Teams

Lodgestory CRM › Settings › Teams

Group your agents into logical units — Support, Sales, Front Desk — and assign a whole team to a chat in one click.

TL;DR

• What it is — a per-organisation roster of teams. Each team has a name, an optional short code, a manager, and members. Assigning a team to a chat brings every member into that conversation's visibility.
• Who it's for — Account Owners and Admins manage teams. Every team member benefits from team-based routing and visibility.
• Top outcome — hand off a chat to "Sales" instead of typing five names, and let Lodgestory pick the primary agent for you using a fair round-robin.

At a glance

How to find it

Sidebar: Settings → Teams.

Direct URL: https://app.lodgestory.com/crm/settings/teams

[SCREENSHOT: teams-landing.png — team cards with names, codes, managers, and member counts]

What is Teams?

The problem it solves

One-to-one chat routing scales for the first few agents. Past that it starts to creak: "assign to Priya, Raj, Alice, Bob, Maya" isn't how anyone thinks. "Assign to Support" is. Teams make that abstraction first-class — and because Lodgestory propagates team-level assignment into each member's individual visibility the moment you assign, every team member sees the chat in their inbox within seconds, with no extra setup.

Teams also power fair work distribution. When you assign a team to a fresh chat, Lodgestory picks one of the current members as the primary on a round-robin basis — the team member who was made primary least recently. Nobody has to keep a spreadsheet of whose turn it is.

What you get

• Team roster per organisation. Create a team, give it a name, an optional short code, and pick a manager. Add members from your team roster.
• Bulk-assign team members. A split-panel picker lets you add or remove many members at once — handy when you're setting up a new team or reshuffling.
• Assign a whole team to a chat. In the inbox's assignment picker, pick a team. Every current member becomes a visible assignee on the conversation immediately.
• Round-robin primary selection. If the chat has no primary yet, Lodgestory picks one for you based on who hasn't been primary most recently. The pick is fair over time.
• Clean unassignment. Removing a team from a chat removes only those members who aren't covered by another team also on that chat. Someone on two teams that are both on a chat stays visible on it when one team is removed.
• Audit messages. When a team is assigned or removed from a chat, Lodgestory drops a small system message in the conversation thread so anyone reviewing later can see what changed.

How it's different

• Visibility is materialised, not computed. When you assign a team, every member immediately becomes a visible assignee. That means inbox filtering, search, and personal view all keep working at their normal speed — there's no hidden join to slow things down.
• Round-robin primary by default. Work distribution happens automatically when a team lands on a chat. No manual rotation tracking.
• One team per chat by design. In the current product, each chat carries one active team assignment. If you need two teams on a chat, either create a combined team or add specific members alongside.

Customer scenarios

• Property onboarding. Admin creates Front Desk, Housekeeping, and Maintenance. Assigns the right agents to each. A housekeeping ticket now drops straight onto the Housekeeping team.
• Bot hand-off. A bot journey's Agent Transfer step is configured to hand to the Sales team. When it fires, Sales is assigned to the chat, a primary is picked via round-robin, and everyone on the team can see the conversation.
• Shift coverage. Admin sets up Shift A and Shift B teams. At shift end, a lead deassigns Shift A and assigns Shift B on open chats — one action per chat handles the visibility flip for five agents at a time.

How it fits with the rest of Lodgestory CRM

Teams sit on top of Team Members and power several surfaces:

• Home / Unified Inbox uses teams in the chat assignment picker and for filter scopes.
• Bot Journeys can hand chats to a specific team in the Agent Transfer step.
• Ticketing Machines can set a default team per issue category.
• Reports offer per-team filters for response time, volume, and resolution rate.

Core concepts

Quick Start — create a team and assign it to a chat in 4 minutes

Step 1 — Open Teams

Sidebar: Settings → Teams.

[SCREENSHOT: teams-qs-1-landing.png]

Step 2 — Click + Create Team

Fill in the name, an optional short code (like SUP for Support), and a manager if you want one.

[SCREENSHOT: teams-qs-2-create.png]

Step 3 — Add members

On the team's detail panel, use the split-panel picker. Left side lists everyone in your organisation; right side is the team. Select individuals, or use Add all to bulk-add.

Step 4 — Save

Lodgestory creates the team and its members together.

Step 5 — Assign to a chat

Open Home / Unified Inbox, open any chat, click the assignment picker, choose Assign to team, pick the team. Every member becomes visible on the chat. If no one was primary, Lodgestory picks one via round-robin.

[SCREENSHOT: teams-qs-5-assign.png]

Step 6 — Remove when done

Same picker, Remove team. Members are cleanly removed — except anyone also covered by another team on the chat.

What's next

• Configure a Bot Journey to hand off to this team → Bot Journeys
• Set this team as the default for a ticket category → Ticketing Machines

How it works

When a team is assigned to a chat, Lodgestory takes the team's current roster and adds every member to that chat's assignee list as a non-primary visible assignee. Agents see the chat in their inbox within seconds. If no primary is set yet, Lodgestory picks the team member who was made primary least recently and sets them as primary. A system message records the change in the conversation thread.

When a team is removed from a chat, Lodgestory walks the team's members and removes each one's visibility — unless that team member is also covered by another team that's still on the chat. This keeps the shared-coverage case working without surprising anyone.

Two subtleties are worth calling out:

• Joining a team later doesn't backfill visibility. If someone joins Sales after Sales has been assigned to 100 chats, they don't retroactively see those 100. They see future assignments.
• Leaving a team doesn't sweep up old assignments. If someone leaves Sales, they still see the chats where they were already a visible assignee. An admin can remove them from those chats individually if needed.

Both behaviours are consistent — team assignment is recorded at the moment it happens, not recomputed forever — and they come up often enough that it's worth flagging when you're setting up new teams.

Features in depth

Team list

Cards per team showing name, short code, manager (if set), member count, and created date. Actions: Edit, Manage Members, Delete.

Create and edit dialog

Name, optional short code (must be unique within your organisation), and an optional manager picked from your team roster. The short code is freeform; use something short and meaningful for integrations.

Manage members

A split-panel picker with search on both sides. Bulk controls: Add all, Remove all, and per-row toggles.

Assign and deassign from the chat header

In the inbox, the chat header's assignment picker has a Teams option. Selecting a team assigns it; removing it deassigns it. A small audit message appears in the conversation thread each time — "Sales team assigned by Priya Sharma" — so anyone reviewing later knows what happened.

Round-robin primary selection

When a team is assigned and the chat has no primary yet, Lodgestory picks the team member who was made primary least recently and sets them as primary. That team member's "last primary" timestamp is updated, and the next team-assignment rotates to someone else. No central counter, no manual tracking.

Roles and permissions

Cross-module workflows

A. Team-driven inbox routing

Create a team, assign members, set it as the default for a ticket category in Ticketing Machines. New tickets in that category land on the team automatically, with a fair primary picked via round-robin.

B. Bot hand-off

A bot journey qualifies a guest, decides a human is needed, and hands to the Sales team via Agent Transfer. Lodgestory assigns the team, picks a primary, and surfaces the chat for the team.

C. Shift coverage

Two teams, Shift A and Shift B. At shift change, a lead deassigns Shift A from every open chat and assigns Shift B. One action per chat flips visibility for the whole incoming shift.

Limits a user will run into

Errors and FAQ

Errors you might see

FAQ

Why doesn't my new team member see the chat I'd assigned to the team yesterday?
Team assignment is captured at the moment it happens. New members joining later see future assignments; they don't retroactively see old chats. If you need them on those older chats, assign them individually, or re-run the team assignment to top up visibility.

Why does an ex-team-member still see a chat?
The same rule in reverse. Removing someone from a team doesn't sweep up old chat assignments. Remove them from the chat individually if needed.

How is the primary picked when a team is assigned?
Round-robin. Whoever hasn't been primary for the longest time gets picked, and their "last primary" timestamp is updated.

Can I assign two teams to one chat?
Not in the current product. Either create a combined team, or add specific members from multiple teams alongside.

What happens to a chat's assignments when I delete a team?
The team-to-chat link is removed. The individual members who were added by that team keep their chat visibility, so nothing goes dark. For a full clean-up, deassign the team from the chat first (which runs the "only remove people not covered elsewhere" logic), then delete the team.

Can a team member be on multiple teams?
Yes. They appear on chats assigned to any of their teams.

API

A partner API is available for creating teams, managing members, and assigning teams to chats. Contact your account team for access.

Changelog

• Apr 2026 — Initial public documentation.

Related modules and next steps

• Team Members — the roster teams are built from.
• Home / Unified Inbox — where team assignment plays out in real time.
• Bot Journeys — Agent Transfer can hand off to a team.
• Ticketing Machines — set a default team per issue category.
• Reports — per-team filters for all the standard reports.