# Status and Availability

Source: https://docs.astalty.com.au/guide/chat/status-and-availability

> Set a Chat status with an emoji, message and clear-after time, and see when someone is away, busy or on leave before you message them.

Astalty Premium - This feature is part of the Astalty Premium plan. See What Premium includes.

> **Enabling Chat**
>
> Chat is an optional feature. The Account Owner can turn it on from the [Optional Features](https://docs.astalty.com.au/guide/settings/optional-features#chat) page.

Your Chat status tells the rest of your team whether you are around. You set your own availability, an optional emoji and message, and how long the status should last - and anyone opening a conversation with someone who is away, busy or on approved leave sees it above the message box before they send.

## Before You Start

Anyone who can use Chat can set their own status and see everyone else's.

## Setting Your Status

Your own status sits at the top of your chat list, under the search box, showing your name and your current status.

![The Chat channel list with the logged-in user's own status row at the top reading Away - Out sick, back Monday, with the face with thermometer emoji on the avatar](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-own-status-row.png)

1. Navigate to [Chat](https://app.astalty.com.au/chat)
2. Click your name at the top of the chat list
3. Under **Availability**, choose **Active**, **Away**, **Busy** or **Do not disturb**
4. Optionally add an emoji and a **Status message**
5. Choose when it should lift under **Clear after**
6. Optionally nominate someone under **Who to contact instead**
7. Click **Save**

![The Chat status picker with Away selected under Availability, Out sick, back Monday in the Status message field, a Clear after dropdown set to Don't clear and a Who to contact instead field](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-picker.png)

**Clear status** returns you to **Active** and removes your emoji, message, clear-after time and redirect in one go.

### Availability

| Availability       | Indicator                     |
| ------------------ | ----------------------------- |
| **Active**         | Green dot                     |
| **Away**           | Amber dot                     |
| **Busy**           | Red dot                       |
| **Do not disturb** | Red dot with a bar through it |

Choosing **Active** is the same as having no status at all - it does not pin you as available. Astalty still shows you as **Away** once you go idle, and as offline when you close Astalty.

> **Do not disturb does not silence anything**
>
> **Do not disturb** changes how you appear to your team. It does not stop messages arriving, and it does not stop notifications - you will still get desktop pop-ups, sounds and push notifications as normal.
>
> To actually silence a conversation, mute it. See [Muting Conversations](https://docs.astalty.com.au/guide/chat/muting-conversations).

### Status Message and Emoji

The **Status message** is free text up to 255 characters - "In a review meeting", "Back Wednesday". It appears next to your availability wherever your status is shown.

The emoji comes from a fixed set of twelve. Click the emoji button beside **Status message** to open them, and click the one you have chosen again to remove it.

![The Chat status picker with the emoji grid open, showing twelve status emoji including a calendar, a car, a coffee cup, headphones and a palm tree](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-emoji-grid.png)

An emoji replaces your coloured dot on your avatar rather than sitting beside it, so a colleague sees the emoji and reads the availability from the tooltip or your profile card.

### Clear After

**Clear after** decides when the status lifts by itself:

| Option          | When it clears                       |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **Don't clear** | Never - it stays until you change it |
| **30 minutes**  | 30 minutes from when you save        |
| **1 hour**      | An hour from when you save           |
| **Today**       | End of today                         |
| **This week**   | End of Sunday                        |

Once a clear-after time is set, the dropdown also offers **Keep**, followed by that date and time, so you can edit the rest of your status without resetting the clock.

> **Expiry clears the whole status**
>
> When the time passes, your availability, emoji, message and redirect all go together. You cannot keep the message and let only the availability expire.

## Redirecting Messages

**Who to contact instead** nominates one colleague to contact in your place. Anyone opening a conversation with you then sees who to go to, with a button that opens a chat with that person.

![A Chat conversation showing a notice above the message box reading Priya Nair is away - Annual leave, back Monday 9 November, with a Message Hannah Clarke instead link on the right](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-notice-redirect.png)

> **Nothing is actually forwarded**
>
> No message is sent, copied or forwarded to the person you nominate, and they are not notified. The redirect is a signpost for the sender, who can still message you instead.

## Seeing Someone Else's Status

A coloured dot - or the person's emoji - sits on their avatar in your chat list, in a direct conversation header, and against each member of a group channel. Clicking someone's picture opens their profile card with their availability, their message, their return date if they are on leave, and a button to message the colleague they nominated instead.

![A Chat profile card showing Ava Chen marked On leave with the line Back 6 Nov](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-profile-popover-on-leave.png)

![A Chat profile card showing Priya Nair marked Away with the message Annual leave, back Monday 9 November, and a Message Hannah Clarke instead button](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-profile-popover-redirect.png)

The header of a direct conversation also shows how many of its members are online.

### The Notice Before You Send

When you open a direct conversation with someone who is away, busy, on **Do not disturb** or on leave, a notice appears directly above the message box naming their status - their own words if they wrote a message, otherwise the status and their return date. It appears when you start a new conversation too, before you have sent anything.

![A Chat conversation showing a notice above the message box reading Ava Chen is on leave until 6 Nov.](https://docs.astalty.com.au/assets/chat-status-notice-on-leave.png)

The notice does not block the message. You can still send it, and Astalty delivers it and sends notifications as usual. The notice never appears in group channels or for someone who is offline without an availability status.

## Approved Leave Sets Itself

Nobody has to remember to update anything before going on leave. Where someone has approved [leave](https://docs.astalty.com.au/guide/scheduling/leave) or [unavailability](https://docs.astalty.com.au/guide/scheduling/managing-availability) covering right now, Chat shows them as **On leave** or **Unavailable** with their return date, and that beats whatever availability they last chose.

It lifts by itself when the leave period ends.

Two limits are worth knowing:

- Only **approved**, one-off leave and unavailability count. Leave still awaiting approval, cancelled leave, and recurring unavailability patterns never show in Chat.
- The leave label wins, but a status message someone typed themselves wins over the return date. If they are on leave and have written "Back Wednesday", senders see their words rather than the date Astalty holds.

## When Astalty Sets Your Status For You

Two things move your status without you touching it:

- **Idle** - ten minutes without activity in the browser shows you as **Away** until you come back. On the Support Worker app, switching to another app does the same.
- **Offline** - closing Astalty shows you as offline with a grey dot.

Neither overrides an availability you chose yourself: a manual **Away**, **Busy** or **Do not disturb** stays until you change it or it clears. Because idle looks the same as a status you set, a colleague who stepped away from their desk ten minutes ago produces the same notice as one who deliberately marked themselves **Away**.

## Status in the App

Support Workers set the same status from the Support Worker app: open **Chat**, tap the smiley icon at the top of the screen, and fill in **Your status**. The availabilities, the twelve emoji, the **Clear after** options and **Who to contact instead** are all the same, and a status set in the app shows on the web and the other way around.

Two differences:

- The app has no profile card. Tapping someone's picture gives you their dot or emoji, not their message or return date - open [Chat](https://app.astalty.com.au/chat) in a browser for that.
- The notice about a recipient's status appears in an existing conversation, but not on the app's new-message screen.