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.
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