Assigning conversations

Every conversation in Ochre has zero or one assignee. The assignee is the person on the hook for the next reply. This page covers how assignment works, how to change it, and how to let routing do most of the work for you.

Why assignment matters

Two reasons.

First, the Mine filter only shows conversations assigned to you. If nothing is assigned, nothing lands in your queue, and conversations rot in Unassigned.

Second, customers feel a single owner. When the same agent handles a thread end to end, replies are faster, context is tighter, and CSAT scores climb.

Assigning to yourself

Open a conversation, click the assignee field at the top, and pick yourself. The conversation immediately appears in Mine.

Assigning to a teammate

Open the conversation, click the assignee field, and pick a teammate from the list. The list shows everyone in the workspace with assign-eligible permissions.

The new assignee gets an in-app notification. If they have email or Slack DM notifications enabled, those fire too. Per-user preferences in Notification preferences.

Reassigning does not reset the conversation. Status, tags, history, AI drafts — all stay. The only thing that changes is who owns the next reply.

Unassigning

Click the assignee field and pick Unassigned. The conversation goes back to the triage queue and shows up in the Unassigned filter.

Unassigning is the right call when you go on vacation, pick up a ticket by mistake, or hand a thread back to triage because the customer needs a different specialty.

Auto-assignment via routing rules

Most teams shouldn't be assigning by hand. The routing-rules assign action can claim conversations on inbound. Two flavors:

• Pick a specific teammate by user ID — useful for named-account ownership.
• Pick round-robin — Ochre calls pick_default_assignee to rotate across the team.

You can layer multiple rules: VIP customers go to a senior agent (specific user), everyone else round-robins. See Routing rules.

Once your rules cover most inbound, manual assignment becomes the exception.

AI Queue handoff

When Autopilot is on and the AI is handling a conversation, the assignee field still works. Clicking Take Over on a conversation in the AI Queue stamps ai_handoff_at (suppressing further AI auto-send) AND assigns the conversation to the caller — assignment and handoff are tied together at that moment. See Autopilot for the bigger picture.

Permissions

Anyone with agent role or higher can assign conversations to themselves and to others. Viewers cannot assign. See Roles permissions.

The assignee can be any active user in the workspace. Deactivated users won't appear in the picker, and conversations they previously owned stay assigned to them until you reassign.

Reassignment etiquette

Add an internal note when you reassign mid-thread, with a one-line summary of where things stand. The next agent shouldn't have to re-read the whole thread. Use Internal notes and Mentions to make the handoff explicit.

Related

• Routing rules for auto-assignment.
• Inbox filters for Mine and Unassigned.
• Inbox overview.