Receive conversation work and manage presence
Copilot Service workspace brings assigned work and time-sensitive work offers into one experience. For example, a service representative might review an assigned case while remaining available for a new conversation. Here, you distinguish inbox items from incoming notifications, follow a conversation into a session, and explain how presence affects work distribution.
| Experience | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Inbox | Shows assigned cases, conversations, and records that a representative can locate and manage. |
| Incoming notification | Alerts a representative to a new assignment, transfer, escalation, consult, or conversation request that might require an immediate response. |
Distinguish assigned work from incoming offers
The Inbox is the central list for a representative's assigned work. Depending on its configuration, it can include cases, conversations, and other routed records. A representative selects an item to open it in a tab or promotes inbox work to a regular session when more time or context is needed.
An incoming notification serves a different purpose. It draws attention to a work event, such as an incoming chat or text conversation, a transfer, a consult, a record assignment, or an escalation from an AI agent. The notification can include customer details and actions that reflect the organization's notification settings.
When a representative accepts a conversation request, Copilot Service workspace starts a session. The session opens Active Conversation, where the representative sees customer and case context. For a messaging conversation, the communication panel also opens so the representative can exchange messages with the customer.
Notification behavior depends on configuration. A notification might let the representative accept or reject a request, assign the item automatically, or accept the conversation automatically and open a session. Some record assignments can't be rejected. Time-out details, desktop alerts, and the information shown in a notification also depend on organizational settings.
Interpret presence and capacity changes
Presence indicates whether a representative is available to receive work through unified routing. The statuses shown to a representative have these meanings in the work experience:
| Presence status | Meaning for the representative |
|---|---|
| Available | The representative has unused capacity and is ready for work. |
| Busy | The representative has partially used capacity and might still receive allowed work. |
| Do not disturb | The representative has no available capacity or chooses not to receive more work. |
| Appear away | The representative indicates that they're away from active work. |
| Offline | The representative isn't available for work or is disconnected. |
| Inactive | The system marks the representative inactive after a missed notification when that behavior is enabled. The representative can't select this status manually. |
Capacity represents how much work a representative can handle at one time. When the representative accepts work, the work consumes capacity. When work closes, capacity becomes available again. The system can recalculate Available, Busy, or Do not disturb from the resulting capacity use.
Manual and automatic updates work together. If a representative manually selects Available or Busy, accepting or closing work can trigger a capacity-based recalculation. Manually selected Do not disturb, Appear away, or Offline persists until the representative changes it or signs out.
Other events can also change presence. A missed notification can set Inactive, and a rejected notification can set Do not disturb, when the corresponding behaviors are enabled. A browser closure, sign-out, device shutdown, or network disruption sets the representative to Offline. After reconnection, the system either restores or recalculates presence according to the reconnect timing and current work.
Note
A displayed status doesn't by itself define every routing outcome. Administrators choose which presence statuses are allowed for each workstream, so the work a representative receives varies by design.
Apply the work-receipt flow in a service scenario
Consider a representative named Alex who begins the day with Available presence. Alex opens the inbox and selects an assigned case for review. The inbox item is existing assigned work, so opening it differs from responding to a new conversation offer.
While Alex reviews the case, an incoming conversation notification appears. In this organization, representatives can accept or reject chat requests. Alex selects Accept, which starts a session, opens Active Conversation, and displays the communication panel. The accepted conversation consumes part of Alex's capacity, so the system recalculates the presence as Busy.
After Alex completes and closes the work, capacity becomes available and presence is recalculated. If Alex misses a later notification, Inactive appears only when the missed-notification behavior is enabled. In an organization that uses automatic acceptance, the incoming conversation instead opens in a session without an accept action.
For a functional consultant, this flow provides a concise design lens. Confirm which work appears in the inbox, which events create notifications, whether representatives have accept or reject choices, and how capacity and allowed presence statuses support the service model. These decisions shape the representative experience without requiring representatives to understand the underlying administration.
With work receipt and presence established, the next unit examines how representatives manage the sessions and application tabs created by their work.