Teams

Objective

A team lets one assistant quietly ask another for help in the middle of a conversation, then reply to your customer as if it knew everything itself. One coordinator leads and talks to the customer; one or more specialists answer privately when asked. The customer sees a single, complete reply and never sees the delegation.

Access

Sidebar -> Teams Route: /app/{tenant}/teams

Roles

• owner, admin: create, edit, approve, test, and disband teams.
• agent: can view the Teams page but sees none of the managing controls.

Availability and prerequisites

Teams is gated three ways. If you do not see it, one of these is the reason:

• Early access: Teams is rolling out gradually and is not general availability yet, so many workspaces will not see it.
• Plan: your plan must include Teams (otherwise you see a "Teams is not in your plan" panel with an upgrade link).
• At least 2 agents: with fewer, you see a "Create your first team" empty state.

Teams run on text channels only: WhatsApp, Email, Web Chat, Instagram, Messenger, and Telegram. Voice-only agents cannot be added to a team.

How a team works

• A team is one coordinator (the leader, "Leads & replies") plus one or more specialists (helpers, "Answers when asked").
• During a single chat, email, or scheduled turn, the coordinator quietly consults the specialists it needs and composes one complete answer for the customer.
• Teams are flat and self-contained: when a specialist is consulted it just answers; it never starts its own team, even if it also leads one elsewhere (no chained delegation).

Create a team

1. Click New team (owner/admin only).
2. In Choose the coordinator, pick the leader that talks to your customer and delegates.
3. Only Teams-eligible agents appear. An agent already coordinating a team cannot start a second one (one team per coordinator).

Add teammates

Open Add teammate to connect a specialist:

A coordinator can have up to 8 specialists.

Approve the plan (human-in-the-loop)

Adding a teammate creates a pending connection that does nothing until an owner/admin approves it.

• The Review team plan box states the built-in guardrails: up to 5 consultations per conversation, no chained delegation, and no loops; each teammate answers privately and the coordinator writes the final reply.
• Click Approve N connection(s) to build the team.
• Editing an approved teammate's alias or hint sends it back to pending for re-approval.

Go live: assign the team to a channel

Approving a plan only builds the team — it does not answer any customer yet. To make it live, assign it as a responder in a channel:

1. Open a channel's settings (WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, Web Chat, or Email when the Inbox module is enabled).
2. In the responder dropdown, open the Teams (can ask a specialist for help) group and choose Team: {name} ({N} specialists).

That channel now answers in team mode, and the Teams page shows "Live on: ...".

Test and preview

• Test & watch (owner/admin, once a team has at least one approved teammate): type a message a customer might send, click Run test, and watch the org chart light up the delegation path along with the coordinator's reply and a "Recent activity" list you can replay. This is a mock run that never reaches a real customer; it does spend your AI tokens and is rate-limited to about 10 tests per minute.
• Watch it work: an animated, scripted illustration of a leader delegating to helpers and composing one reply. It never calls the AI or touches data and is safe to open anytime.

Manage a team

• Team name: give a team a custom display name (pencil edit); clearing it falls back to the coordinator's name.
• Disband team: removes all teammate connections and the team name. No agents are deleted — the coordinator and specialists keep existing as agents; only the team links are removed, and you can rebuild anytime.

Safety guarantees

Enforced by construction, not just by prompt:

• At most 5 consultations per conversation.
• Delegations never chain and never loop.
• A wall-clock cap (about 90 seconds) and a token ceiling per run.
• Specialists answer privately; the customer only ever sees the coordinator's final answer.

Where teams show up elsewhere

• A Team-assisted badge on conversation detail views (Web Chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram) shows how many specialist consultations happened.
• Leads a team / In a team badges on the Agents page.
• A Team activity card on the Usage page (consultations, tokens, average duration this month).
• Scheduled Tasks: pointing a scheduled task's agent at an approved coordinator runs the whole team automatically on schedule.
• Helio can propose team connections conversationally, but a human always approves them in the Teams page.

Good practices

• Give each specialist a clear Alias and a short "When to ask" hint so the coordinator delegates accurately.
• Keep the coordinator and approved specialists active; an inactive member shows a warning and weakens the team.
• Use Test & watch before going live to confirm the delegation path looks right.