Why am I being forced away?
The main cause of being forced away is that you were online and didn't respond to a messages.
Olark Force Away
You will receive a notification from Olark saying that you are being forced away when you have received a message from a visitor but have not responded.
If you do not respond to the initial inbound chat within 5 minutes and no other messages are sent to other visitors, Olark will automatically force you away so you will not miss any more new visitor chats.
Olark force away is a universal setting and cannot be adjusted or turned off.
When does the timer begin?
- The first message on any conversation that doesn't start with [info] starts a 5 minute timer for each agent the message was sent to.
- Whenever we hear from an agent for any reason (presence update, messaging that visitor, messaging another visitor) we clear the timer.
- If the timer expires we mark the agent as away and send them a notification that they have been set to away.
Chat client auto-away
The second cause is that your chat program may be setting itself away after a certain amount of time spent idle. These options vary depending on the IM client, but can usually be found in the Preferences or Settings menu.
You can follow the following links for more info about the auto-away feature for the following clients:
Related article
- Automatic Replies for Delayed Chats Use our Javascript API to automatically respond to visitors who have not yet received a reply from your agent