How the live chat connection works

When a visitor opens your chat widget, their message reaches your agents in real time over a lightweight, one-way connection built for the browser (similar technology to live sports scores or stock tickers). Agents receive and reply to messages over a separate, two-way connection built for instant back-and-forth. Splitting these two jobs means a hiccup on one side (say, thousands of visitors browsing at once) can never slow down or interrupt the other (an agent typing a reply).

Why your browser tab sometimes "sleeps"

Every modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari) automatically pauses inactive background tabs to save battery and memory — this happens on any website with a live connection, not just Velaro. When your tab is asleep, your workspace can't process anything until you switch back to it, so Velaro automatically marks you unavailable for new chats while this happens — the same way Zendesk, Intercom, and other help desk platforms handle it. The moment you switch back, you're automatically marked available again.

This never affects whether you get alerted. Push notifications reach your device independently of whether your tab is asleep, closed, or your computer is locked — you can accept or watch a new conversation directly from the notification itself, and it opens right where you left off.

How a new conversation reaches an agent — two different mechanisms

Velaro uses two distinct mechanisms, and it's worth knowing the difference:

Automatic assignment hands a new conversation directly to an available agent with no click required — used by teams running auto-routing mode. This is the one setting that respects your Business Hours schedule: if a team is fully outside its configured schedule, Velaro will not silently auto-assign a conversation to anyone.

The "Claim" / "Watch" alert is different, and deliberately simpler: it notifies every logged-in agent on the team the moment a conversation arrives — regardless of whether that agent currently shows Available or Away, and regardless of Business Hours. We treat alerting as "tell the humans, let them decide" rather than trying to predict who's likely to respond. In practice this means: if you've ever granted notification permission on a device, that device can be notified about a new conversation even outside your scheduled hours, until you either sign out or turn off notifications for that device. If your team wants alerts to also respect Business Hours, let your Velaro contact know — we're aware this is a real, common ask and are evaluating it.

Reassignment is the safety net on the other side: if an agent stops responding to an assigned conversation, or a queued conversation waits too long unassigned, Velaro can nudge an idle/away agent or release it back to the queue for someone else — both configurable per team.

Recommended: the Velaro Desktop App (optional)

For the most reliable experience, we recommend the Velaro Desktop App — it runs outside the browser entirely, so tab sleep never applies to it, and it gives you a background sound alert plus a screen-pop the instant a new chat arrives, even if you're working in another program. Because it's never subject to browser tab-sleep behavior, agents on the Desktop App also never see the temporary "marked available again" notice described above — there's simply nothing to pause. It's entirely optional — everything works in your regular browser too, this just closes the small gap where a sleeping tab could otherwise delay an alert until you looked back at the screen.

Mobile app: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch

Velaro Workspace is a native app covering iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in one download. Like the desktop app, it uses your device's native notification system instead of a browser — alerts arrive instantly even if the app isn't open, with no "tab sleep" concept at all (that's purely a browser/desktop behavior).

• iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch — Velaro Workspace on the App Store

Android: not yet available — in progress. We'll update this article the day it publishes.

Note: on iPad specifically, Safari and Chrome both aggressively suspend browser tabs when you switch apps — if you're using the browser workspace on iPad rather than the native app, add the page to your Home Screen for the most reliable alerts.