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Compare Live Agent and Omni-Channel Routing for Chats
See the benefits and limitations of using Omni-Channel routing for chats or keeping Live Agent routing for chats. If you want to use Chat in Lightning Experience, you must use Omni-Channel routing.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
Important
Legacy Chat will be retired on February 14, 2026. To avoid service interruptions to your end users, switch to enhanced Chat (formerly Messaging for In-App and Web). Enhanced Chat offers many of the legacy Chat features that you love plus asynchronous conversations that can be picked back up at any time. Learn about migrating in Help and Trailhead.
There’s a lot to keep in mind as you decide whether to try Omni-Channel routing for chats. Omni-Channel routing for chats is enabled when:
- You enable Chat for the first time, or
- You create a chat button that uses the routing option Omni-Channel Queues or Omni-Channel Skills
Let’s compare the two routing model options when using Chat and Omni-Channel together.
| Live Agent Routing (Salesforce Classic only) | Omni-Channel Routing |
|---|---|
| Agents must chat with customers in the console in Salesforce Classic. | Agents can chat with customers in the console in Salesforce Classic or in standard or console apps in Lightning Experience. |
| Agents use the Omni-Channel widget in Salesforce Classic to handle their work. | Agents use the Omni-Channel widget in Salesforce Classic or the Omni-Channel component in Lightning Experience to handle their work. |
| Agents use Omni-Channel Presence, including its configurable statuses. | Agents use Omni-Channel Presence, including its configurable statuses. |
| Use Omni-Channel sound notifications in the Presence Configuration for chats. | Use Omni-Channel sound notifications in the Presence Configuration for chats. |
| Agent capacity is set and consumed by Omni-Channel. | Agent capacity is set and consumed by Omni-Channel. |
| Chats are routed to agents using Skills. | Chats are routed to agents using Omni-Channel queues. |
| Chats can’t be prioritized with Omni-Channel work, or relative to each other. Omni-Channel work items that haven't yet been routed are always routed ahead of chats. | Chats are prioritized with Omni-Channel work, and can be prioritized relative to each other using queues. |
| Chats always have the size 1. | Chat size is configurable by queue. |
| Supervisors use the Chat Supervisor Panel to observe chats and assist agents with their chats. | Chat supervisors can view agent activity in Omni Supervisor, but they use the Chat Supervisor Panel to observe chats and assist agents with their chats. Create a skill for agents handling chats routed with Omni-Channel to make them visible in the Chat Supervisor Panel. |
| Reports and data for chats are separate from Omni-Channel data. | Chat data is included in Agent Work reports in addition to Chat reports. |
| For a queue to appear as an option on the Chat button, the queue must include the Chat Sessions object in its support objects. | For a queue to appear as an option on the Chat button, the queue must include the Live Chat Transcript object in its supported objects. |
| The Live Chat Transcript is created when the chat ends. | The Live Chat Transcript is created when the chat is requested. |
| You can customize the Live Chat Transcript page layout for Ended chats. | In Salesforce Classic, you can customize the Live Chat Transcript page layout for Waiting, In Progress, and Ended chats. In Lightning Experience, you can customize Live Chat Transcript pages in the Lightning App Builder. |
| Agents associate records with the chat transcript only after the chat has ended. | Agents can associate records with the chat transcript during the chat. Agents can associate records on the chat transcript itself or use a console sidebar lookup component in Salesforce Classic. |
| Uses the Console Integration Toolkit Methods for Chat. | Uses the Console Integration Toolkit Methods for Omni-Channel for Salesforce Classic, or Omni-Channel Objects for the Lightning Console JavaScript API for Lightning Experience. |
If you use the findorCreate code to find or
create related records, the code triggers only when an agent accepts the chat
request. |
If you use the findorCreate code to find
or create related records, the code triggers even if the chat visitor cancels the chat
before the agent accepts. |
However, there are a few limitations to using Omni-Channel routing for chats:
- You can’t transfer a chat from a button using Live Agent routing to a button using Omni-Channel routing.
- Queues with multiple object types can cause problems when using Omni-Channel routing. We recommend creating a queue for each object type, such as Chats, Cases, and Leads, instead of setting queues to handle multiple object types.
- When an agent uses “Transfer to Agent” for a chat routed with Omni-Channel and the receiving agent has an admin profile, the agent who initiated the transfer can lose visibility of the chat transcript until the receiving agent accepts the chat request. This situation occurs because Omni-Channel changes ownership of the chat transcript when the transfer is initiated, before the next agent accepts the chat.
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