Every team that runs live chat eventually faces the same question. What happens when a visitor clicks the chat button and nobody is there to answer? Velaro gives you two different tools to control that moment, and which one is right for your team depends entirely on how your team actually works. This article walks through both, when to use each, and exactly how to set them up.

The two tools

A business hours schedule tells Velaro exactly when your group is open. Once a schedule is active, any chat that arrives outside those hours is labeled "Out of schedule" instead of being scored against your staffed hours performance. Your reports stay clean and your after hours volume is clearly separated from real coverage gaps during the times you are actually staffed.

Hiding the chat button when unavailable goes a step further. Instead of showing a chat button that leads to a chat nobody can answer, the button disappears entirely once your group has no available agents, whether that is outside your hours or during an unexpected gap. Visitors never see something to click that will not get a response.

You can use either one on its own, both together, or neither. There is no universal right answer. It depends on how your team is structured.

How different teams actually use this

Fixed hour teams. Support desks, back office processing groups, and internal help desks often run a hard 9 to 5 or similar block. These teams almost always turn on a schedule so after hours traffic is reported accurately, and many also hide the button outside their hours so visitors are not invited to start a conversation that will not be answered until the next business day.

Follow the sun teams. Larger organizations with agents across multiple regions sometimes run without any schedule restriction at all, because coverage genuinely spans around the clock as one region hands off to the next. For these teams a schedule would be a false constraint, since someone is realistically online at almost every hour anyway.

On call and sporadic coverage teams. Some groups intentionally do not run fixed hours. A specialist group might only have one or two people who log in when they have bandwidth between other duties. These teams often skip the schedule entirely and simply accept that a chat is only answered if someone happens to be logged in at that moment. That is a completely valid operating model, and Velaro does not require a schedule to function.

Seasonal and campaign teams. Some groups only staff chat during specific promotions or renewal periods and want the button to disappear completely the rest of the year rather than show a schedule message. These teams lean on the hide button setting more than the schedule itself.

None of these approaches is more correct than another. They are different operating models, and the configuration should match how the team actually staffs itself, not the other way around.

Setting up a business hours schedule

1. In the admin console, go to your group settings and open the Scheduling section.
2. Turn on business hours scheduling for the group.
3. Enter your open and close time for each day your team is staffed. Leave a day blank if your team does not operate that day at all.
4. Set your time zone, including how daylight saving time should be handled if that applies to your region.
5. Save your changes. The schedule takes effect immediately for new chats.

Once saved, any chat that arrives outside the hours you entered will be labeled "Out of schedule" in your reporting instead of "No agents online," and it will no longer count against your staffed hours metrics.

Setting up hide the button when unavailable

1. In the same group settings area, find the Unavailable Behavior section.
2. Enable the option to hide the chat button when no agents are available.
3. Decide whether this should apply only outside your schedule, only when agents are logged in but unavailable, or in both situations.
4. Save your changes.

With this on, visitors browsing your site outside your staffed times, or during a moment when your whole team happens to be away, will not see a chat button at all. This is the right choice for teams that would rather offer no chat option than an unanswered one.

Which one should you use

Ask yourself two questions. First, do you want visitors who arrive after hours to have the option to leave a message or request a callback, or would you rather they see no chat option at all until you are back online. If you want that option available, use a schedule alone. If you would rather the button disappear, add the hide setting on top of the schedule.

Second, does your team run fixed hours at all. If your coverage is genuinely sporadic or on call, you may choose to run with no schedule and accept that missed chats outside your working moments are simply part of how your team has chosen to operate. That is not a limitation of the platform. It is a reflection of your staffing model, and the reporting will always show exactly what happened, accurately, regardless of which model you choose.

A note on accuracy

Your reports always reflect what actually happened at the moment a chat arrived; whether an agent was logged in, whether they were available, or whether the group was inside its configured hours. Turning a schedule on or off, or hiding the button, changes how that moment is categorized and displayed going forward. It never changes the underlying event itself. This is why two accounts with very different schedules, or no schedule at all, can both have completely accurate reporting at the same time. The numbers are not wrong in either case. They are simply describing two different ways of running a support team.