> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.dmly.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Assign chats to teammates

> Assign a conversation to a teammate, understand what assignment does and does not change, and divide inbox work across a team.

Assignment marks who owns a conversation. It is a label your team agrees to respect — not a
lock. Three things surprise people, so read them first:

* **Assignment belongs to the contact, not the thread.** Assigning one conversation assigns
  every thread that contact has — DMs and comments, on every channel. One contact has one owner.
* **Assignment does not hide anything.** Everyone who can open the Inbox still sees every
  conversation, assigned or not. It changes a filter, a notification and a webhook — nothing
  else.
* **Replying takes the conversation.** Whenever a teammate sends a reply, the conversation is
  reassigned to them automatically, even if it was already assigned to someone else. The
  conversation follows whoever answered it last.

## Assign a conversation

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the conversation">
    Select it in the Inbox list. The details panel opens on the right.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Pick a teammate in Assigned to">
    Use the **Assigned to** dropdown and choose a member of your workspace. Choose
    **Unassigned** to hand it back to the pool.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Only workspace members appear in the list, and only a real workspace member can be assigned.

<Note>
  Assigning is silent when nothing really changes. Picking the person who is already assigned,
  or unassigning, sends no notification and fires no webhook.
</Note>

## What assignment actually does

When you assign a conversation to someone new:

* They get an in-app bell notification that links straight to the thread. See
  [Notifications](/inbox/notifications).
* DMLY sends a `conversation.assigned` webhook, if you use them. See
  [Webhooks](/api-reference/webhooks).
* The conversation now matches that person in the assignee filter.

That is the whole list. Assignment grants no extra access, removes no access, and does not
change what the contact sees.

<Warning>
  When a teammate replies to a conversation assigned to someone else, the assignment moves to
  them with no notification to the previous assignee. If ownership matters to you, agree a rule
  that people only reply in their own filter.
</Warning>

## How a team divides the work

The practical pattern is a filter, not a rule engine.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Everyone works their own queue">
    Open the filters and set the assignee filter to your own name. That is your list for the
    day.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Someone triages Unassigned">
    Set the assignee filter to **Unassigned** to see everything nobody has picked up, and assign
    each one out.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Close what's finished">
    Use **Mark as done** so the conversation leaves the **Open** folder. Nothing closes by
    itself, and any new message from the contact reopens it. See
    [Conversation status](/inbox/conversation-status).
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  Set the filter to **Anyone** to go back to the full list.
</Tip>

Use [Internal notes](/inbox/notes-and-collaboration) to hand context over with the conversation
— notes are team-only, and mentioning a teammate in a note notifies them.

## Assign automatically

There is no routing rule in the Inbox itself. Automatic assignment comes from
[Automations](/automation/overview):

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Assign in a flow" icon="diagram-project" href="/automation/flow-builder">
    An **Assign** node or a human-handover node sets the owner as part of a flow.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Round-robin with AI" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/automation/overview">
    The AI agent can share chats out round-robin — the teammate with the fewest conversations
    currently assigned wins.
  </Card>
</Columns>

Assignment from a flow, from the AI agent, or from a reply does not fire
`conversation.assigned` and does not send the assignee a bell notification — only assigning by
hand from the details panel does.

When a flow hands a conversation to a human, DMLY drops a note into the thread so the agent can
see why it landed with them. By default the node also pauses the bot (**Pause bot replies**) and
tells the contact someone will be with them shortly — both are editable on the node. Take over
manually with **Pause bot (human takeover)** in the details panel.

## The "On call duty" toggle is not an inbox setting

<Note>
  **On call duty** / **Off duty** in the sidebar controls WhatsApp voice calls only — it decides
  whether inbound WhatsApp calls ring you. It has no effect on chat assignment or routing, and
  it only appears when a WhatsApp channel has calling enabled. See
  [WhatsApp calling](/inbox/whatsapp-calling).
</Note>

DMLY has no availability or on-call setting for chat. An away teammate still receives
assignments; move their conversations by hand.

<Accordion title="A teammate can't see the Inbox at all">
  The whole Inbox can be hidden from a role. Check the member's role under
  [Roles and permissions](/account/roles-and-permissions) — the same settings also mask contact
  phone numbers and email addresses in the conversation panel.
</Accordion>