All Zendesk customers on all Support plan types can add at least one Facebook account to Zendesk Support, so that public messages like Facebook Wall posts and comments will become tickets. Your agents will be able to see and respond to these tickets from the Support interface, just like any other ticket.
If you have the Social Messaging add-on, however, or if you have been grandfathered, you can add multiple Facebook accounts, instead of just one. You will also be able to receive private messages sent through Facebook Messenger from those accounts. To learn more about the specific limits for your account, scroll down and read Facebook page limits with Support.
You must be an administrator to add a Facebook account to Support.
This article includes these sections:
- Facebook page limits with Support
- How the Facebook channel works
- Public messaging with Facebook
- Private messaging with Facebook
- Setting up the Facebook channel
- Editing your Facebook channel
- Adding another Facebook Page
- Managing Facebook tickets with business rules
- Troubleshooting
Related articles:
Facebook page limits with Support
The number of Facebook accounts that you can add to your Support account, and whether private is supported, depends on whether you have the Social Messaging add-on or a grandfathered account. For example, if you want to add more than one Facebook account, or receive private messages sent through Facebook Messenger, you may need to buy the Social Messaging add-on.
If you don't have the Social Messaging add-on, you can still use Facebook with Support, but you can only add one Facebook account, and only public messaging is supported (for example, Facebook Wall posts).
Note the following limits:
-
With the Social Messaging add-on: You are allowed to have 15 Facebook Pages. Both public and private messaging (for example, with Facebook Messenger) are supported.
-
Support without the Social Messaging add-on: You are allowed to have one Facebook Page. Only public messaging is supported. Private messages are not supported.
Note: If you were a customer as of January 31, 2020 with an existing Facebook integration, you are currently allowed to add up to 15 Facebook Pages, and both public and private messaging are supported.
For information about what type of Support plans you need have in order to buy the Social Messaging add-on, and what Suite plans include the Social Messaging add-on, see About Zendesk product add-ons.
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. To learn more about the differences, see this Facebook article. You can create and manage a Facebook Page from your personal account.
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. With some 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.
If the posting user is not already a user in your account, they becomes 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.
You can't add attachments to public replies in Facebook tickets, including replies to posts, comments, and direct messages.
Public messaging with Facebook
- For standard wall posts, only comments received in the first week after the post will be added to the ticket.
- 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 you would like comments to be added as new tickets, you can enable the Comments as Tickets feature under Admin > Channels > Facebook > Edit. Replies to that comment are then added to the created ticket.
An agent working in Support 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 the agent interface:
You can set up a view in Support to see all of your Facebook tickets in one place.
Private messaging with Facebook
If your account supports private messaging, private messages that are sent to your Facebook Pages through Facebook Messenger become tickets. This means that a user can ask a private question, and an agent can have a one-on-one conversation with the user. Users click the Send Message button on the Facebook Page to send a private message.
If you aren't sure whether your account supports private messaging, see Facebook page limits with Support.
Setting up the Facebook channel
To set up your Facebook channel to monitor a Facebook account
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click the Add your first Facebook Page link. If you already have a Facebook Page, click Add.
- Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
- When asked, be sure you grant Zendesk access to your account.
- In the Add Facebook Pages to your account window, locate the page you want to add, and select the permissions you want to include:
- Click Add for the Facebook Page you'd like to link to your Zendesk.
- If you have multiple Facebook Pages, click Add for another Facebook Page or close the window.
The Facebook Page you added appears on your Facebook Channel page. You can edit the settings now, if you'd like. By default, any Wall post is converted to a ticket, including those by the page owner.
Editing your Facebook channel
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click Edit beside the Facebook Page you'd like to edit settings for.
- In the Include Wall posts section, select No if you don't want Wall posts automatically converted to tickets. Otherwise, leave it as is.
- Select Comments on a post are added to the same ticket to add responses on Wall posts as replies to the Wall post's ticket.
- Select Comments on a post create new tickets to add responses on Wall posts as new tickets.
- Select Include hidden posts to review posts that haven't been approved by the page as tickets in Zendesk Support.
- Deselect Include Wall posts authored by the Page if you don't want posts by the Facebook Page owner converted to tickets.
- Select Include unpublished posts to review unpublished posts (also known as dark posts) as tickets in Zendesk Support. This will also allow Facebook ads to convert to tickets.
- In the Include private messages section, select Yes if you want private messages converted to tickets.
- Click Update Page settings.
Note: 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
You can monitor Facebook Pages from your Support account. 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.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click Add new Page.
- Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
- 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).
- Click Add beside the Page you'd like to add.
The Facebook Page appears in Facebook Channel page.
Managing Facebook tickets with business rules
- 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.
Troubleshooting
If you need help fixing a problem with your Facebook channel, see Troubleshooting issues with your Facebook channel.
137 Comments
Hey,
Is it possible to update a ticket when the private message gets archived in the fb business manager?
Our use case is that the marketing team replies to the "easy ones" directly via facebook, i want to close the tickets then with a trigger.
Hey Andreas,
Yes, it is possible to update a ticket when the private message gets archived in Facebook. Archiving the conversation in Facebook just hides it from your inbox until the next time you chat with that person. So commenting on that ticket again just picks up the chat where you left off.
Hi there, I was wondering about the 2 FB pages limit that is still in place - I see this was discussed a couple years ago and that there were issues with FBs API. However, these days even Freshdesk allows for unlimited FB pages integration so I don't see a reason why Zendesk wouldn't offer the same. Any updates on this front? Thanks!
Hi, Milana -
We're actively investigating whether we can remove the limit or not. We would like to, but we had some doubts about whether we can be sure all of our API calls will make it through, but the prognosis seems good. We'll be working on this soon.
Hi guys,
I recently became aware of this Facebook integration feature and wanted to see if I could get some help on 1 thing.
If it was mentioned before, I apologize for making you repeat any reply. I was able to incorporate our company's facebook page without any trouble but since out company develops many different games, we have our tickets separated in Views. Is there a way I can separate the Facebook posts and Private messages into another View? If so, how can I go about doing that? I've tried messing around with it today but I couldn't seem to figure it out.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks,
Brian
@Brian - We have conditions in the Views menu that allow you to include or exclude various channels. You can use the condition [Ticket: Channel] to create these. There are options for both Facebook Post and Facebook Private Message.
Hey Max,
Thanks for your quick reply. Unfortunately I've tried that but it didn't seem to work.(Maybe I'm doing it wrong.)
Right now I have the page deactivated until I can get the view set up properly, but it's currently set up as follows (if something is wrong, just let me know):
Meet ALL of the following conditions:
Ticket: Channel is Facebook Post
Ticket: Channel is Facebook Private Message
Ticket: Status is New
Ticket: Status is Open
Is there anything else I'd need to include?
Hi, Brian -
You're asking Zendesk to retrieve tickets that can't exist. Those conditions say that it needs to be all four of those things, and a ticket cannot be both Open and New at the same time. It also can't be both a post and a private message. You should use some "ANY" conditions. Change it as follows:
Meet ALL of the following conditions:
[Ticket: Status] [Less than] [Pending]
Meet ANY of the following conditions:
[Ticket: Channel] [is] [Facebook Post]
[Ticket: Channel] [is] [Facebook Private Message]
Hi Max,
Thanks a lot for your help. I'll try this and let you know how that works.
Brian
Max - Any ETA on the removal of FB page limits beyond soon? Just curious if this is something that may happen within the next quarter or if we're looking at a year or more down the road before a decision is made.
Hey, James -
We have actually begun to do some investigation. We're not ready to commit to a time frame, but have begun to escalate the priority now that we're feeling safer about API limits.
Hello,
I wanted to ask regarding the page limits.
In the first page of this discussion, we can read the following in description:
"You can add up to fifteen Facebook Page to the Facebook channel. You have to be an administrator or have appropriate role permissions to set up the Facebook channel in Zendesk."
As I see in a discussion, the talk is about the limit of 2 pages per accounts. Thus, could please anyone clarify if it's 2 or it was increased to 15?
Or maybe I am mixing up the channels and pages, not sure.
Thank in advance for the answer.
Hi Giorgi!
Previously, it was only possible to add 2 Facebook pages to your Zendesk. As of February 18, 2016 that limit was increased to 15 Facebook pages. You can read all about it in this announcement post:
Hope that helps!
Dear Jessie,
Thank you very much for your answer and for that awesome news!
Highly appreciated.
All the best,
Giorgi
Hi!
What about creating tickets from Fb user posts, mentioning specific Fb page?
Andrei -
Technically if a user @ mentions your page, that will be converted into a ticket as well. We plan to eventually make that a separate option, but right now it's treated in the same way as a wall post.
If someone @ mentions your page in a comment (rather than a post) it will not be captured at this time.
The only issue I have at the moment is with the opening of links from our Facebook Business managed page. Are there any plans to improve this functionality?
Hi,
When I allow Facebook posts to convert into tickets, then someone comments on this post and I reply to him, my reply appear no Facebook as another comment, not as a reply to that person.
Is there a way to make my reply becomes a reply to the user, not a new comment on the post?
I appreciate if someone can answer me, please.
Thanks
Hi Coptic Treasures,
At present the ability for a Facebook ticket reply to appear as a reply on the post as opposed to a comment is not currently possible. I see you've already posted some feedback on the feature request post HERE regarding this. We'll reach out to our product managers to see if we can get an update to this for you asap.
Let us know if there's anything else we can help with. :)
Hi all,
Can someone confirm if you can manage Facebook Ad comments via Zendesk integration?
Thanks in advanced :)
Hi Alexander,
I am not sure if it works, we had wall posts including our own posts enabled and our ads never occurred there.
Bear in mind that Zendesk does not handle reply-to comments in a proper way, so even when it would fetch the ads, it is pretty useless i would say.
Hi Zendesk Team,
I understood that with Zendesk we can effectively manage 1) facebook private messages and 2) comments from users on your pinwall.
We would need following features to manage our facebook account effectively:
1) Replying to comments to our own posts
2) Liking user comments on our page and beneath our posts
3) Being able to manage facebook groups with zendesk not only pages?!
4) integration of facebook comments - social plugin for websites (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments/#moderation-setup-instructions)
Is any of these features already implemented and I missed it or do you plan to implement any of these features in the near future? Thanks for your help!
Best,
Raphael
We use Facebook Enterprise platform, zendesk support can not use it to integrate channel, always display we have no one fanpage.
Hi Sigurd!
I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you're asking...are you having problems connecting your Facebook page to your Zendesk?
Hi Guys
I was wondering if I am removed as an admin from our companies FB page will I still have the ability to respond to tickets through Zendesk? The reason I ask is that the person who set up our integration said I also had to be an admin on our FB page.. Is this really the case?
Thanks
Hey Johnny!
As long as there aren't any restrictions set up in your Zendesk that would prevent you from seeing or interacting with those tickets, you should be able to respond to them even if you're not an admin on the FB page.
Is there a way to manually select certain FB posts to create a ticket? We have a FB page for our sales team and the majority of the chatter on that page is sharing of best practices. I need my team to be able to identify certain posts to convert them to tickets. Is this functionality available or is it an all or none thing?
Hi Sandra,
At this time it wouldn't be possible to manually convert specific wall posts to tickets at present.
I can certainly see the benefit of this and will happily log this as a feature request so that our product managers can look into this for future updates to our Facebook integration.
Glen, Sandra,
A big +1 for a feature for our Facebook admins / Comms team to manually decide that it's a support ticket. I imagine something like the "Create a ticket" button in Help Center comments.
The full Facebook channel in Zendesk produces too much noise, while the support team switching over to FB as needed is not scalable.
Thanks!
James,
We started evaluating the Hootsuite/Zendesk integration last week to accomplish this task. Seems like a viable solution.
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