Conversation Auto-Closing

Boei automatically closes inactive AI conversations so your inbox stays focused on what needs attention. Once an agent takes over a chat, closing it becomes the agent's responsibility, Boei does not silently auto-close claimed conversations.

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.

Global rule: conversations with a pending operator action (an approval card waiting for your decision) are never auto-closed, regardless of the timers below.

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)

Once an agent has taken over a chat (or has been auto-assigned to it), the chat stays open until the agent closes it. There is no visitor-idle timer that closes claimed chats behind the agent's back. This matches how tools like Intercom, HubSpot, and Chatwoot handle agent-assigned conversations.

Two exceptions apply:

• Escalated chat waiting for an agent - if no agent claims the chat within 24 hours, Boei auto-closes it and adds a system note ("Automatically closed after 24 hours without agent response"). The note is visible to agents in the thread timeline but not to the visitor. If the visitor replies later, the conversation reopens normally.
• Async channels (email/WhatsApp/SMS) - polling staleness is meaningless here, so nothing auto-closes them either.

If you claim a chat and get pulled away, the chat sits open. Close it when you are done, or leave it and the visitor's next reply keeps the thread live.

Reopening a Conversation

A closed 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.