one.

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

With Hide launcher when unavailable turned on (Chat Window → Appearance → Offline Status), the

chat launcher 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 the team's schedule. Visitors are offered a **leave a

message** option instead of a dead button.

A message left this way creates a ticket for the 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.

If a team is simply busy (open, but every agent is at capacity), the widget shows a softer note

instead and still lets the visitor start a live chat.

This applies to the web chat widget only — SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for

Business, email-to-chat, and API-created conversations always accept an incoming message

regardless of a team's hours; that's expected for those channels.

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.