Live conversations: website chat setup, queue, transfer and supervision

Every conversation that arrives now has a **session**: it starts, it waits, someone answers, it can be transferred and it ends. That is what makes a live queue, a transfer with acceptance and supervision possible, including in the website chat, which never had an owner.

Every conversation that arrives now has a **session**: it starts, it waits, someone answers, it can be transferred and it ends. That is what makes a live queue, a transfer with acceptance and supervision possible, including in the website chat, which never had an owner.

Nothing here needs to be configured to work: sessions start on their own with the next message. Screen: **Inbox > Live**.

Now (supervision) The board lists the live conversations, first the ones nobody has answered, then the ones waiting longest. On each one you can: - **Watch**: read the conversation live. It changes nothing for the customer or the agent, and it is recorded in the conversation trail. Watching without a trace would be silent surveillance. - **Whisper**: talk to the agent without the customer seeing. It never goes through any channel: it becomes a notification for the agent and an entry in the trail. - **Step in**: talk to the customer right now, through the same channel the agent uses. Watching, whispering and stepping in are for people who manage settings.

Transfer with acceptance In the conversation panel, choose the person, write what they need to know and transfer. By default the other person has to **accept**: handing a conversation to someone who has not seen it (and may be on a break) leaves the customer alone. While it is pending, the conversation stays with whoever had it, and the screen says so. Declining gives it back, never to nobody.

Chat on your website In **Inbox > Live > Website chat** you decide, without a developer: - **Where it shows up**: address rules with `*` (for example `/pricing*`). The most specific deployment wins; an exclusion always wins over an inclusion. - **Button**: side, label and color. - **Language**: the chat speaks your organization language by default, and each deployment can pick another one. You can also override any label. - **Pre-chat form**: up to 8 fields (text, email, phone, long text or list), each optional or required. A field mapped to name, email or phone fills the lead the chat creates. - **Outside business hours**: show a notice, ask for a message, or hide the bubble. The hours come from the channel policy, not from a second calendar. - **Queue position**: while nobody has answered, the visitor sees the position and, when there is measured history, an estimated wait. Without history no time is promised, only the position.

Same person, another device The chat lives in the browser: changing devices used to lose the history. If your website knows who is signed in, it can sign the visitor id on **your server** (HMAC with the secret shown on that screen) and pass `userId` and `userHash` to the widget. With a valid signature the conversation is picked up on any device. Without a signature nothing is resumed, and that is the point: resuming by a typed email would let anyone read someone else's conversation. Never put that secret in the page JavaScript.

Replying on social channels The inbox now replies on social conversations. Who sends depends on the platform: - **Bot channel**: uses the bot you already connected. - **Messenger and Instagram**: use the page token of **your own app**, with the messaging permission approved by the provider. We cannot grant that for you; without the token the conversation stays read-only and the inbox says why. - **Your own channel**: declare an https address of yours and we post the message there ({platform, to, text, rich}); the token is stored encrypted with your integration. This is how a channel we do not support natively can still be answered from the inbox. Outside the 24 hours since the customer's last message, Messenger and Instagram refuse new messages, and the composer says so before you type.

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