Agents, profiles and permissions

Overview

Each person who uses ChatISP has their own account, identified by email. What they see and what they can do in the system is not decided account by account, but by the access profile they belong to: a profile is a list of permissions, and everyone in the same profile has exactly the same reach.

Team management lives in two screens of the Administration group in the side menu:

The system ships with three ready-made profiles (Administrator, Supervisor and Agent), and you can create as many profiles of your own as you like, for example "Billing", "Field technician" or "Night supervisor".

The Agents screen

Open Agents in the side menu. The screen shows a table with the whole team, a search field at the top and, on the right side of the header, the Access profiles button (for those who can manage profiles) and the New agent button (for those who can manage the team).

Table columns

Search

The Search by name, username, email or department field filters the table as you type. The search also matches the WhatsApp number, the connection name and the profile name. Next to the field you see the count: the team total, or "filtered / total" when a search is active.

Plan agent limit Plan limit

The contracted plan defines how many active agents the system supports. When the plan has a cap, the screen header shows a meter in the format "X of Y agents in your plan", which changes color near the limit and turns into Plan limit reached when it gets there. Once the cap is reached, the New agent button no longer appears, and reactivating an inactive account is also refused until a seat is freed.

Register an agent

1. In Agents, click New agent.
2. Fill in Name and Email (both are required).
3. If you want the person to receive queue and transfer alerts on their phone, enter the Agent WhatsApp.
4. Choose the Role. The suggested default is Agent.
5. In Initial access, choose how the person will sign in: Set the password now, Invite by email or Invite by WhatsApp (see Invitation).
6. Check the Departments and, if applicable, the Connections they work in.
7. Review the Receive WhatsApp alerts and Active switches (both start on) and click Save.

Registration fields

Invitation by email or WhatsApp

Instead of you making up a password and passing it on to the person, the invitation sends a secure link: they open the link, create their own password and are signed in right away. This is the recommended method, because nobody except the agent ever knows their password.

How to invite

1. In New agent, fill in name, email and profile.
2. In Initial access, choose Invite by email or Invite by WhatsApp. To invite by WhatsApp, the agent's number must be filled in.
3. Click Save. If sending works, Invitation sent! appears. If sending fails, the invitation remains valid and the system opens the Invitation link window with the message Sending failed, but the invitation is active: copy the link and send it yourself.

The WhatsApp invitation is sent through the system's own connected WhatsApp; that is why the option shows (channel unavailable) while no connection is connected. The email invitation is sent through the Ravi Systems email service and does not depend on any configuration on your server.

What the person receives

A message with their name, the access email and the link, stating that it is valid for 72 hours. When they open the link, the Access invitation screen shows Your access e-mail and asks for the password twice. The Create password and sign in button only accepts a strong password; once accepted, the person is signed in right away, straight to their profile's home page.

Validity and stable link

• The invitation is valid for 72 hours from when it is sent.
• The link stays the same while the invitation is pending and within its validity: resending through another channel or copying it again does not invalidate the link you already sent.
• Actually resending (by email or WhatsApp) renews the validity for another 72 hours, keeping the same link.
• After it expires, the row's tag becomes Invitation expired and whoever opens the link sees This invitation has expired. Ask the system administrator to resend it. The next resend generates a new link.
• The link can be used only once: after the password is created, opening the same link shows Invitation not found.

Resend or copy the link

On the row of an agent with a pending invitation, click Invitation. The Access invitation window shows when it was last sent (Sent on) and offers Invite by email, Invite by WhatsApp (each one only appears if the corresponding data is registered) and Copy link, so you can send it however you prefer.

Departments, connections and conversation limit

Departments

The departments checked in the registration decide which queues the agent takes part in: they receive the conversations of those departments (manually or through automatic distribution) and their queue alerts. An agent can be in several departments. With no department, they only work on the conversations assigned or transferred directly to them. Creating departments and distribution is explained in Departments.

Connections per agent

When the internet service provider (ISP) has more than one WhatsApp number (for example, one for sales and one for support, or numbers for different cities), you can restrict each agent to the connections they work in:

• No connection checked (the default): the agent works in all of them.
• One or more checked: they only see and receive the conversations and calls of those connections, including in automatic distribution, queue alerts and campaigns.
• The restriction applies to any profile, including those with Supervise all conversations: whoever checked the boxes decided where the person works.
• A number connected at the same time by QR code and through the official API appears as a single entry in the list: checking that number covers both forms of connection.
• Connections appear in the list even when they are currently disconnected, because the restriction is part of the registration.
• If a checked connection is deleted, it leaves the restriction automatically; if it was the only one checked, the agent goes back to working in all of them.

When transferring or sharing a conversation, the list of destinations already shows only those who work in that conversation's connection.

Concurrent conversation limit

The cap on how many conversations each agent receives at the same time is not set in the agent's registration, but in the department: the Maximum per agent in round-robin field, available when the department's automatic distribution is turned on. Above that number, the round-robin stops delivering conversations to the agent and the queue waits. The cap applies to all agents in that department. See Departments.

Access profiles

Open Access profiles in the menu (or through the button of the same name on the Agents screen). The screen is split in two: on the left, the list of profiles, each with its number of people and a summary of its reach (Full access, "N permissions" or Basic support only); on the right, the editor of the selected profile.

The system profiles

All three are tagged System. System profiles cannot be deleted; customize their permissions or create your own profiles.

What every profile has, even with no permissions

Every profile has basic support: their own conversations, the queues of their departments, the service orders they opened or are responsible for, and their own account. In practice, any signed-in user uses Service mode, the Service orders board, the Calendar, Contacts, the Team environment and My account. Permissions extend that reach.

Create a profile

1. Click New profile. A draft appears in the list with the hint Start by checking the permissions below and save.
2. Give it a Name (required and unique) and, if you like, a Description: a short summary for whoever chooses the profile when registering someone.
3. Turn on the switches for the permissions you want. Each group (Support, Administration, Advanced) has the Check all and Clear shortcuts.
4. Click Save.

While there are unsaved changes, switching to another profile in the list asks first (This profile has unsaved changes., with the Discard option), and closing the browser tab also asks for confirmation.

Duplicate

The Duplicate button creates a new profile with the same permissions and the same description, asking only for the Name of the new profile (suggestion: "Copy of ..."). Duplicating the Administrator produces a profile with all current permissions checked, but editable, which is useful for creating an "almost administrator" and then turning off what it should not have.

Who is in this profile

Below the permissions, the editor lists the profile's members with their login, the date of their last access (or Never signed in), and the Invitation pending or Inactive tag when applicable. The Move to another profile button changes a person's profile right there, without going through the Agents screen. You cannot change your own profile.

Delete a profile

Only your own profiles can be deleted. If there are people in the profile, the Delete profile window asks where they should go (Move the people in this profile to): nobody is left without a profile.

Complete permissions table

These are all the permissions that appear in the profile editor, with the exact name on screen and what each one unlocks. The Default column indicates which system profiles have it turned on in a new installation (the Administrator always has all of them).

Support group

Administration group

Advanced group

Sign in as another user

With the Sign in as another user permission, a manager can take over the session of someone on the team to see the system exactly as that person sees it. It is useful to check whether a profile is set up correctly, or to understand what the agent is reporting ("such and such button does not appear").

1. In Agents, click the eye icon (Sign in as) on the person's row.
2. Confirm in Sign in to the system as ...?.
3. The system reloads already in their account, with a fixed bar on the screen: You are viewing the system as ....
4. To go back, click the Back to ... button on the bar. You return to your own account, on the Agents screen.

Rules and limits

• You can only sign in as someone active who has already accepted the invitation, and never as yourself.
• You cannot sign in as someone with more permissions than yours (the screen warns You cannot sign in as someone with more permissions than yours.). An Administrator can sign in as anyone.
• In the other person's account, their security settings are locked: password, two-step verification, WhatsApp, Google Calendar and sessions cannot be changed from there.
• It cannot be chained: while you are signed in as another person, the sign-in-as button disappears.
• Administrative actions taken in this mode are recorded in the audit log with the person's name followed by "(via your name)", and the act of signing in as them is itself recorded in the Agents area.
• Your browser's "stay signed in" never carries over to the other person's account; when you go back, yours is restored.

Deactivate an agent

Deactivating is the way to go for leaves of absence, long vacations or when you have not yet decided to delete. Edit the agent, turn off Active and save.

• The person can no longer sign in, neither with the password nor through the "stay signed in" of a trusted browser.
• They leave automatic distribution and the lists of transfer destinations.
• The plan seat is freed.
• Nothing in the history changes: conversations, messages, notes and reports keep their name.
• To bring them back, turn Active on again (as long as there is a free seat in the plan).

Delete an agent

Click the trash icon on the agent's row. Before anything happens, the Delete ... window gathers everything the person has in the system and shows, with numbers, what stays and what goes in each mode. Nothing happens until you click Delete agent.

How to delete: the two modes

In neither mode does the customer lose history: conversations, messages, internal notes, service orders, voice calls, recordings, internal calls, meetings, appointments and audit records always remain. The only thing that changes is the signature (their name marked as deleted, or "Removed agent").

What goes away

What is in their hands right now

If the person has work in progress (ongoing conversations, open service orders, future appointments, scheduled messages, shared conversations), the window asks where it should go:

• Hand over to another agent: choose an active agent in Who takes over; they receive the conversations, service orders, future appointments and scheduled messages.
• Send back to the queue: conversations go back to the queue of the same department and distribution chooses who handles them; service orders, appointments and scheduled messages are left with no one responsible.

Each moved conversation gets an "Agent deletion" entry in its timeline.

Progress

When you confirm, the account is deactivated and all its sessions drop at the same instant. The rest of the work (which, for someone with years of history, can exceed hundreds of thousands of records) runs on the server, and the window shows the percentage, the current phase and "X of Y records". You can close this window: the work continues on the server. If the server is restarted midway, the deletion resumes automatically from where it stopped.

If something prevents completion, the window shows The deletion stopped halfway and nothing else was deleted. and a Detail for support; send that detail to Ravi Systems support. The completed deletion is recorded in the audit log.

Protections against getting locked out

The system prevents situations in which the installation would be left with no one to administer it:

Ravi Systems support access

To provide support, the Ravi Systems team has its own access credential to ChatISP, the same one it already uses in Ravicor. What the customer needs to know about it:

• It does not appear on the Agents screen or in the profiles, does not take a seat in the plan and does not receive conversations from distribution.
• It cannot be edited, invited or deleted from the Agents screen, and it has no password, two-step verification or "stay signed in" of its own.
• Administrative actions taken by support are recorded in the audit log under the support account's name, like those of any user.