Overview

Balanced assignment gives waiting conversations to eligible teammates with the fewest open conversations. It uses teammate availability and assignment limits to avoid automatically adding work when someone is at capacity.

Use it for team inboxes where the amount of work already assigned matters more than an equal rotation of new conversations.

Turn on Balanced assignment

You need permission to Manage Balanced Assignment and Workload. Teammates who receive conversations must have Full seats.

1. Go to Settings → Members & Teams → Teams

2. Expand the team inbox you want to configure

3. Choose 'Balanced' as the assignment method

4. Click 'Save changes'

Use a routing Workflow to send conversations to this team.

How conversations are assigned

A teammate can receive a conversation when they belong to the team, are Active, have automatic assignment enabled, and have room under both their teammate limit and the inbox assignment limit.

Among eligible teammates, Featurebase chooses the person with the fewest open conversations across the Workspace. If their counts are equal, it uses the oldest recorded automatic assignment first.

When nobody is eligible, the conversation waits in the team inbox. Balanced assignment picks up waiting work as teammates become available or capacity is freed.

Primary and secondary teammates

In the team's settings, use Member priority to choose 'Primary' or 'Secondary' for each teammate, then click 'Save changes'.

Primary teammates receive the team's work first. Secondary teammates provide overflow cover when no primary teammate is eligible. A secondary teammate's own primary inbox work takes precedence when they can receive it.

For example, a teammate can be Primary in Technical Support and Secondary in General Support. They help General Support when it needs cover and they have no eligible waiting work in Technical Support.

Set teammate limits

Set the Workspace default

1. Go to Settings → Inbox → Assignments → Workload management

2. Under Assignment capacity, enter the Default assignment limit

3. Press Enter or click outside the field to save

The limit counts open conversations across the teammate's inboxes. Leave the field empty for no Workspace limit. Snoozed and closed conversations do not use capacity.

Adjust individual limits

Open the Teammate limits tab. Enter a limit beside a teammate and press Enter to save.

• A positive number - Sets that teammate's limit

• An empty field - Uses the Workspace default

• 0 - Removes the teammate's overall limit

You can also select teammates and click 'Set limit…', enter a value, and click 'Apply'. Use 'Pause assignment' to stop automatic assignment temporarily, or 'Resume assignment' to restore it.

Prioritize waiting conversations

In Assignments → Workload management, drag the rules under Conversation priority order. The first rule takes precedence; lower rules break ties.

• Team inbox order - Uses the inbox order in Settings → Members & Teams → Teams

• Priority - Puts conversations marked as priority first

• SLA breach time - Puts the earliest SLA deadline first

• Waiting longest - Puts customers who have waited longest for a reply first

• Oldest conversation - Puts conversations started earliest first

Primary inbox work takes precedence over secondary inbox work. The selected rules then determine the order within each group.

Let teammates take the next conversation

Turn on Let teammates take the next conversation on the same page. Teammates can then click 'Take next' in the Inbox to receive the next waiting conversation from their Balanced team inboxes, using the same priority order.

Reassign after snoozing

In Assignments → General, use Reassign unsnoozed conversations to control what happens when a snoozed conversation reopens:

• Reassign when the assignee is at capacity - Returns the conversation for reassignment if the teammate has no room for it in a team that enforces limits

• Reassign when the assignee is away - Uses either Any away status or Away & reassign only, depending on your selection

The conversation returns through its team inbox for assignment. If nobody can receive it, it stays with the team without an individual assignee.

FAQs