Contact usRequest a demo

Configuring conversation visibility

All conversations are visible to the participants in the conversation, and visitors only ever see the conversations they’re participants of. Which other conversations an agent may see can depend on several factors:

  • The conversation visibility of the conversation template a conversation is based on (or the value it was overridden with)

  • The agent’s user role

  • Various configuration properties

  • The visibility rules that apply to the agent and the conversation’s context person

This article discusses each of these factors in turn to explain how you can control the visibility of conversations.

When does conversation visibility come into play?

Before discussing how to configure conversation visibility, it’s important to point out that conversation visibility doesn’t always affect which conversations an agent has access to.

Conversation visibility doesn’t affect conversations an agent is participating in. For example, if an agent is invited to join a conversation with a visitor they can’t normally see, they’ll still be able to join the conversation and see it.

Conversation visibility also doesn’t affect the conversations an agent can see in their queue. Even rule-based conversations that an agent can’t see according to the visibility rules in place are accessible if they’re in the agent’s queue. The queue is affected by the named areas and languages or locales an agent has access to, but not the labels assigned to them (and thence the visibility rules in place).

You shouldn’t necessarily be too surprised, then, if an agent is conducting a conversation with a visitor that they can’t see according to the enabled visibility rules.

Conversation visibility of the conversation template

When you create a new conversation template, you must specify the visibility of conversations created from it. There are two different types of visibility:

Private

By default, conversations with private visibility are only visible to the participants in the conversation and the supervisors of the conversation’s assigned agent. The extent of the supervisor’s access is configurable.

Rule-based

Conversations with rule-based visibility are visible to the participants and any agent with access to the conversation’s context person according to the visibility rules you defined.

Which of these two options you select determines how you can further influence conversation visibility.

Note that conversation visibility isn’t a configuration property of the conversation template. This means that if you change the conversation visibility on a template with configuration inheritance enabled, ongoing conversations aren’t affected. Conversely, you can change a conversation’s visibility at any time using either the Unblu web API or the conversation info context panel in the Agent Desk.

Admins and superadmins have access to all conversations.

Configuration properties

There are two configuration properties that affect conversation visibility:

There are four possible levels of access:

  • NONE: This option is only available for conversations with private visibility. It prevents the supervisor from accessing the conversation in any way.

  • INFO: This allows the agent or supervisor to read the conversation’s metadata and to search for it, either in the Unblu UI or through the web API. It also gives them access to the conversation’s details (but not the actual conversation) through the conversation history.

    To view the actual conversation, the agent or supervisor must request access.

  • OPEN_AS_GHOST: In addition to the access granted by INFO, this level lets the agent or supervisor view the conversation as a ghost in the conversation history. It also gives them access to any recordings in the conversation. However, they aren’t able to join the conversation without requesting access.

  • OPEN_AS_GHOST_AND_JOIN: The final level grants the agent or supervisor full access to the conversation. In addition to the permissions of the other access levels, this level lets them join conversation without having to request access.

Both configuration properties can be set in the USER scope. This lets you give specific users—​auditors, for example—​greater access to conversations than others.

Visibility rules

If the conversation visibility is rule-based, the visibility rules determine who besides the converation participants may view the conversation. For more information, refer to Labels and visibility rules.

See also