The Problem
Someone goes on vacation. Or takes a day off. Or is on sick leave. Every day someone in the company is unavailable - but emails, tickets, and tasks keep coming in.
Without a substitution system, one of two things happens:
- Requests wait until the person returns (the client waits)
- Someone manually monitors and reassigns tickets (extra work for someone)
For emails, a common practice is setting up an autoresponder - “I’m on vacation until April 25, for urgent matters please contact Anna: [email protected]”. This works, and you can configure it in Intum at the mailbox level too.
But an autoresponder has its limitations. The client gets information that nobody is available and has to write to someone else on their own. If you want the client to get a response as quickly as possible - without passing the work to them - there’s a better mechanism.
How It Works in Intum
In Intum, absences are combined with the existing ticket escalation mechanism. The idea is simple: if we know someone is away, we don’t wait for the SLA to be breached - we act immediately.
Setting an Absence
Each user can mark themselves as unavailable:
- Click your avatar in the upper right corner
- Select Settings (or go to your profile)
- Set:
- Status - “Unavailable” / “On leave”
- Unavailable until - optional return date (the system will automatically restore the status)
- Substitute - who takes over your responsibilities
An administrator can also set an absence for any user in the team management panel.
What Happens After Setting an Absence
When a user is marked as unavailable:
- New tickets assigned to this person are immediately routed to the substitute (if specified) or to the desk pool
- Existing open tickets for this person - the system can reassign them to the substitute or leave them (depending on settings)
- Escalation treats the absence as an immediate SLA breach - it doesn’t wait, it immediately proceeds to the next step
Connection with Escalation
Escalation policies have a “Skip people on leave” option. When enabled:
- An escalation step assigned to an absent person is skipped
- The system jumps to the next step (e.g., supervisor notification)
- No time is wasted notifying someone who won’t respond anyway
In practice, this means one click (“I’m unavailable”) is enough - and the system takes care of the rest, using the escalation rules you already have configured.
What the Absence System Affects
One person’s absence can impact many things in a company. The system handles work redirection in all modules where someone is assigned as responsible:
- Tickets (Helpdesk) - new tickets bypass the absent person, existing ones go to the substitute or desk pool
- Emails (Mail) - new messages in the absent operator’s mailboxes/folders are redirected to the substitute. You can also enable an autoresponder
- Live chats (Webchat) - the client is waiting in the window, so the reaction here is fastest - new conversations are immediately routed to an available operator
- Phone calls (VoIP) - redirection to the substitute or call center queue instead of ringing the absent person
- Clients and deals (CRM) - notifications about client activity (new email, ticket, approaching deadline) go to the substitute account manager
- Tasks and projects (Organize) - supervisor notification about tasks with upcoming deadlines belonging to the absent person
- Knowledge base comments - comments awaiting moderation go to another person with moderator permissions
- Forms - notifications about new form submissions are redirected to the substitute
Three Absence Scenarios
The system reacts to absence in three ways, depending on how much it knows about the situation:
1. Known Absence (Vacation, Sick Leave)
The user set their status to “unavailable” themselves, or an admin did it. The system knows in advance and reacts immediately - redirects tickets to the substitute, skips this person in escalation. Zero delay.
2. Detected Absence (No Activity)
The system tracks every user’s activity - logins, clicks, ticket responses. If someone is assigned to a ticket but has had no activity in the system for a while - they’re probably just not there. They left early, are in an off-site meeting, or forgot to set their status.
In this situation, there’s no point waiting the full SLA time. The system can shorten the escalation time because it knows this person won’t respond anyway - not because they’re busy with other tickets, but because they’re not using the system at all.
This works counterintuitively:
- Someone is active in the system but not responding to a ticket - they’re busy, they see notifications, give them time
- Someone has no activity at all - they’re not there, escalate faster
No user needs to click anything. The system detects this automatically based on data it already collects.
3. Unknown Cause (Standard SLA)
The standard case - we don’t know anything, someone simply didn’t respond within the designated time. Escalation works normally, step by step, according to the policy.
All three scenarios lead to the same result: work gets to someone who will handle it. Only the reaction time differs - from immediate (vacation) through shortened (no activity) to standard (SLA).
Setting Up a Substitute
A substitute is the person who takes over the absent person’s responsibilities. They can be set at several levels:
- User - in their profile, they choose who substitutes for them. The simplest option, sufficient for small teams
- Group - instead of a specific person, you can designate a group. The system will distribute work among available group members
- No substitute - tickets return to the desk pool and wait for an available operator
The best approach is a combination: designate a substitute for everyday matters, and for exceptional situations let escalation handle the rest.
Absence Calendar
In the Automation panel, there’s a team absence overview - who is unavailable, until when, and who is substituting for them. Useful for managers to get a picture of the situation.
Tips
- Set a return date - the system will automatically restore the status. Without a date, you need to manually unmark it after returning
- The substitute should know about the substitution - the system will send them a notification, but it’s also worth telling them in person
- Test on one team before enabling globally
- Combine with escalation - setting an absence alone without an escalation policy isn’t enough. Escalation is the engine that reacts to the absence
- Smart escalation based on activity works automatically - it requires no configuration from users
- Chats and VoIP require the fastest response - the client is waiting in real time. Tickets and tasks are less urgent