Messenger Settings: Configure Chat, Design, and Hours

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Messenger

The Messenger tab in the Thread Admin Panel is where you control the settings of your customer Messenger applications. It has five sub-tabs: Settings, Design, Hours, Installation, and Teams Apps.

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The Settings Tab

On this page you configure the properties of your Messenger, including the Support type and the Show all tickets in Chat toggle (formerly “Proactive Messages”) — learn more about the latter in Show all tickets in Chat and excluded boards.

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Support type: “Standard Chat” vs “Chat with SLAs”

The Support type is a single choice you make in the Settings tab. It controls the new-request button customers see in Messenger and whether they are shown a response-time expectation. Chat with SLAs is the default. Chat with SLAs — Customers start a new thread with the Chat button, and Messenger tells them when to expect a response to new threads. The default expected response time is 5 minutes, which matches the Swarm Mode response timer in Inbox; you can also change it to No estimate (no time is shown to the customer) or a Custom time. Selecting Chat with SLAs also enables Swarm Mode for your Inbox users. Standard Chat — Customers start a new thread with the Request button. No response-time expectation is set, so these threads can be treated more like an email thread in terms of timed response. In this section, you are also shown a version of your own branded Messenger which you can use for testing purposes.

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The Design Tab

The design section allows you to customize your Messenger experience to your own liking. To learn more about this, see this help doc. Any changes that are made to your Messenger are kept in real time and deployed to the Desktop version and Microsoft Teams version almost instantly.

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What a customer experiences

Worth knowing when you’re configuring the above, because it’s what your settings produce. A customer clicking Chat is asked to describe their issue. The request has two parts:

• Description — becomes the issue description your technician sees. Encourage detail; it’s what makes the request actionable straight away.
• Device — if the contact has configurations associated in your PSA, they’re listed and the customer picks the affected one. Choosing None of the above creates the ticket with no configuration attached.

Either way the ticket lands on the board your Messenger settings route to, and dispatch or Triage Agent takes it from there. Once a technician is assigned, the customer sees that technician’s name at the top of the chat window and is notified. You work the resulting ticket wherever you receive it — Inbox, or the Teams or Slack Companion App — replying, adding internal notes, and taking the usual actions.

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The Hours Tab

This section allows you to set a working hours schedule if you wish. Outside of these set hours are referred to as “After Hours”, and you are able to display a custom message and it lets your customers know that the support team is currently offline

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The Installation Tab

This section includes your Messenger’s unique App ID as well as a custom snippet you can use to embed Messenger in your website. For more info on embedding Messenger in websites, see this help doc.

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Teams Apps

This section shows you the custom Teams apps you have created, and allows you to edit and duplicate existing Teams apps. For more info on these apps, please see this help doc.