Ghost Interactions: Preventing Chrome from Freezing Your Console – Talkative

💡

Modern browsers slow down, pause or unload tabs that sit in the background. If the Talkative Console is in one of those tabs, agents can see ghost interactions (the alert sound plays, but there is no interaction on screen), delayed notifications, missed alerts, or a Console that has to reload when they return to it. This guide explains how to reduce the chance of ghost interactions in Google Chrome.

Why this happens

When a tab has been in the background for a while, Chrome can do three different things to it:

Throttle it. The tab keeps running, but its timers are slowed down. After about five minutes in the background, timers may run no more than once a minute. Notifications can arrive late, and can also contribute to ghost interactions.

Freeze it. The tab's JavaScript is paused until the agent returns to it. Events that arrived in the meantime can then be processed in a burst, so an alert may play for an interaction that has already been answered, timed out or reassigned. This is the most common cause of ghost interactions.

Discard it. Chrome unloads the tab completely to free up memory. The tab stays in the tab strip, but the Console reloads from scratch when the agent clicks on it.

⚠️

These settings reduce the chance of the Console being discarded or throttled. They do not guarantee it. They also cannot prevent problems caused by a lost network connection, such as a laptop going to sleep, a Wi-Fi change or a virtual private network (VPN) reconnecting. The Console reconnects and refreshes its state when this happens, but alerts raised during the gap can be missed.

Option 1: Keep the Console active on a single computer (Chrome settings)

Use this option for an individual agent, or to test the behaviour before rolling out a policy to a whole organisation. It tells Chrome's Memory Saver feature never to discard tabs from the Console's address.

In Chrome, open Settings (the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, then Settings).

Select Performance in the left-hand menu. You can also go straight there by typing chrome://settings/performance into the address bar.

In the Memory section, find Always keep these sites active.

Select Add.

Enter the address of the Console, for example eu.engage.app. Use the address you normally see in the browser's address bar with the correct regional modifier, without any path after the domain name.

Select Add to save. The site now appears in the list.

If you do not see the Always keep these sites active list, Memory Saver may be turned off (in which case Chrome is not discarding tabs for memory reasons) or the setting may be locked by your organisation. If the settings are greyed out, ask your IT administrator to use Option 2 instead.

ℹ️

This setting prevents Chrome from discarding the tab. A hidden tab can still be throttled. To reduce throttling as well, an administrator can apply the IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled policy described in Option 2.

Checking the result

Open a new tab and go to chrome://discards. Find the Console tab in the list. The Is Discardable column should show a cross for the Console tab, and View Reason will explain why. This page is also useful for confirming that a policy has taken effect.

Option 2: Apply a policy across an organisation (Group Policy)

Use this option when an IT administrator manages Chrome for a team of agents. Chrome reads its settings from Group Policy on Windows, and the same policies can be pushed to Mac and Linux computers with mobile device management (MDM) tools or the Google Admin console. The policy names are identical on every platform. Only the way they are delivered differs.

Before you start

Download and install the Chrome administrative templates (ADMX files) from the Chrome Enterprise download page, and add them to your Group Policy Central Store. If Chrome policies already appear in your Group Policy Management Editor, this is already done.

You need permission to edit the Group Policy Object (GPO) that applies to your agents' computers.

The policies

Policy name	What it does	Recommended value
`TabDiscardingExceptions`	A list of web addresses that Chrome will never discard, whether because of Memory Saver or low computer memory. Equivalent to the per-user list in Option 1, but applied centrally.	The address of the Console, for example `console.example.com`
`IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled`	Controls whether Chrome limits background tab timers to once a minute after a tab has been hidden for five minutes or more.	Disabled (`0`)
`BatterySaverModeAvailability`	Controls Energy Saver, which reduces Chrome's activity when the computer's battery is low. Setting it to disabled stops Chrome applying battery-saving behaviour to background tabs on laptops.	Disabled (`0`) if agents use laptops on battery power

⚠️

Disabling IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled applies to every site in the browser, not only the Console, and can increase battery and processor use. Consider applying it only to the computers agents use for contact centre work. Policy names and supported values can change between Chrome versions, so check them against the current Chrome Enterprise policy list before you roll anything out.

Setting the policies in Group Policy Management

Open the Group Policy Management Editor and edit the GPO that applies to your agents' computers.

Go to Computer Configuration, then Policies, then Administrative Templates, then Google, then Google Chrome.

Open the policy URL pattern Exceptions to tab discarding (TabDiscardingExceptions). Set it to Enabled, select Show, and add the Console address as a new entry, for example console.example.com. Select OK.

Find Control the IntensiveWakeUpThrottling feature (IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled). Set it to Disabled.

Optionally, open Enable Battery Saver Mode (BatterySaverModeAvailability) and set it to Disabled.

Select OK on each policy. The settings reach each computer the next time Group Policy refreshes. You can force this by running gpupdate /force on the computer, and then restarting Chrome.

The display names in the editor can differ slightly between template versions. If you cannot find a policy by its display name, search for the policy name shown in brackets above.

Checking that the policies applied

Restart Chrome.

Go to chrome://policy and select Reload policies.

Confirm that TabDiscardingExceptions and IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled appear in the list with the values you set and the status OK.

Go to chrome://discards and confirm that the Console tab shows as not discardable.

Other tips for agents

Keep the Console in its own browser window rather than as one of many tabs. A visible window is never throttled, frozen or discarded.

If a computer goes to sleep, or the network changes, refresh the Console when you come back to it so that its information is current.

Make sure the browser's notification and sound permissions for the Console remain allowed, so that alert sounds can play.

Other browsers

Microsoft Edge has a similar feature called Sleeping tabs, found under Settings, then System and performance. Add the Console address to the Never put these sites to sleep list. Edge also supports the IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled policy. Check Microsoft's policy documentation for the other policy names in Edge.

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Throttle	The browser keeps a background tab running but slows down its timers, so scheduled work happens late.
Freeze	The browser pauses all JavaScript in a background tab until the tab becomes visible again.
Discard	The browser unloads a background tab to free up memory. The tab reloads from scratch when selected.
Memory Saver	A Chrome feature that discards tabs that have not been used for a while.
Energy Saver	A Chrome feature that reduces browser activity to save battery power. Called Battery Saver in some policy names.
Group Policy	A Windows feature that lets administrators apply settings centrally to many computers.
Group Policy Object (GPO)	A named collection of Group Policy settings that is applied to a set of computers or users.
Administrative template (ADMX)	A file that describes a program's settings so they appear in the Group Policy Management Editor.
Mobile device management (MDM)	Software that administrators use to configure and manage computers and phones remotely.
Virtual private network (VPN)	An encrypted connection between a computer and a private network. Reconnecting can briefly interrupt other connections.