How to Set Up Round-Robin Auto-Assignment in Freshdesk

What automatic ticket assignment actually does

Automatic ticket assignment takes the manual "who's going to pick this up?" step out of your queue. When a new ticket lands in a group — or gets reassigned into one — Freshdesk checks that group's settings and, if automatic routing is switched on, picks an agent for you rather than leaving the ticket unassigned.

All of Freshdesk's automatic assignment runs on one engine, OmniRoute (labelled Advanced Automatic Routing in the group settings UI). Whichever method you choose, OmniRoute enforces the same two gatekeeping rules before it hands anyone a ticket. First, availability: only agents with an Available (online) status are considered — someone who's set to unavailable or offline is skipped. Second, capacity: OmniRoute checks how many open tickets an agent is already carrying, and an agent who has hit their maximum is passed over. Those two rules are why auto-assignment feels fair rather than blindly mechanical — a ticket won't be dumped on someone who's logged off or already underwater.

Step 1: Enable round-robin in Group Properties

Round-robin is configured per group, not globally, which is deliberate — your billing team and your technical-escalations team can route differently. Per Freshworks' Configure Round-Robin Ticket Routing documentation, here's the path:

1. Log in as an admin and go to Admin → Groups.
2. Click the edit icon next to the group you want to route automatically (for example, your Billing or Support group).
3. Switch to the Group Properties tab.
4. Under the automatic assignment setting, select Advanced Automatic Routing.
5. Choose Round robin as the routing method.
6. Save.

That's it — from that point, every new ticket that enters the group is handed to the next available agent in a circular order. Freshworks describes the ordering as routing to "the agent who has gone the longest without receiving one," so over time each agent's count evens out.

A plan note before you go looking for the toggle. Advanced Automatic Routing — and therefore round-robin, load-based, and skill-based assignment — is gated to Freshdesk Pro and Enterprise (and, equivalently, Freshdesk Omni Pro and Enterprise). If your group settings don't show the option, that's almost always a plan issue rather than a permissions one. Confirm the gating against your own account, since Freshworks adjusts plan packaging over time.

Step 2: Tune availability and capacity

Turning round-robin on is only half the job. The distribution is only as good as the availability and capacity signals feeding it, and those live in Assignment Preferences / the OmniRoute settings.

• Availability is driven by each agent's online/offline status. If your agents don't actively set themselves Available, tickets can bunch onto whoever happens to be marked online — so agree a team habit around setting availability at the start of a shift.
• Capacity is the maximum number of open tickets an agent can hold before OmniRoute skips them. Set this to something realistic for your queue; set it too high and round-robin will happily keep feeding an already-buried agent.
• You can exclude certain ticket statuses from the capacity count (for example, tickets waiting on the customer), so an agent isn't blocked from new work by tickets that aren't actively theirs to move.

Get these two dials right and round-robin behaves; leave them at defaults and you may see uneven distribution and wonder why.

Round-robin vs load-based vs skill-based: pick deliberately

Here's the part most guides skip. Round-robin is one of three methods under the same Advanced Automatic Routing setting, and they optimise for genuinely different things. Per Freshworks' Automatic Ticket Assignment using OmniRoute documentation:

The mental model: round-robin is fairest by headcount, load-based is fastest, and skill-based is most accurate. Round-robin treats every ticket as interchangeable, which is exactly right for a queue of similar, simple requests and exactly wrong if half your tickets need a French speaker or a database specialist. Load-based shines when volume is high and you'd rather a fast-clearing agent get more than have tickets sit behind a slow one. Skill-based is the most powerful and the most setup-heavy — you have to define skills and attach them to agents first — so reach for it only when the type of ticket genuinely determines who should handle it.

All three live in the same place (Group Properties → Advanced Automatic Routing), so switching between them is a dropdown change, not a migration. Start with round-robin, and graduate to load-based or skill-based when your queue's shape demands it.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Freshdesk's automatic assignment is solid, deterministic, and does exactly what it says: it distributes ownership. But be clear about what it is and isn't. Auto-assignment answers the question "who owns this ticket?" — it says nothing about "what does this ticket need?" Round-robin will cheerfully hand a password reset and a thorny billing dispute to the same agent in the same rotation, because to the algorithm they're identical units of work.

The other honest gap is that assignment happens before anyone understands the ticket. Round-robin and load-based routing don't read the message; they just count. Skill-based routing gets closer by matching declared skills, but it still relies on those skills being set up and on the ticket carrying the right metadata (language, product) to match against. And in every case, once the ticket is assigned, a human still has to read it, understand it, look up whatever it references, and write the reply. Distribution is fast; the actual work is not.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits — and it's worth understanding the build-versus-buy tradeoff before reaching for one. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists to do the reasoning that assignment logic can't: reading the ticket, understanding intent, and drafting a real response. Macha is one such layer that runs on top of the Freshdesk you already use as a native connector — it does not replace Freshdesk, its groups, or its routing. You connect Macha to Freshdesk with your subdomain and API key, and it works the same tickets your groups already assign: understanding a ticket by intent, drafting or posting a grounded reply, and looking up order or account status through a custom tool that turns a REST API into something the agent can call. The clean division of labour is that Freshdesk keeps deciding who owns a ticket, and the AI layer helps with what the ticket actually needs — which pairs naturally with the workflows in how to automate Freshdesk with AI. (Macha's connector is for Freshdesk specifically — not Freshchat, Freshservice, or Freshcaller. And credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution — see the pricing breakdown.)

Used together, the split is tidy: round-robin (or load-based, or skill-based) makes sure every ticket has an owner the moment it arrives, and an agent layer makes sure that owner isn't starting from zero.

FAQ

Where do I enable round-robin in Freshdesk? Go to Admin → Groups, click the edit icon next to the group, open the Group Properties tab, select Advanced Automatic Routing, and choose Round robin, then Save. It's configured per group, so each group can route differently.

Which plans include automatic ticket assignment? Advanced Automatic Routing — round-robin, load-based, and skill-based — is available on Freshdesk Pro and Enterprise (and Freshdesk Omni Pro and Enterprise). If you don't see the option, it's usually a plan limitation. Confirm the current gating against your own account.

What's the difference between round-robin and load-based routing? Round-robin distributes tickets in a circular order so each agent gets an equal count. Load-based routing assigns to the agent with the most spare capacity, optimising for speed of response rather than an even headcount. Both skip agents who are offline or at maximum capacity.

Does round-robin assign tickets to offline agents? No. All three methods run on OmniRoute, which only considers agents with an Available (online) status and skips anyone already at their maximum ticket capacity — so keeping agent availability accurate is essential for even distribution.

Can I add AI to Freshdesk assignment without replacing Freshdesk? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Freshdesk as a native connector and works on top of your existing groups and routing — it doesn't replace them. Freshdesk keeps deciding who owns each ticket, while the AI layer helps understand and draft the reply the assigned agent would otherwise write from scratch.

Ready to help your agents start from an answer instead of a blank ticket? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Freshdesk in minutes.