How Long a Task Stays in Your Queue
Tasks don't wait forever. Every task that arrives in Connie carries a time-to-live — how long it stays in the queue before the system automatically closes it.
On Connie, that window is 96 hours — four full days.
Why four days and not one
Connie's underlying platform defaults to 24 hours. For a contact center that runs seven days a week, that's fine. For a nonprofit that closes on Friday evening, it isn't — and the difference matters most at exactly the moment you're least able to catch it.
Here's the case that decided it:
Your office closes Friday at 5:30 PM. An email referral arrives at 5:31 PM. Your next agent starts Monday at 7:00 AM.
| Time-to-live | Task expires | Agent arrives Monday 7:00 AM | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 hours (platform default) | Saturday 5:31 PM | — | ❌ Gone. Nobody ever saw it. |
| 72 hours | Monday 5:31 PM | ✅ Still there | Works — until a holiday |
| 96 hours (Connie) | Tuesday 5:31 PM | ✅ Still there | ✅ Survives a holiday weekend too |
That last row is the reason for 96 rather than 72. If Monday is a holiday and your team returns Tuesday at 7:00 AM, a 72-hour window would have closed the task on Monday evening — hours before anyone walked in. 96 hours covers a normal weekend and a long one, with about ten hours to spare.
What this means for you day to day
- Anything that arrives while you're closed will still be waiting when you get back — over a weekend, and over a three-day weekend.
- This applies to everything that waits for a person: email, fax, web referrals, website contact forms, text messages, and voicemail.
- Live phone calls and web chats are different. Those have a much shorter window, because someone is on the line right now. Nobody holds on a phone line over a weekend.
- A caller is never left holding after their window closes. If a live call's window ends while the caller is still on hold, Connie sends them to voicemail, so their message lands in your queue for 96 hours like any other. Your program can also set a shorter hold time limit.
When a task reaches the end of its window, it closes quietly. There's no alert, no email, and it won't appear in your reports. That's exactly why the window is set generously — and why long-pending items are worth a look when you start your shift.
If you need something different
Some programs have needs the standard doesn't cover — a referral pathway that routinely takes a week, or a compliance rule that requires a shorter retention window.
Custom time-to-live settings are available. They're configured per channel, per program, so one department can differ from another.
To request a change, contact your Connie account representative or the Connie Care Team. Please include:
- Which program or channel (for example, "H2H web referrals" or "RAMP voicemail")
- The window you need, and roughly why
- Who approved it on your side
One thing worth knowing before you ask: the window is set at the moment a task is created and cannot be changed afterward. Raising the limit protects everything that arrives from then on — it can't reach back and recover a task that has already closed. So it's worth raising sooner rather than after something is missed.
Related
- Handling Tasks — the task lifecycle, channel by channel
- Parking Tasks — stepping away from a task you're waiting on. Parking has its own, much longer window and is the right tool when you're waiting on a third party.
- Task Alerts — how Connie notifies you about waiting work