Departments give you the power to distribute conversations and assign various agents to specific departments. For example, you can create a department entitled “Sales” and assign specific conversations to that department. To start using departments, follow the steps below:

• Go to Settings > Miscellaneous and add, delete and manage the departments. After saving, reload the page.
• Go to Users > Agents and edit an agent, you will see a new field where you can set the department of the agent.
• Reload the page and you’re done! In the Conversations area, you will now see an option to set the department.

Settings

• Display in dashboard Displays the departments’ list in the chat dashboard and force users to choose a department before starting a conversation.
• Display images Displays the department image instead of the department color.
• Label Replace the label Departments (plural) with another text. The name is displayed in the admin and tickets area.
• Label single Replace the label Department (singular) with another text. The name is displayed in the admin and tickets area.
• Dashboard title Set the title of the chat dashboard list. Default: Departments.

How it works

• Agents and admins can only access conversations, users, and agents that have been assigned to their specific department.
• When an agent is assigned to a new department, an email notification is sent to all of the agents assigned to the new department.
• The General department is global and gives agents access to all of the conversations within all departments. Also, all agents without a department are automatically assigned to the General department.
• To automatically assign a department to the user conversations you can Enter the JavaScript variable var SB_DEFAULT_DEPARTMENT = ID; into the pages where the chat is displayed, replace ID with the department ID. For more details check the APIs here.
• Admins with no assigned department always see the conversations of all departments.
• The chatbot can assign a department to the active conversation via Dialogflow actions.

How to assign a department

You can assign a department to a conversation in several ways:

• Via Settings > Miscellaneous > Departments settings > Display in dashboard. This setting will force the user to choose a department when starting a new conversation.
• Via Settings > Automations > More.
• Via JavaScript the variable var SB_DEFAULT_DEPARTMENT = ID;. Enter the code into the pages where the chat is displayed and replace ID with the department ID. For more details check the API here.
• Via API.