Presence and the live queue
Agent presence, how chats enter the queue, reservation and accept, concurrency, and anti-cherry-pick.
Live chat is real-time support. When a customer needs a person, their conversation enters the live queue, and the assignment worker offers it to an eligible, available agent.
Agent presence
Presence is who is at the console right now and how available they are. Each agent has a status:
- Available: ready to take chats.
- Busy: temporarily not taking new chats.
- Away: stepped out.
- Offline: not at the console.
- At capacity: already handling their maximum concurrent chats.
An agent can set their status manually from the presence selector, and the system derives "at capacity" automatically from how many live chats they hold. Presence is also recorded over time, which is what powers the utilization and staffing reports in analytics.
How a chat enters the queue
When a conversation escalates to a human it is enqueued. Each queue entry can carry required skills, a language, and a priority score (higher is served sooner). The entry's status moves through a clear lifecycle:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| WAITING | In the queue, pickable by the assignment worker. |
| RESERVED | Held for one specific agent until they accept. |
| ACCEPTED / ACTIVE | The agent took it; the live chat is under way. |
| REQUEUING | The reservation lapsed or was declined; back to the queue. |
| DONE / CANCELLED | Terminal. |
Reservation and accept
Rather than dropping a chat on whoever is nearest, Hark reserves an entry for one eligible agent and waits for them to accept. If they do not accept before the reservation times out, the entry requeues and is offered to someone else. This keeps a clear owner for every waiting chat.
Concurrency
Concurrency is how many live chats one agent handles at once. It is resolved from the most specific setting available: a per-member limit if set, otherwise the team default, otherwise the org default. When an agent reaches their limit their presence shows At capacity and the queue stops routing new chats to them.
Anti-cherry-pick
Hark discourages agents from skimming the easy chats. When an agent declines a reserved entry, the decline is recorded, the entry avoids being re-offered to that same agent immediately, and a team can require a reason for declines and cap consecutive declines. A team can also hide the shared queue entirely so agents only see the chats reserved for them.