Configuring live chat and agents

The live chat widget connects customers to your team in real time over websockets. This guide covers enabling it, adding agents, and tuning its behavior.

Enable live chat

Live chat visibility is controlled by a feature setting in the admin panel. Turn it on so the widget appears for visitors. When no agents are available, the widget can fall back to ticket creation so requests are never lost.

Add and manage agents

1. Grant the support agent role to team members (see Roles and permissions (RBAC)).
2. Agents open the agent console to go online and accept chats.
3. Agent presence is tracked over the websocket connection; when an agent goes offline, their availability updates automatically.

Availability and capacity

• Agents set themselves online/offline.
• Presence uses a short TTL refreshed by the active socket, with a grace window so a page refresh does not flap their status (SUPPORT_AGENT_PRESENCE_TTL_SECONDS, SUPPORT_AGENT_PRESENCE_REFRESH_MS, SUPPORT_AGENT_DISCONNECT_GRACE_SECONDS).
• If an agent disconnects mid-chat, their active chats are returned to the queue after CHAT_ORPHAN_REQUEUE_SECONDS so another agent can pick them up.

Timeouts

• CHAT_INACTIVITY_MINUTES: idle chats are closed after this period.
• CHAT_WAITING_TIMEOUT_MINUTES: how long a waiting visitor stays queued.
• CHAT_DISCONNECT_GRACE_SECONDS: grace before the other side sees a disconnect notice.

Requirements

Live chat needs Redis (for sockets and presence) and a running worker. Make sure both are configured. See Configure database and Redis.

Related articles

• Support desk overview
• Roles and permissions (RBAC)

Still need help?

Open a support ticket if the widget does not connect.