Agent Desk guide

The plus icon in the top bar allows you to start various types of conversation. Which types of conversation you can start depends on your organization’s use of Unblu Spark.

Join, Join screen, and Join mobile all open a modal dialog showing a PIN that you can share with a visitor to launch a conversation in Unblu:

PINs can only be redeemed for a certain period. The dialog includes a countdown showing how much time remains to redeem the PIN.

If the PIN isn’t redeemed it expires. When this occurs, the dialog below appears:

It’s always possible to generate a new PIN by clicking Generate new PIN. Generating a new PIN automatically invalidates the previous PIN.

Show and Show Screen both open a conversation panel with a new conversation. In both cases, you must invite users to join the conversation. Do so with the Invite button in the control bar beneath the top bar.

The type of conversation that’s created when a user enters the PIN depends on which option you selected in the plus icon menu:

If you’re allowed to start outbound conversations, you can do so by selecting the appropriate conversation template from the plus icon menu. When you do, Unblu opens a modal dialog where you can search for the visitor you want to start a conversation with:

You can search for customers by name, email, and source ID. Unblu only displays customers that meet the following criteria:

If your search comes up empty, you can still start an outbound conversation by clicking the New customer action at the bottom of the modal dialog. This opens the New customer modal dialog for the Anonymous customer type:

If you want to start a conversation with an authenticated customer, switch the Customer type from Anonymous to Authenticated. The modal dialog then looks like this:

What happens next depends on the channel that’s linked to the template you selected.

In the service status panel, availability is displayed in the Capacity column and refers to all the agents assigned to the various named areas. The numbers after the availability status show the total current capacity utilization for all the agents.

In the picture above, all the named areas have an available capacity of four conversations and a total capacity of six conversations.

The availability information in the agent availability panel refers to each agent’s personal availability. The numbers in brackets show their personal current capacity utilization.

In the picture above, the agent Anna Palmer has an available capacity of one conversation and a total capacity of three conversations.

An agent’s personal availability status can be affected in a number of ways:

If automatic queue dispatching is active, agents can change their availability status independently of their online status. for more information, see automatic request dispatching.

If you don’t want visitors to see the availability of your agents, you can disable availability badges.

When enabled, internal messaging mode lets agents exchange messages privately with each other in a conversation, without visitors in the conversation seeing their messages. They can also upload files as internal or public files.

Once internal messaging mode is enabled, to send an internal message:

If it’s enabled for your user type, hovering over a message displays the reply icon . When you click the icon, the message you clicked appears above the text field where you type your response.

If you’re replying to an internal message, Unblu automatically activates internal messaging mode for the reply. The message you’re replying to and the area of the text input field appear in a different color.

Switching to public mode by clicking the closed padlock icon automatically removes the internal message you’re replying to.

If you click the cross icon on the internal message you’re replying to, your message is sent to the conversation as an internal message. If you want to send it as a public message, click the closed padlock icon to switch to public mode.

Once you send your reply, it appears in the conversation:

Above your reply, you can see the first sentence of the message you replied to. Clicking the sentence takes you to the original message, so you can read it in its entirety.

If your organization has implemented a system that can suggest answers to visitor messages, and you have permission to use the suggestion source, you can see the chat suggestion icon when you move the mouse pointer over a chat message from another participant. (The icon may be in the kebab menu .) Clicking the icon asks the suggestion source of the current conversation for a suggestion of how to respond to the message.

If Unblu is configured to allow it, you can "edit the prompt" beforehand, that is, edit the message you request a suggestion for. This is especially useful if the message contains spelling errors or uses a different term from the one your organization uses for a product. In this case, you must click Generate suggestion to get a suggestion.

Your organization may also provide a set of predefined prompts. If that’s the case, there’s a Templates button above the text field for editing the prompt. Clicking it displays a list of prompts you can generate suggestions for instead of the chat message.

When the suggestion source responds, the suggestion is only displayed to you:

You now have several options:

Once you click Send, the suggestion is sent to the chat:

If you asked for a suggestion on an internal message,the suggestion is sent as an internal message. If the suggestion was requested on a public message,the suggestion is sent as a public message.

All chat suggestions you send to the chat, whether you edit them or not, are sent in your name. There’s no way of distinguishing messages you composed yourself from ones that originated with a suggestion source.

If the suggestion source can’t make a suggestion—​because it doesn’t understand the request, for example—​the message No suggestion found appears beneath the message you requested a suggestion for. This message is only visible to you.

If your organization uses Unblu’s chat translation feature, translated messages in a conversation have a label. The label includes a link to the original message and information about the language the original message is in:

If messages aren’t translated automatically (you can configure this in your language settings), hovering over a message that can be translated displays the translate icon . Clicking it translates the message into the target language.

The file upload system is aware of the messaging mode in use. When an agent clicks the upload file button , the current messaging mode is applied to the file upload. If the agent drags and drops a file, a dialog appears to select the mode required:

In the All shared files view, the Upload file button opens a dropdown to select the mode.

If you’re in a conversation with a visitor over WhatsApp, the appearance of the conversation panel can vary.

Secondary agents may be allowed to remove the assigned agent from a conversation. With the necessary permissions, they can directly reassign the conversation to themselves or another agent when they remove the assigned agent.

To remove the assigned agent, the secondary agent opens the assigned agent’s participant information popup and clicks the Remove participant button. The effect this has depends on how many agents are participants in the conversation:

The Forward button opens the following menu:

Selecting one of the menu items opens a modal dialog where you can select whom exactly the conversation should be forwarded to. The picture below shows the dialog after selecting Forward to team:

When you click the person, team, or named area that you want to forward the conversation to, a text field appears where you can add a message for them. This message is optional, and it isn’t visible to visitors in the conversation.

Once you’ve finished typing your message, click Forward.

Forwarded conversations are listed in the Forwarded tab if your inbox is configured to display this tab.

When you open a forwarded conversation, a banner indicating that it’s been forwarded is displayed at the top of the conversation. You can revoke a forwarding from the banner. You can also directly forward the conversation to someone else. This has the effect of revoking the original forwarding and forwarding the conversation again.

When another agent answers the forwarded request, you automatically leave the conversation and the conversation is no longer listed in the Forwarded tab. For more information about what this entails for you, refer to the documentation on the conversation life cycle.

The Invite button opens the following menu:

As with the forward conversation menu, selecting either Invite an agent or Invite team opens a fly-in page where you can choose whom to invite and add a message to include with your invitation. Depending on your configuration, you can also choose to invite the agent or team as a hidden participant in the conversation.

For customers, you can choose between three different types of invitation, each of which opens a different modal dialog.

All three types of visitor invitation expire after a period. By default, PIN invitations expire sooner than email and private link invitations.

Email and private link invitations that have already been generated are listed on the fly-in page of the respective link type, along with a countdown to each invitation’s expiry time and a link to revoke the invitation. When an invitation expires, its Revoke link is replaced by a Renew link which lets you generate a new invitation.

If enabled by your organization, the Invite menu also contains a button to copy a public link to access the conversation.

The Share action provides access to the various ways for you to collaborate with other participants in a conversation. The types of collaboration you can launch, and therefore the contents of the Share action, vary from organization to organization.

By default, the action is in the overflow menu of the control bar. However, your organization may have placed it directly in the control bar. What happens when you click the action depends on a several factors:

You can collaborate on any participant’s screen, but only on a visitor’s browser tab.

The participants' names and avatars in the menu are particularly important if there are more than two participants in a conversation. The extra information helps to ensure that you don’t start a collaboration with the wrong contents.

If your conversation is recorded automatically, there’s an indicator in the control bar. Initially, it indicates that Unblu’s starting the recording:

Once the recording has started, Unblu displays the Recording icon and a timer that shows how long it’s been recording the conversation.

If you can manually start recording a conversation, Unblu displays the Record button to the right of the collaboration action:

When you click the button, Unblu displays the indicator to tell you it’s starting the recording. Once the recording is in progress, there’s an indicator similar to the one for automatic conversation recording. In the case of a recording started manually, the indicator also has a Stop recording button :

The End conversation button does exactly that: it ends the conversation. Depending on how Unblu is configured, it may display a dialog asking whether you really want to end the conversation. The action is only available to users entitled to end the conversation. Who may end a conversation can be configured in the conversation templates and in the conversation itself.

Once a conversation has ended, you can no longer add content to it. You can access conversations that have ended in the conversation history and from the Other conversations tab of the participant details panel.

For more information about conversation states, refer to Conversation life cycle.

The Leave conversation button lets users leave a conversation without ending it. Once you leave a conversation, you no longer have access to it. Depending on your participant type, leaving the conversation may also affect the conversation state.

The button is only available if your participant type is allowed to leave a conversation.

If you’re the assigned agent of a conversation and there are other agents in the conversation as well, a modal dialog appears when you click *Leave conversation:

If you select Assign to another agent, a fly-in page appears listing all the secondary agents in the conversation. When you click the agent you want to reassign the conversation to, a text field appears where you can add a message for the agent. To complete the reassign process, click Assign.

If the conversation state changes to UNASSIGNED when you leave—​for example, because you chose to remove all agents from the conversation—​you might have to set the awaited person type. In that case, Unblu displays a modal dialog when you click Leave conversation:

For more information on the differences between leaving and ending a conversation, refer to Leaving vs ending a conversation.

It’s possible to collaborate in different ways at the same time. For example, a visitor could share their browser tab with you while you share your screen with them. You can only ever see one of the collaboration layers at any one time. However, running more than one collaboration layer simultaneously makes it easier to switch between them.

When multiple collaboration layers are active in a conversation, the active collaboration layers are marked with dots to their left when you click the Share action. The collaboartion layer currently in view has a darker dot than the others:

In the example above, there are two collaboration layers, a universal co-browsing layer and a screen-sharing layer. The screen-sharing layer is the one currently visible in the collaboration space: the dot to its left is darker than the other dot.

The Conversation info action opens the conversation info context panel:

The panels contains the following information:

The Conversation info icon is only available if Unblu is configured to display it.

The Chat action is only available if you’re in a call or a collaboration session. Clicking it opens the conversation’s chat in a panel on the right of the main content area. It also resizes the main content—​the call or collaboration layer—​to accommodate the chat panel. This way, you have access to all the communication channels that are in use within a conversation at once.

The Files action gives access to all the files uploaded to a conversation, including any video screenshots or recordings made in the course of the conversation. It also lets you upload files to the conversation.

The Participants action opens the participants panel.

The panel lists all the other participants in the conversation. Participants are grouped by their status:

Each participant’s entry sports a kebab menu that gives you access to actions you can carry out on the person. By default, the only action available is to remove the participant from the conversation.

Canned responses are predefined text snippets that agents can use in live chats. They can include predefined placeholders for the agent’s and visitor’s names, as well as custom placeholders that must be replaced by the agent. Canned responses can be defined at the account, team, and user level.

To use a canned response in a conversation, type the appropriate keyboard shortcut in the text input field. Alternatively, press the Canned response icon next to the field. Both actions open the canned response dialog above the text input field:

The dialog lists all the canned responses available to the agent in the same language as the current conversation. The list is arranged in alphabetical order by title. Titles need not be unique, so each item also displays the beginning of the text of the canned response. This makes it easier to distinguish between canned responses.

The filter box above the list allows you to search through the available canned responses by title and by content. The picture above shows a canned response dialog after clicking the icon and typing re in the text input field.

Canned responses with one or more custom placeholders have an arrow to their right. When you select such a canned response, the entire text of the canned response is displayed in the dialog, and you can replace the custom placeholders with content suited to the conversation.

There are two types of custom placeholders: text placeholders and multiple-choice placeholders.

Multiple-choice placeholders are shown as buttons with the label Select and the placeholder title. When you click the button, the available options are listed for you to select from.

Text placeholders appear as boxes in the text. The box contains the hint defined for the canned response. When you select a text placeholder, the hint disappears and is replaced by the text you enter.

As you can see in the picture above, you can use the same placeholder more than once in a canned response. Selecting or entering a value for the first occurrence of a placeholder applies the same value to all the other occurrences of that placeholder. You can only assign a value to the first occurrence of the placeholder. By default, the first occurrence of a placeholder is pale blue. Subsequent occurrences are gray.

Once you’re happy with the text, click Add to insert the text in the text input field. The button is only available if you’ve assigned every placeholder a value. You can continue to edit the text, either manually or by adding another canned response.

To send the message, press the Enter key or click the Send message icon .

Closed captions work the same way in the Agent Desk as they do in the Floating Visitor call UI. For more information, refer to the Closed captions section of the Floating Visitor UI guide.

If you decide to start collaborating during a call, the visitor may have to give their consent. If so, they receive a message that they must confirm in the chat panel. Although the chat panel icon in the Floating Visitor UI shows a badge, visitors might not realize they have to go there before they can start collaborating with you.

Refer to the relevant section of the Floating Visitor UI guide for further details.

If you’re allowed to pause notifications yourself, the menu entry opens the pause notifications menu:

If you select the option Automatically, Unblu automatically pauses notifications when you’re on an audio or video call in Unblu, or when you open a collaboration layer. Depending on how your organization’s configured Unblu, it may also pause notifications for other reasons, such as meetings scheduled in your calendar, or calls in other applications such as Microsoft Teams.

Once the reason for pausing notifications ends, Unblu automatically resumes sending you notifications.

You can also choose to pause notifications for a specific duration. The pause notifications menu includes options for various predefined durations. Selecting Custom time opens a dialog where you can enter the date and time Unblu should resume sending you notifications:

The entry in the Agent Desk user menu depends on the option you choose:

If your organization has configured Unblu to pause notifications automatically, you only see an entry when notifications are paused. The entry displays the notifications paused icon and the reason notifications are paused:

The Profile link takes you to the General tab of your Agent Desk user profile.

You can change a number of personal settings, including your first and last name, your username, and the labels assigned to you. To change your avatar, upload a new picture with the Select Image button.

If you want (or need) to change your password, select the Define password radio button. This displays two additional input fields for you to define and confirm your new password.

Remember to save any changes you make by clicking the Save button. If you don’t, Unblu displays a dialog asking whether you want to discard the changes.

If you want to save your changes, click Keep editing to return to the main window, then click Save.

Canned responses are predefined text snippets that you can use in chat messages. They help reduce the amount of typing you have to do for frequently used messages.

Canned responses can be defined for entire Unblu accounts, teams, or individual agents.

The Canned responses menu item opens the Canned responses tab of your Agent Desk user profile.

The overview pictured above belongs to a supervisor of the team "Client advisors". As a result, they can duplicate and delete not only their personal canned response, but also the one owned by the team that they supervise. That’s what the Copy and Trash can icons are for.

Agent can see how many times they’ve used a canned response in a given period in the My uses column. Hovering over the information icon beside My uses shows the period of time configured.

For more information on how to use canned responses, see the section on using canned responses above.

If your organization uses Unblu’s deputy delegation system, you may have a Deputies item in the Agent Desk user menu. The menu item opens the Deputies tab of your profile.

The tab displays all your deputies and shows which delegation level they’re assigned to. If you don’t respond to a conversation request sent to you personally, your level 1 deputies are notified. They can then accept the request in your place. If your level 1 deputies don’t respond to the request, your level 2 deputies are notified, and so on.

If you’re authorized to manage your deputies, you can add and remove deputies and move them to a different delegation level:

If you can’t manage your deputies, the Add deputies, delete button, and options menu won’t be present. You’ll still be able to see who your deputies are.

Keyboard shortcuts are an alternative way of completing an action that you would normally use your mouse for. The Agent Desk has an extensive set of keyboard shortcuts to make it easier to navigate the UI and to access various actions. UI elements that have a shortcut associated with them display that shortcut as a tooltip when you hover over the element with your cursor.

The Keyboard shortcuts item in the Agent Desk user menu open a modal dialog that lists the current keyboard shortcuts.

The modifiers displayed are based on those available in your operating system. The default keyboard shortcuts have been chosen so as not to clash with the keyboard shortcuts used by common browsers.

If you prefer to specify your own keyboard shortcuts, click Customize shortcuts to open the editing modal dialog:

To change a keyboard shortcut, first click the modifier or modifiers that you want to use and enter a letter or number in the text field at the end of the line. It isn’t possible to change a shortcut by placing the cursor in the text field and pressing the combination of keys you wish to assign to the action in question.

Bear the following points in mind when customizing shortcuts:

Once you’re happy with your custom shortcuts, click Save.

If you want to revert to the default keyboard shortcuts, click Restore defaults.

The last option in the My settings section opens a modal dialog for your language settings:

Select the language you want the Agent Desk to be displayed in and click OK.

If your organization uses Unblu’s chat translation feature, the modal dialog looks different, with a dropdown to set the Agent Desk language and a toggle to enable translations:

When you enable translations, additional settings appear: