Routing rules
Automatically assign incoming conversations to the right agent or team the moment they arrive.
Routing rules are the most commonly used automation type. They run immediately when a new conversation arrives — assigning it to an agent or group, setting its priority, and tagging it before any human sees it.
How routing differs from channel routing
Channel routingand routing automations are the same feature — the channel routing page covers the same rules from a "channel configuration" perspective. This page focuses on advanced patterns and best practices.
Round-robin vs load-balanced assignment
| Method | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Round-robin | Conversations rotate through all online agents in the group evenly, regardless of current workload | Teams with roughly equal ticket complexity |
| Load-balanced | Next ticket goes to the agent with the fewest open conversations | Teams with mixed ticket types and varying handle times |
| First available | Ticket sits in the group queue until an agent claims it | Teams that prefer agents to self-select based on expertise |
| Skills-based | Matched to agents tagged with relevant skills (Enterprise plan) | Specialised teams where not all agents can handle all ticket types |
Priority routing
Combine urgency detection with routing to ensure high-priority conversations jump the queue:
- Create a rule: If AI urgency is 'urgent' → assign to Senior Agents group, set priority: Urgent
- Create a second rule: If AI urgency is 'high' → set priority: High (assigned normally)
- Leave the default rule as-is for normal/low priority
Skill-based routing (Enterprise)
Enterprise workspaces can tag agents with skills (e.g. spanish, enterprise-billing,technical-level-2) and route conversations to agents who have all the required skills.
Configure agent skills in Settings → Team → [agent] → Skills, then use the Agent has skill condition in routing rules.
Time-based routing
Route differently based on when the conversation arrives:
- During business hours: assign to live team
- Outside business hours: assign to on-call group or leave unassigned for next day
- Weekends: route urgent tickets to on-call group; normal priority into queue
Use the Time of day and Day of week conditions to set this up. Time is evaluated in your workspace timezone (set in Settings → General).
Fallback when no agents are available
If a routing rule targets a group and no agents in that group are online, the conversation either:
- Waits in the group queue — notifies the group when they come back online
- Falls back to the default inbox — if fallback routing is configured
- Escalates to an on-call group — if an escalation rule is configured for idle time