Description:
When an agent sets their status to "Away" (unavailable) and specifies both a start and end date/time for this period, Freshdesk does not automatically reactivate the agent's availability once the end time is reached. The agent remains stuck in "Away" status until someone manually switches it back to "Available."
Current behavior:
- Agent sets status to Away with a defined start and end time.
- End time passes.
- Status stays on "Away" — no automatic change occurs.
- Freshworks support has confirmed this is expected/known behavior, not a bug, and that there is currently no option to have the status turn back on automatically.
Expected behavior:
If an end time is explicitly provided when scheduling an "Away" status, Freshdesk should automatically set the agent back to "Available" once that end time is reached. Otherwise, offering an end time field serves no functional purpose and is misleading to admins and agents who reasonably expect it to control something.
Why this matters:
- Agents and team leads rely on the end time to plan coverage; when it silently does nothing, tickets can go unassigned or availability dashboards show stale/incorrect data until someone notices and manually intervenes.
- The only documented workaround is configuring "Agent Shifts" so that availability toggles automatically based on the agent's shift schedule. However, in our account, we cannot find an "Agent Shifts" configuration option anywhere in Admin (under Team we only see Agents, Groups, Roles, Business Hours, and Agent Status — no Agent Shifts). The "Agent Status" section only lets us define status categories (Available / Unavailable-Busy / Unavailable-Away) and does not support any time-based scheduling with automatic reactivation.
- This means the one workaround Freshworks points to for this exact issue is not accessible to us, leaving no way to make the "end time" field on a scheduled Away status actually do anything.
Requested fix:
- Automatically switch an agent's status back to "Available" (or their previous status) when a scheduled Away/OOO end time is reached, regardless of whether Agent Shifts are configured.
- If Agent Shifts remains the intended mechanism for this, please clarify where this can be configured in the current Admin interface, since it does not appear under Team > Agent Status, Business Hours, Groups, or Roles in our account.
