Automated Inbox Conversation Assignment – Round Robin, Weighted Distribution & Agent Availability

Hello OwnerRez Team,

 

I would like to suggest an enhancement to the Unified Inbox that would significantly improve conversation management for property managers working with multiple sales or customer service agents.

 

OwnerRez already provides manual conversation assignment capabilities. However, we would like to extend this functionality to include automatic assignment of incoming conversations, together with agent-specific inbox views.

 

At KHB Holiday Homes, we manage multiple short-term rental properties and receive approximately 30–40 new WhatsApp inquiries per day. We currently have two agents handling these prospects, but our team may expand in the future.

 

Manually distributing incoming conversations becomes increasingly inefficient as inquiry volumes and team sizes grow.

 

1. Automatic Round Robin Assignment

 

New incoming conversations should be automatically assigned to eligible team members in rotation.

 

For example, with three agents:

 

- Conversation 1 → Agent A

- Conversation 2 → Agent B

- Conversation 3 → Agent C

- Conversation 4 → Agent A

 

The system should support any configurable number of agents, rather than being limited to two.

 

2. Weighted Round Robin Distribution

 

Administrators should also be able to configure unequal distribution percentages.

 

For example:

 

- Agent A: 50%

- Agent B: 30%

- Agent C: 20%

 

This would be particularly useful when agents have different experience levels, responsibilities or workloads, or when training new employees.

 

Both equal and weighted distribution should be available.

 

3. Agent Availability Management

 

Automatic assignment should consider whether an agent is actually available to handle new conversations.

 

Ideally, availability could be determined through:

 

- Manual availability status: Available, Busy/Away or Off Duty.

- Configured working schedules: Specific working days and hours for each agent.

- Optional online status: Whether the agent is currently connected to OwnerRez.

 

An active OwnerRez user account should not automatically mean that the agent is available to receive new conversations.

 

When an agent becomes unavailable, the system should temporarily exclude that person from new assignments without removing their existing conversations.

 

4. Agent-Specific Inbox Visibility

 

This is an important requirement for making automatic assignment truly effective.

 

Ideally, each agent should have a personal inbox displaying only conversations assigned to them.

 

For example:

 

- Agent A sees only conversations assigned to Agent A.

- Agent B sees only conversations assigned to Agent B.

- Unassigned conversations remain visible to managers or administrators.

- Managers and administrators retain the ability to view, manage and reassign all conversations.

 

This would establish clear ownership of each prospect and prevent multiple agents from unnecessarily handling the same conversation.

 

Preferred solution:

 

Introduce conversation-level access permissions, allowing administrators to restrict agents to their assigned conversations.

 

Minimum alternative – Persistent Inbox Filters:

 

If implementing conversation-level access restrictions would require significant development, a simpler initial solution would be to support persistent, user-specific Inbox filters.

 

For example:

 

- Default Inbox View: Assigned to Me

- Remember Filters Across Sessions: Enabled

- Allow Agent to View All Conversations: Yes / No, configurable by an administrator

 

The selected filter should be saved to the user's OwnerRez profile and automatically restored whenever the agent logs in again, including after logging out, restarting the application or switching devices.

 

Ideally, administrators could also lock the default filter for specific staff members.

 

This would allow each agent to focus on their own conversations without repeatedly configuring filters.

 

5. Preserve Conversation Ownership

 

When a prospect sends additional messages or returns later, the conversation should preferably remain assigned to the agent who originally handled it.

 

Round Robin should apply to new conversations, not redistribute ownership every time an existing prospect sends another message.

 

Manual reassignment should always remain possible.

 

When a conversation is reassigned, the new agent should receive the complete conversation history.

 

6. Additional Features 

 

Other valuable capabilities would include:

 

- Load-Based Assignment: Assign new conversations to the available agent with the fewest open conversations.

- Automatic Reassignment: Reassign conversations when an agent fails to respond within a configurable period.

- Unassigned Queue: Keep conversations in a shared supervisory queue and notify a manager when no agents are available.

- Routing Rules: Configure assignment according to messaging channel, property or inquiry source.

- Agent Performance Reporting: Track conversations assigned, response times, and ideally conversion into bookings. Reporting should also track conversations reassigned or redirected to other agents because of unavailability. 

 

Business Benefits

 

These improvements would help property managers:

 

- Distribute incoming leads fairly and efficiently.

- Reduce response times and prevent missed inquiries.

- Establish clear ownership and accountability for each conversation.

- Allow agents to focus exclusively on their assigned prospects.

- Scale their teams without requiring a supervisor to manually distribute messages.

- Improve the conversion of inquiries into confirmed reservations.

 

I believe this would be especially valuable for property management companies handling significant volumes of WhatsApp, Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com messages through the Unified Inbox.

 

I also found an earlier feature request titled "INBOX – Message Assignment to Teammembers" (https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/inbox-message-assignment-to-teammembers).

 

However, that request primarily concerns the ability to assign conversations to team members.

 

This proposal specifically focuses on automating the assignment process and providing individual agents with dedicated, persistent Inbox views.

 

I would be interested to know whether any of these capabilities are already being considered for the OwnerRez roadmap.

 

We would also be happy to participate in beta testing if such functionality is developed.

 

Thank you for considering this suggestion.

 

Best regards,

KHB Holiday Homes