What routing does
Routing auto-assigns new tickets to a specific agent — or round-robins between several — based on the ticket’s type, so, for example, every “Billing” ticket lands on the one teammate who handles billing without anyone manually assigning it. Routing is optional per type: a type with no agents checked simply isn’t auto-assigned, and those tickets sit unassigned until an agent picks one up or assigns it by hand.
Before you start
Routing rules are keyed to ticket types, so you need at least one ticket type already created (Settings → Tickets → Types) before there’s anything to configure — if none exist yet, the Routing tab just shows “Add ticket types first.” and no rows to check. You also need owner or admin access; Settings → Agents and its Routing sub-tab aren’t visible to teammates with the base Agent role.
Configure routing
- Click the gear icon → Agents (or click Agents in the left-hand navigation if Settings is already open).
- Click the Routing sub-tab at the top of the section.
- Each row on the page is one ticket type, labelled with its name. Next to it is a checkbox for every active (non-disabled) agent, shown by their handle.
- Check every agent who should receive tickets of that type. Check just one agent to send every ticket of that type straight to them; check several to round-robin between them.
- Repeat for every ticket type you want auto-assigned. Leave a type with no boxes checked to leave it unrouted.
- Click Save routing.
A confirmation message appears next to the button once the save completes.
How round-robin assignment works
When more than one agent is checked for a type, Essential Support cycles through them in the order you checked them — the first matching new ticket goes to the first agent, the next to the second, and so on, wrapping back to the first once it reaches the end. The rotation is tracked per ticket type and advances by one every time a ticket actually receives a type-based assignment, so two tickets of the same type created back-to-back land on different agents (as long as more than one is checked).
Routing only fires at the moment a ticket is given a type — either when it’s created with a type already set, or afterward if AI auto-triage assigns one (under Settings → AI → AI features, the option “Auto-assign a ticket type when one isn’t set”). A ticket that never gets a type is never auto-assigned, and changing a ticket’s type by hand after creation doesn’t retroactively trigger routing for it.
Keeping routing current
- Only active agents show up as checkboxes here. If you disable a teammate (see Deactivate or remove an agent), they don’t automatically drop out of a rule they were already part of — go back to the Routing tab and click Save routing again (even with no other changes) right after disabling anyone, so the rule is recalculated without them.
- Deleting an agent removes them from every routing rule immediately and automatically — no extra step needed.
- If a rule ends up with zero agents checked (the last one was removed), it’s dropped entirely, and that ticket type goes back to unrouted.
- Deleting or archiving a ticket type removes its routing row the next time you open the tab.
- Adding a new ticket type doesn’t route anywhere by default — visit Routing afterward and check the agents you want handling it.