Setting up your Facebook channel (standard agent interface)

Fastpath: Admin > Channels > Facebook

All Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Support customers can add at least one Facebook account so that public messages, such as Facebook Wall posts and comments, become tickets. Your agents will be able to see and respond to these tickets from the Support interface, just like any other ticket.

Additionally, Zendesk Suite customers can add multiple Facebook pages and they can receive public messages and private messages from those accounts.

Zendesk Support plans	One Facebook Page with public messages only. Private messages are not supported.
Zendesk Suite plans	Up to 15 Facebook Pages with public and private messages. Note: This applies to some legacy customers as well. See Setting up the Facebook channel for details.

You must be an administrator to add a Facebook account to Support.

This article includes the following sections:

• How the Facebook channel works
• Setting up the Facebook channel
• Editing your Facebook channel
• Adding another Facebook Page
• Managing Facebook tickets with business rules

How the Facebook channel works

The Facebook channel supports Facebook Pages, which are different from personal timelines. Facebook Pages help businesses, organizations, and brands share their stories and connect with people.

After you add a Facebook account to Support, Support monitors messaging activity on the Facebook account. Each new Wall post (a public message) on the Facebook account becomes a ticket in Support. On Zendesk Suite plans, private messages sent to the Facebook account through Facebook Messenger will also become tickets.

Facebook limits how Pages can communicate publicly and privately with users. For example, if you receive a ticket from a Wall post, when you reply in the ticket, your response is added as a comment to that Wall post. If you receive a ticket from a private message, when you reply in the ticket, your response is a private message. You cannot respond to a Wall post with a private message in the ticket. And likewise, you cannot respond to a private message with a Wall post in the ticket.

When a user posts to your wall, a ticket is created and the following happens:

• For standard wall posts, only comments received in the first week after the post will be added to the ticket. If you would like comments to create new tickets, you can enable that setting (see Editing your Facebook channel).
• Comments received after the first week are not added to the ticket and no new ticket is created.
• If you post an ad to your wall, a ticket is created. Comments are recorded in the ticket for one year after the posting. However, if you close the ticket, comments will no longer be recorded.

If the posting user is not already a user in your account, they become a new user in your account. If your channel has multiple Facebook Pages and a new user posts on more than one page, a separate user account is created for each page on which that user posts.

An agent can respond to a Wall post by adding a public comment to the ticket in Support. The agent's response is added as a comment to the Facebook post. In the following Wall post, for example, an agent answered the user's question in the Support agent interface.

Here's the corresponding ticket in Support:

Setting up the Facebook channel

Note: If you are a Suite customer, you must install social messaging before you can set up Facebook (see Installing and setting up social messaging).

You can connect a Facebook account to your Zendesk account so that Facebook messages become tickets, and your agents can see and respond to these tickets, just like any other ticket.

The number of Facebook accounts and the type of messaging supported by your account depends on your plan type.

Zendesk Support plans	One Facebook Page with public messages only. Private messages are not supported.
Zendesk Suite plans	Up to 15 Facebook Pages with public and private messages. This also applies to the following legacy customers: Support customers as of January 31, 2020 with an existing Facebook setup Support customers with the legacy Social Messaging add-on Legacy Support Suite customers

If you are using Agent Workspace, and Facebook private messaging is supported for your account, you need to take an additional step to enable private messages after you add your Facebook Page to your account.

To set up your Facebook channel to monitor a Facebook account

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
2. Click the Add your first Facebook Page link. If you already have a Facebook Page, click Add.
3. Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
4. When asked, be sure you grant Zendesk access to your account.
5. In the Add Facebook Pages to your account window, locate the page you want to add, and choose the default permissions that Zendesk has to your Facebook page. If you change any of these permissions, the connection between Facebook and Zendesk might not work properly.
6. Click Add for the Facebook Page you'd like to link to your Zendesk.
7. If your plan supports multiple Facebook Pages, click Add beside another page if you want to add it. Otherwise you can close the window.

   The Facebook Page you added appears on your Facebook Channel page. If you are using Agent Workspace and Facebook private messaging is supported for your account, you need to take an additional step to enable private messages.

   If you need troubleshooting your Facebook channel, see Troubleshooting issues with your Facebook channel.

Editing your Facebook channel

You can edit settings for any Facebook Page you've added.

You won't see all of the settings listed in this section if your account does not support private messaging.

To edit your Facebook channel settings for Wall posts, ads, and private messages

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
2. Click Edit beside the Facebook Page you'd like to edit settings for.
3. Change any of the following settings:
   • Include Wall posts section automatically converts Wall posts to tickets.
   • Comments on a post are added to the same ticket adds responses on Wall posts as replies to the Wall post's ticket.
   • Comments on a post create new tickets adds responses on Wall posts as new tickets.
   • Include hidden posts enables you to review posts that haven't been approved by the page as tickets.
   • Include Wall posts authored by the Page converts posts by the Facebook Page owner to tickets.
   • Include unpublished posts enables you to review unpublished posts (also known as dark posts) as tickets. This will also allow Facebook ads to convert to tickets.
   • Include private messages converts private messages to tickets.
4. Click Update Page settings.

If you don't see the Message button on your Facebook Page, you need to enable it. In your Facebook Page, select Manage > Edit Page, then select Show Message button and click Save Changes.

Adding another Facebook Page (Zendesk Suite plans only)

On Zendesk Suite plans you can monitor as many as 15 Facebook Pages from your Support account. You can add additional Pages, up to the limit, at any time.

Note: These accounts also support 15 Pages: Support customers as of January 31, 2020 with an existing Facebook setup, legacy Social Messaging add-on customers, and Legacy Support Suite customers.

Keep in mind that there are still limits that Facebook places on traffic from external sources, so it is possible that your account might make too many requests. This has more to do with how many posts and messages you retrieve than how many pages you enable.

Also, keep in mind that if a new user posts on more than one page, a separate user account is created for each page on which that user posts.

To add another Facebook Page to your Facebook channel

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
2. Click Add new Page.
3. Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
4. In the Add Facebook Pages dialog box, select Import recent activity if you want to create tickets from existing messages or posts. Zendesk will import the last week of activity (up to 250 tickets).
5. Click Add beside the Page you'd like to add.

   The Facebook Page appears in Facebook Channel page.

Managing Facebook tickets with business rules

Just like with tickets from other Zendesk channels, you can set up business rules, like views, automations, and triggers, to manage your Facebook tickets. In addition to the actions and conditions available for all tickets, there are a few Facebook-specific options you can use:

• Ticket: Channel values:
  • Facebook Post returns tickets created from posts.
  • Facebook Private Message returns tickets created from private messages.
• Ticket: Integration account lets you pick a specific Facebook account if you’ve added more than one. This condition also has options for Twitter and channel integrations like Google Play.

For general information about setting up business rules, see these articles:

• Creating and managing triggers
• Streamlining workflow with time-based events and automations
• Using views to manage ticket workflow