Teams: route conversations by department, language, or skill

Teams group agents so conversations land with the right people automatically instead of sitting in one shared pile that everyone has to scan. You can split work by department (Support, Sales, Billing), by language (an EN team, a DE team, a PT-BR team), or by skill level (Tier 1 generalists versus Tier 2 specialists). When a conversation comes in, an automation rule sends it to the matching team (or an agent sets the team by hand), and those agents pick it up. Teams are available on the Business plan and above.

What is a team in Deskwoot?

A team is a named group of agents with a small amount of configuration: who belongs to it and whether new conversations get spread across its members automatically. It sits on top of the normal assignee and inbox model, so a conversation can still be assigned to one specific agent inside a team when you want a single person accountable for it.

Common ways teams get set up

• By department. Support, Sales, Billing, Onboarding. This helps most when your main support inbox keeps catching sales and billing questions that need different people.
• By language. An EN team, a DE team, a PT-BR team. Combined with built-in translation, each customer gets answered in their own language by someone who speaks it.
• By skill or tier. Tier 1 handles the first reply, Tier 2 owns escalations.
• By region or time zone. An EMEA team during European hours, an AMER team for the Americas. Pairs with Business Hours so there is always someone awake on the rotation.

How do conversations get into a team?

There are 2 ways in:

1. Automation rules. Match on message content, inbox, label, or a contact attribute, then assign the conversation to a team with the Assign Team action. This is how a billing question that lands in the generic support inbox gets handed to the Billing team, and how every conversation of one inbox can go to one team.
2. Manual assignment. An agent can move a conversation to a different team under TEAM in the Details tab of the conversation's right panel.

Auto-assignment inside a team

Once a conversation belongs to a team, auto-assignment can pick a specific agent inside it. Each team has the switch Assign conversations to team members automatically (open the team with Manage), which gives 2 modes:

• Round robin (switch on). The least busy online team member gets it, as long as the inbox assigns by Round Robin (Collaborators tab of the inbox). Best when volume should spread evenly and any agent can handle any ticket.
• Manual (switch off). The conversation stays with the team but without a named owner, so whoever picks it up first owns it. Best for specialist teams where the right person depends on the context.

Online status, the cap on how many open conversations an agent can hold, and per-agent suspension all feed into the rotation, so a busy or off-shift agent never gets handed a fresh ticket.

What can each team see?

Visibility does not depend on teams. Administrators see every conversation. An agent sees the conversations assigned to them, the unassigned ones, the ones transferred to them and the ones where a teammate @mentioned them. There is no setting that limits an agent to their own team's conversations. On Enterprise, a custom role with Restrict view to conversations assigned to this agent limits an agent to the conversations assigned to them, which keeps Tier 1 out of Tier 2 escalations until they are handed over.

Reporting by team

Reports have no team filter. They show conversations by status, channel and label, CSAT, first response and resolution time, and Agent Performance with the numbers of each agent, so you can compare the people in a team and spot where a team is short-staffed.

Which plans include teams?

Teams are on the Business plan and above. On Startup you work from shared inboxes with manual or round robin assignment. Business and up unlocks teams and automation rules that assign a team. SLA policies and custom roles, which pair well with a tiered team setup, are Enterprise features.

How to set up your first team

1. Go to Settings > Teams and click Create new team.
2. Name the team (for example, "Sales") and add a short description so other agents understand its scope.
3. Click Manage on the team and add members.
4. Leave Assign conversations to team members automatically on for an even spread, or switch it off for specialist teams.
5. For automatic assignment, check under Settings > Inboxes (Configure, Collaborators tab) that the inbox assigns by Round Robin.
6. If you need conditional routing, build a rule in Settings > Automation (for example, messages containing "refund" go to the Billing team).

Frequently asked questions