Conversation Auto-Closing

Boei automatically closes inactive conversations so your inbox stays focused on what needs attention. Closure rules depend on whether the chat is still with the AI or has been picked up by an agent.

How to get there: Closed conversations are visible in Inbox → status filter set to Closed. Closed AI chats also feed transcript emails and post-processing analytics.

AI Conversations (no agent assigned)

Pure AI chatbot conversations close automatically after 20 minutes of inactivity.

Inactivity is measured as the most recent of:

  • The last message sent (in either direction), and
  • The last time the widget polled the server (the visitor having the chat window open and active)

If either signal is younger than 20 minutes, the conversation stays open. As long as the visitor still has the widget open and is polling, the chat will not be auto-closed, even if no new messages are being sent.

Once closed, the conversation gets:

  • status set to closed
  • The AI completion timestamp recorded for analytics
  • Post-processing queued (summary, sentiment, tags, optional transcript email)

Live Chats (agent assigned)

When an agent has claimed a chat, different rules apply:

  • Claimed chat, visitor went idle - closes after 15 minutes without the widget polling. A system message is added noting the auto-close.
  • Claimed chat, visitor never polled (e.g. they left before the agent's first reply went out) - closes after 1 hour of no activity.
  • Escalated chat waiting for an agent - never auto-closed. It stays visible in your inbox until an agent handles it.

When a live chat has switched to an async channel (such as email), polling staleness is ignored. The customer may be very active over email but never reopen the widget, so those threads are not auto-closed by these rules.

Reopening a Conversation

A conversation can come back to open in two ways:

  • A new inbound message arrives (visitor replies, email reply, etc.)
  • The AI post-processor decides a transcript should be sent and reopens the thread for follow-up

Closed conversations are not deleted, you can always find them via the status filter.

Routing of reopened live chats

When a visitor reopens a previously closed live chat (one that had an agent assigned), Boei decides where it goes based on whether that agent is still online:

  • Previous agent is online - the chat goes back to the same agent and shows up in their live panel right away, so the conversation continues with someone the visitor already spoke to.
  • Previous agent is offline - the chat is returned to the queue, a system note is added to the thread ("Agent {name} is offline. Chat returned to queue."), and any other available agents are notified so the visitor is not left waiting.

Agents are marked offline automatically after about 10 minutes without activity, so this routing handles the common case of a visitor coming back hours or days later when their original agent is no longer at their desk.