Configuring idle timeout and disconnection settings for unified agent statuses

Unified agent statusis part ofomnichannel routingand provides a way for agents to control their availability for email, voice, and messaging from a single menu. However, there are situations in which Zendesk can infer and automatically update an agent's status, such as lengthy periods of inactivity or a detected disconnection. Admins can use the Status timeouts page in Admin Center to configure the desired idle timeout and status as well as the disconnection status for each unified agent status.


What's my plan?







All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus










Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise







Verified AI summary ◀▼
Configure idle timeout and disconnection settings to manage agent availability across channels. Set idle timeout to update agent status after inactivity, and adjust disconnection status for network or session disruptions. Customize statuses to suit your team's workflow, ensuring agents are marked as away or offline when needed. This helps maintain accurate agent presence and improves response management.






Location: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing
> Status timeouts


Unified agent status is part of omnichannel routing and provides a way for agents to control
their availability for email, voice, and messaging from a single menu. However, there
are situations in which Zendesk can infer and automatically update an agent's status,
such as lengthy periods of inactivity or a detected disconnection. Admins can use the
Status timeouts page in Admin Center to configure the desired idle timeout and status as
well as the disconnection status for each unified agent status.
This article contains the following topics:
Considerations for configuring idle timeouts and disconnection behavior
Configuring a status's idle timeout behavior
Configuring a status's disconnection behavior




Considerations for configuring idle timeouts and disconnection behavior

Consider the following when modifying a status's idle timeout and disconnection
behaviors:
Updates made to a idle timeout behavior won't be reflected for agents
currently working on tickets until they refresh the page.
In the event that a disconnection event occurs while an agent is in an idle
status, the disconnection status overwrites the idle status.
If an agent is removed from a group while using a custom unified agent
status that is restricted to that group, when they become idle or
disconnected, their status changes to Offline.





Configuring a status's idle timeout behavior

The idle timeout and disconnection settings can be configured individually for each
unified agent status. Idle timeout is turned off by default and must be selected if
you want Zendesk to infer agent status based on session activity. For the purposes
of idle timeout, inactivity is defined as no mouse or keyboard interactions
within the Zendesk tab of a browser. However, even if
an agent is idle by this definition, updates to an agent's status by the API cause
the idle timer to reset.
In most cases, the default idle status is Keep current status and no idle
timeout value, but, if you turned on idle timeouts prior to September 8, 2025, your
unified agent statuses inherit a default idle status of Away or
Offline and an idle timeout of 10 minutes.


Configuring an idle timeout for a status

To turn on and configure an idle timeout for a status, you must change the
unified agent status's idle status to anything other than Keep current
status.

To configure idle timeout for a status
In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status
timeouts.
In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status you want to
configure an idle timeout for.
Select the preferred Idle status. This could be one of the
standard unified agent statuses (away or transfers only)
or a custom unified agent status. Selecting Keep current status
turns off idle timeout for the status.

Under Idle timer, enter a value between 5 and 1440 minutes, after
which an agent is deemed inactive and their status should be updated to
the configured idle status.
Click Save.





Turning off a status's idle timeout

Admins can turn off idle timeout for each unified agent status individually.
Make sure you inform agents if you disable the fallback status for idle agents.
They will need to manually set themselves to away or offline when
they are unavailable to receive work.

To disable idle status
In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status
timeouts.
In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status for which you
want to turn off idle timeout.
Change the Idle status to Keep current status.
Click Save.






Configuring a status's disconnection behavior

In addition to idle timeout, Zendesk can also infer session connectivity based on the
following disconnection events:
An agent closes the Agent Workspace without signing out (by
closing down their computer or browser window or putting their computer to
sleep)
An agent’s connection is lost due to a network outage


It's generally considered a best practice to configure the disconnection status to
keep an agent's current status only in cases where the agent's status is related to
PTO or already offline.

Note: A disconnection event is different from a Zendesk session expiring.


Configuring a disconnection status

To turn on and configure a disconnection status, you must set the unified agent
status's disconnection status to anything other than Keep current
status.

To configure a status's disconnection status
In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status
timeouts.
In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status you want to
configure an idle timeout for.
Select the preferred Disconnection status. This could be one of
the standard unified agent statuses (away, transfer only,
or offline) or a custom unified agent status. Selecting Keep
current status turns off the disconnection status.

Click Save.





Turning off a status's disconnection status

Admins can turn off the disconnection status behavior for each unified agent
status individually.

To disable a status's disconnection status
In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, select Omnichannel routing > Status
timeouts.
In the table of unified agent statuses, find the status for which you
want to turn disconnection status.
Change the Disconnection status to Keep current
status.
Click Save.





{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5286614817562-Configuring-idle-timeout-and-disconnection-settings-for-unified-agent-statuses",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5286614817562-Configuring-idle-timeout-and-disconnection-settings-for-unified-agent-statuses",
"headline": "Configuring idle timeout and disconnection settings for unified agent statuses",
"description": "You can configure idle timeout and disconnection status settings for unified agent statuses to control how agent availability is automatically updated based on inactivity or disconnection events.",
"articleSection": "Team members and groups",
"datePublished": "2023-01-06T22:05:39+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-03-24T14:00:21.353039+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5286614817562-Configuring-idle-timeout-and-disconnection-settings-for-unified-agent-statuses"
},
"author": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"url": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk"
},
"isPartOf": {
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Zendesk Help",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us"
},
"about": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Zendesk"
}
}
//
const fast_path_style = document.createElement('style');
fast_path_style.innerHTML = `#article-body .fastpath{font-size:.9em;background-color:#f3f3f3;border:1px solid #d3d3d3;padding:10px 10px 8px;margin-bottom:16px}#article-body .fastpath::before{content:none!important}`;
document.head.appendChild(fast_path_style);