What you are switching, and where
There are two separate switches, and they live in two separate places. The AI agent has one on/off switch of its own, and every scripted workflow has one of its own. Both sit inside the Brand section of the menu, under the brand they belong to. There is nothing to switch on the chat widget itself.
Turn Vex AI on or off
- Go to Brand → Vex.
- Stay on the Personality tab.
- Open the General tab inside it.
- Use the switch labelled Enable this agent — the description under it reads "Turn this AI agent on or off. When off, it won't respond to visitors."
- Press Save.
With the agent switched off, your chat widget goes back to ordinary live chat: visitors still open it, still write, and your team answers. Nothing is deleted, and switching it back on needs no re-import.
If the brand has no Vex yet
A brand without an AI agent is a normal state, not a broken one. The Vex screen then shows a single message — "Nothing answers with this knowledge yet" — and one Add Vex button. Pressing it creates the agent already switched on, answering from whatever the brand already knows. A brand can have one Vex and no more, and creating one uses an AI-chatbot allowance from your plan.
Turn a workflow on or off
- Go to Brand → Workflows.
- Find the workflow in the list — each row carries its own Active state.
- Switch it off. From that moment it is no longer started in new conversations.
One behaviour worth knowing if you switch workflows on and off a lot: a workflow whose trigger is Manual now also runs in a conversation that already has one of your people assigned to it. Only automatically triggered workflows stay held back while a colleague is on the chat. Before this change, a manually started workflow simply did nothing in that situation.
Deleting the AI agent instead of switching it off
On Brand → Vex → Personality → Danger Zone you can delete the agent outright. That removes the agent, its conversation starters, its suggestions and its report history — and nothing else. Your knowledge is untouched: the knowledge bases, documentation, files, website pages, question-and-answer entries and products all belong to the brand and stay exactly as they are. Add another agent later and it answers from the same material, with no re-import and no re-processing. The confirmation dialog says all of this before you commit.
Phone calls are switched separately
A phone agent is not part of Vex — it sits beside it, reading the same brand knowledge. Switching Vex off therefore does not stop calls being answered. To pause a phone agent, go to Brand → Voice and use Pause on the agent's ⋯ menu; Resume starts it again.
What happens to conversations that are already open
- Nothing is deleted or closed. Every conversation stays in your inbox with its full history.
- Visitors can keep writing, and your team receives the messages as normal live chat.
- A workflow that is switched off is not started in new conversations from that point on.
Next step
Before you switch anything back on for real visitors, try it first: Test your chatbots before going live.