A department represents a business unit in your organization with specific responsibilities. Departments help you group agents and route incoming chats or tickets to the appropriate team, making customer requests easier to manage.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Log in to your Comm100 Control Panel.
2. From the left navigation menu, go to Global Settings > People > Departments.
   
   
3. Turn on the Departments, and click New Department.
   
4. On the New Department page, enter the department name and add agents to the department. You can add a description to help identify the department.
   
   
5. Choose whether the department is available in Live Chat and Ticketing & Messaging. By default, a newly created department is available in both products. 
   • Available in Live Chat: When selected, the department is available for Live Chat and can be used in features such as the Pre-Chat window, offline messages, chat transfers, routing rules, and auto-distribution. If deselected, the department is unavailable in Live Chat and does not appear as an option in these configurations.
   • Available in Ticketing & Messaging: When selected, the department appears as an option in Ticketing & Messaging configurations such as auto distribution rules and triggers.
     
6. Click Save.

The department is now created and can be used in the enabled Live Chat or Ticketing & Messaging configurations.

Use Department in the Pre-Chat Window

After you create a department and make it available in Live Chat, Department becomes available as a system field in the pre-chat field list.

To allow visitors to select a department before starting a chat, follow these steps:

1. From the left navigation menu, go to Live Chat > Campaign > Pre-chat. If you use multiple campaigns, make sure you select the correct campaign.
   
   
2. In the Fields section, configure whether the Department field is visible or required.
   
   
3. Click Save.

When the Department field appears in the pre-chat window, all departments available for Live Chat are listed with their current status, such as online or offline.

When a visitor selects an online department and submits the chat request, the request is automatically routed to agents in the selected department. The visitor-selected department is also retained as part of the chat information.

To learn how to enable and customize the pre-chat window, see this article.