Announcing enhancements to agent timeout and disconnection configurations

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
September 8, 2025 | September 8, 2025 | September 17, 2025

Zendesk is excited to introduce a new and improved way to manage agent statuses when idle timeouts and disconnection events occur.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

For clarity, an idle timeout occurs when no mouse or keyboard interactions are detected from the agent for a set period of time. A disconnection is defined as an agent closing the browser, putting their computer to sleep, or losing network connection without changing their status to indicate they are unavailable.

Until now, there have been limited options for how to handle idle timeouts and disconnections. Specifically, admins could decide whether agents should have their status automatically changed to Away or Offline after an idle timeout, and disconnection events always resulted in the agent's status being changed to Offline.

Now, admins can configure the idle timeout period, idle status, and disconnection status for each unified agent status.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Zendesk recognized that businesses want more control and flexibility in managing their agents' statuses in response to idle timeouts and disconnections. Configuring idle timeout and disconnection settings individually for each unified agent status allows organizations to tailor these settings to better fit their operational needs and improve workforce management.

What do I need to do?

These new settings are available to all omnichannel routing customers. To learn more about configuring and using these options, see Configuring idle timeout and disconnection settings for unified agent statuses.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.