Delegated identity

Let HANDOFFice reply as a named member of your team, from their own account, in their own voice. Customers keep hearing from the people they trust, even when those people are busy, away or on leave.

When to use it

• Continuity. A key contact goes on leave, and their customers never notice the gap.
• Out of hours. Replies go out overnight from the person the customer knows.
• Moving on. When someone leaves a role, their relationships don't leave with them.

How it works

HANDOFFice learns each person's working voice from their sent messages: how they greet people, how they sign off, how they say no. It keeps the voice and corrects the spelling.

Replies go out from the person's own account, so threads, signatures and history stay intact. To the customer, nothing has changed.

Set up a delegate

Add an entry to handoffice.yml for each person HANDOFFice should represent.

Changes take effect at the next sync, usually within ten minutes.

Disclosure

By default, delegated replies aren't labelled. In our testing, customers rated labelled replies as less helpful, even when the content was identical.

You can label replies on any channel with disclose: true. Check the rules for your sector before you rely on the default.

Leave and continuity

When someone goes on leave, keep their account active and their delegate running. HANDOFFice looks after their inbox, keeps their calendar tidy and replies in their voice until they're back. There's no need for an out-of-office.

What a delegate can do

1. Approvals always need a human approver, unless approver delegation is turned on. See Human approval.

Revoking a delegate

Remove the person's entry from handoffice.yml, or switch their delegate off under Settings, then People. Revoking takes effect within 24 hours, so conversations already in progress can finish naturally.

A delegate for a workspace owner can only be revoked by another owner.

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