Departments
Group agents by skill or product area so visitors can route their chat to the right team from the start.
Once your team grows past "everyone replies to everything", departments help you direct chats to the people who can actually answer.
What a department is
A department is a named group of agents — "Billing", "Technical Support", "Sales", whatever fits your team structure. Each agent can be in multiple departments. Each conversation can (optionally) be tagged with one.
Create departments
Chat → Settings → Manage departments:
- Name — what the visitor sees in the dropdown ("Billing", "Technical Support").
- Sort order — controls the order in the widget. Lower numbers come first.
- Agents in this department — tick the team members who should receive routed chats.
- Active — uncheck to hide a department without deleting it (useful while reshuffling).
You can have as many or as few departments as you want — including zero, in which case the widget shows no department picker.
How visitors see it
When at least one active department exists, the widget's pre-chat form shows a Department dropdown above the message field. The first option is Any (no department), so a visitor who isn't sure can skip the choice.
If you've also required name or email, the department selector slots in cleanly next to those fields.
How routing works
- Visitor picks a specific department → Nura24 auto-assigns the new conversation to a random agent from that department.
- Visitor picks "Any" (or no departments are configured) → falls back to your normal assignment rules (manual claim, or round-robin if enabled).
The department is stamped onto the conversation, so it shows up in the agent sidebar even if the assignment got reshuffled later.
Tips
- Don't over-segment. Three or four departments is plenty for most teams. Twelve options is a chore for the visitor and creates dead-end queues for the team.
- Keep "Any" useful. Most visitors don't know which department they need. Make sure someone is watching unassigned chats so "Any" doesn't sit in limbo.
- Cross-staff strategically. An agent in both "Billing" and "Tech Support" balances the load when one department is quiet.