> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.aide.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What Aide Chat does when your team is offline

> Aide Chat uses your business hours to show visitors whether a person is around and to decide what Aide does when your team is offline.

Aide Chat uses your business hours to show visitors whether a person is around and to decide what Aide does when your team is offline. Set it up in Aide Chat > Behaviour.

## Business hours

Under **Business hours**, choose the **Source**: your default schedule or another schedule you created. See [Business hours and holidays](/aide-helpdesk/business-hours) to set up schedules.

## When no one is online

Pick what Aide does outside business hours:

* **Aide keeps handling**: Aide answers as it does during hours. If it hands off, it posts the outside-hours message and asks for an email.
* **Aide acknowledges, collects an email and pauses**: Aide posts the outside-hours handoff message, asks for an email and stops. Your team picks it up when you open.

The outside-hours message is set in Aide AI Agent > Handoff, where `{{reply_time}}` becomes your next opening time.

## Asking for an email

Under **Ask for an email**, choose when visitors are asked:

* **In the chat, after Aide first replies**: asked once, and the visitor can skip it.
* **Before the first message**: required to start chatting, which guarantees you can follow up by email.
* **Off**: never asks on its own. A handoff still asks if your Handoff settings say to.

How your team's replies reach a visitor who left is covered in [Follow up by email when a visitor leaves the chat](/aide-chat/chat-email-follow-up).

## Transcripts by email

Turn on **Offer transcripts by email** to let visitors have a copy of the conversation sent to them when it ends. It asks for an email if the visitor hasn't given one.


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