Business hours
Define when your support team is available. Outside of business hours, the widget can display an offline message, collect messages for later, or let the chatbot take over.
Enable Business Hours
- Settings → Widgets → [Widget] → Business Hours
- Turn on "Enable Business Hours"
- Select your Timezone
Configure Daily Schedule
For each day of the week, you can specify:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Active | Is this day a workday? |
| Open | Opening time (e.g. 09:00) |
| Close | Closing time (e.g. 18:00) |
Example:
- Monday–Friday: 09:00–18:00 (active)
- Saturday–Sunday: inactive
When the Widget Goes Offline
Two conditions will take the widget offline — they work independently of each other, either one is enough:
- Outside of Business Hours — once business hours are enabled, the daily schedule always applies. This is not just a display.
- No Agent Online — but only if in the widget "Agent must be online" (
require_agent_online) is turned on. If the switch is off, presence doesn't matter: the widget remains reachable even if the last agent logs out.
The switch is on by default. Until 12.08.2026 it was not evaluated — every widget went offline as soon as the last agent logged out, even if the chatbot was enabled. Whoever wants the bot to answer 24/7 can simply turn the switch off now (or select "AI Takes Over" below).
Offline Behavior (what visitors see instead)
Under Settings → Widgets → [Widget] → Offline Behavior you choose what happens when the widget is offline according to the rules above:
- Show Offline Form (Default) — visitors can leave their name + email + message, you get an email. The message appears as a new conversation as soon as an agent comes online.
- Hide Widget Completely — no form. In this mode, you can maintain Fallback Contacts (phone number + email) below, which are shown to the visitor as clickable links
- AI Takes Over — the chat remains normally open and the chatbot responds, even though no one from the team is there. Intended for night and weekend operations.
With "AI Takes Over", the system checks before each request whether the bot would answer at all: emergency stop, client's chatbot switch, widget override, and the activation mode all count. If any of these says No, the widget automatically falls back to the Offline Form — it never opens a chat behind which no one is present.
Warning about the combination: If the chatbot's activation mode is set to "Only when an agent is online", "AI Takes Over" cancels itself out — the bot is silent exactly when no one is there. In this case, the widget shows the form.
Fallback contacts are also used if an AI Handoff finds no available team — see the article Handoff Rules. Empty fields are not displayed.
Auto-Close
With "Auto-Close after X hours", inactive conversations are automatically closed. Default: 24 hours. Set the value to 0 to disable Auto-Close.
Session Timeout
The Session Timeout (default: 30 minutes) determines after which inactivity a visitor session is considered ended. This affects visitor statistics, not the conversation.