Get started with live chat
π£ Open Beta β Premium and Enterprise. Live chat with a human agent (including AI-to-human handoff) is in Open Beta. It's available to Premium and Enterprise tenants and is on by default for any new space, in both existing and new sites. Existing spaces stay off; an admin can turn it on at the space level.
This guide walks you through standing up live chat from scratch. By the end you'll have chat turned on in your space, a chat widget on your support website, and a support team ready to take conversations.
If you only need to do one piece (not the full setup), follow the linked reference articles instead β each step below points to a more detailed guide.
Before you start
You'll need:
A Premium or Enterprise tenant with Service Collection
A Customer Service Management space, with you as an admin
(Optional) A support team with agent roles in the space
About 30 minutes for the initial setup.
Step 1 β Turn chat on in your space
Ensure the feature is turned on:
Go to your space and open the space settings.
Open the chat settings.
Turn on Live chat.
Turning chat on at the space level doesn't expose chat to customers yet β that happens in Step 3, when you enable chat for a channel.
For full detail, see Set up chat for your support team.
Step 2 β Check the conversation limit
The conversation limit is the maximum number of active conversations one agent can have at once. It's set by the Maximum conversations field at the site level and applies across all spaces, so it may already be set for your site.
A site admin sets it in Jira administration:
Go to Jira administration > Jira apps.
Open Customer Service Management.
Open Chat settings.
Set Maximum conversations to the value you want.
Step 3 β Route conversations to your space
Tell your customer experience which space to send live chat conversations to.
Open your customer experience settings.
Open the chat settings for that experience.
Choose the space you turned chat on in as the routing destination.
Save your changes.
For more detail, see Set up your chat experience.
Step 4 β Choose your support mode
Decide who answers customers in this experience:
AI agent β an AI agent answers customers.
Support team β conversations go straight to a human agent.
AI agent and support team β the AI agent answers first and can hand off to a human agent.
If you want the AI agent to hand off to your support team, set up automated handoff on the AI agent. See Ensure your customer service agent can hand off requests to your team. Your chat settings determine whether handoff sends the customer to a conversation with your support team.
For all the mode options in detail, see Set up your chat experience.
Step 5 β Set the fallback message
The fallback message is what customers see when they can't be connected to an agent. If no agents are available, customers see it straight away. If agents are available but no one accepts within 20 minutes, customers see it and the conversation ends.
Write something that gives them a useful next step β a link to your contact form, your support email, or your hours of availability.
In your customer experience's chat settings, edit the Fallback message.
Save your changes.
Step 6 β Brief your support team
Your agents need to know how to take live chat conversations before customers start chatting.
Share Manage live conversations with customers with your team.
Agree as a team how you'll use availability (who's on, who's on a break, who's heads-down).
Make sure at least one agent is Available when customers can chat β otherwise customers see the fallback message.
Step 7 β Test it end to end
Before pointing real customers at live chat, run through it yourself:
Open your support website in a private browser window (so you appear as a customer, not as yourself), and sign in as a test customer.
Start a chat from the widget.
From a second browser (signed in as an agent), accept the conversation, exchange a few messages, then end and resolve it.
Confirm the work item shows up correctly in your space.
If anything doesn't behave as expected, double-check Steps 1β5 and your agent availability.
Step 8 β Add a chat widget to your support website
Customers can only start a chat when there's a chat widget on the page they're on.
Open your customer experience settings.
Open the chat settings for that experience.
Add a chat widget to your support website.
For step-by-step, see Add a chat widget to your support website. To embed the widget on another website or app (for example a marketing site or product page), see Embed an AI-powered chat widget on any website.
What's next
Run chat with real customers and adjust the conversation limit, fallback message, and AI handoff as you learn.
Organize conversations in your queues by adding a dedicated queue or filtering them out of existing ones - each conversation is a work item. Set up chat for your support team.
Set up service-level agreements (SLAs) for conversation work items if you want to track response and resolution times. Set up chat for your support team.
Review conversations to spot patterns and improve your AI agent's answers.
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