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Setting up multiple brands (Enterprise)

Jennifer Rowe
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

enterprise plan

Note: Support Enterprise includes up to five brands. Support Enterprise with the Multibrand add-on includes up to 300 brands.
Brand is a customer facing identity, represented by a collection of contact points for your customers. These contact points can include email support addresses, Help Center, Web Widget, Talk, Twitter, and Facebook. 

Brand is also a ticket value, added to all your tickets. Agents can manually change the brand associated with a ticket, and they search for tickets by brand. You can also use brand in business rules, including macros, views, triggers, and automations, as well as in Explore and Insights reporting.

Your Zendesk Support has one brand by default, that was created when you set up your Zendesk account. Support for up to five brands is available on Enterprise. There is also Multibrand Add-on for Enterprise that enables you to add up to 300 brands.

You must be an administrator to add and manage brands.

This article contains the following sections:

For a list of resources, see Multibrand resources.

Understanding how Multibrand works in your account

When your account is created, one brand is created for you by default. So, before you add any brands, you have a single account subdomain and one brand subdomain that match. When you add brands, you still have a single account subdomain, but you have multiple brand subdomains, including your original brand that matches your account subdomain.

When you have multiple brands, one is always assigned as the default brand. This is the brand associated with your default Help Center, and is applied in any situation where another specific brand is not indicated. The default brand cannot be deleted or deactivated until another brand is made the default. The default brand is also the brand retained if you downgrade to a single-brand plan. The default brand is identified as (Default) on your brands list.

The account Owner can also define an agent brand, or agent route, which is essentially an agent's default brand. You select a brand for the agent route on the Settings > Account page, under the Branding tab. When your agents log in to Zendesk they see the assigned agent route, which is always tied to one of your brands. The agent brand cannot be deleted or deactivated until another brand is made the agent route. It is identified as (Agent) on your brands list.

Note: Currently, you cannot change the subdomain of your original brand without also changing your account subdomain.

Brand is a ticket value. Every ticket has a brand. Users and organizations do not have a brand value. They belong to the account, not a brand. You cannot segment users or orgs by brand.

Most channels have a brand value, so that you can configure specific channels for specific brands. This includes Help Center, Web Widget, Talk, Twitter, and Facebook.

Adding multiple brands

Zendesk Support creates one brand for your account by default, but you can set up and support multiple brands.

On Enterprise you can add up to five brands. With the Multibrand Add-on, you can add as up to 300 brands.

You can watch this overview video or read the instruction below to add a brand.

Setting Up Multibrand (01:05)
To add a brand
  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Brands.
  2. Click Add brand.

    If this is the first time you are adding a brand, click Get started instead.

  3. Enter a Brand name.

    Brand name is required and must be a unique name, not used by any of your other brands. This name will be customer-facing.

  4. Enter a Subdomain for this brand's Help Center.
    Note: This feature has the following plan restrictions:
    • Support Enterprise and Guide Lite or Professional: Five brands, one Help Center
    • Support Enterprise and Guide Enterprise: Five brands, five Help Centers
    • Support Enterprise with Multibrand add-on and any Guide plan: 300 brands, 300 Help Centers

     This subdomain will be the address (URL) for this brand's Help Center: mybrand.zendesk.com/hc. It will also be the default support address for this brand: support@mybrand.zendesk.com. 

    Subdomain is required; each brand has its own subdomain. It can include only letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, and a dash (-). When you enter a subdomain you'll see notification that the subdomain is either available or already taken.

  5. (Optional) Add a Logo by dragging your file to the designated logo area or by clicking choose file.

    Your logo should be 2 MB or less and must be a PNG, JPG, JPEG, or GIF file. For best results, your logo should be square. Otherwise, your logo will be stretched or compressed to fit.

  6. (Optional) Enter a brand signature to append your agent's personal email signature when they are representing that brand. For information on agent signatures, see Adding an agent signature to ticket email notifications.

  7. (Optional) Enter an alternative support site URL in Host mapping to map one of your own domain names to the Help Center for this brand. For example, you might use support.mybrand.com/hc instead of mybrand.zendesk.com/hc.

    When you enter your host mapped URL it is automatically tested, and you'll see notification that your host mapping is either working or not working.

    Note: There are multiple steps required to set up host mapping for a brand, including generating an updated SSL certificate every time you add one or more brands. For more information, see Generating an SSL certificate for host-mapped brands.

    After you add multiple brands, host mapping is managed in Manage > Brands instead of Settings > Account.

  8. Click Save changes.

    Your new brand is created and added to your list of all brands.

    Note: Your new brand will not be available to end-users until you add a Help Center or associate it with another channel (see Configuring your channels to support multiple brands).

To manage your brands, see Managing multiple brands. To start using and supporting your new brand, see the next section Next steps after you add a new brand.

Generating an SSL certificate for host-mapped brands

When you add a host mapped brand, you need to regenerate your SSL certificate. If you do not regenerate your certificate, host mapping will work, but the brand will not be protected.

Note: If you did not previously have host mapping set up, skip this section and go through the entire host mapping process. See Changing the address of your Help Center subdomain (host mapping).

You need to regenerate your SSL certificate every time you add one or more host mapped brands, but you do not need to regenerate your certificate for every host mapped brand. For example, if you add three new brands, you need to regenerate your certificate only once. If you later add two more brands, you need to regenerate your certificate again.

Your certificate request should be formatted as a SAN (SubjectAltName) cert. This type of certificate is used to manage multiple SSL-protected host mapped domains. Each brand subdomain is listed in the certificate as a SAN.

Alternatively, You can use a wildcard certificate if your brands are in the same domain. For example brand1.company.com, brand2.company.com, and brand3.company.com are all in the same domain.

To regenerate your SSL certificate when you add one or more host mapped brands, see Using hosted SSL.

Requiring the Brand field on tickets created by agents

When you have multiple brands, every ticket has a brand. For all customer-facing channels, the brand is automatically applied to the ticket.

When agents create tickets, they have the ability to chose the brand. You can require that agents select a brand before they submit a new ticket. If you do not require that agents select a brand, then your default brand will be applied to the ticket, unless the agent selects another brand before submitting the ticket.

To require that agents select a brand when creating new tickets

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Brands.
  2. Click the toggle beside Require brand before save.

  3. Navigate away from the Brand settings page.

    Your change is automatically saved.

Excluding your branded Help Centers from system generated account emails

By default, when you have multiple brands with active Help Centers, a list of all your active branded Help Centers are included in account emails. Account emails are system-generated emails that notify agents and end-users about their profile, including welcome emails, account verification emails, and password reset emails.

If you do not want to include a list of your active branded Help Centers in account emails, you can exclude it.

To exclude the list of active branded Help Centers from account emails to agents and end-users

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Settings > Customers.
  2. Beside Account emails, deselect Include a list of active Help Centers in account emails.

  3. Click Save tab.

Next step after you add a brand: Configure your channels to support multiple brands

When you add multiple brands, you have to add a Help Center, or associate another channel with each brand, before your customers can open requests with a specific brand.

You can support your brands in any of these channels: email, Help Center, Web Widget, Talk, Facebook, Twitter, and the API.

Note: Currently, Zendesk Chat does not support multiple brands (see Multibranding Zendesk Chat for a possible option).
See the following articles to configure your channels to support multiple brands:

Other possible next steps after you add a brand and configure your channels

For a list of resources, see Multibrand resources.

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55 Comments

  • Colin Piper
    • Edited

    @Maria. you may find a solution to your question about setting the reply to email address here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203464558-Setting-the-default-reply-email-address-using-a-trigger

    0
  • Maria Nørgaard

    @Colin: You're awesome! Thank you so much! :)

    @Max: Thanks for your reply. Hope it'll soon be prioritized by ZD.

    0
  • Jennifer Haight

    Any updates on brand-specific signatures? We would like to have a signature including brand-specific contact information automatically applied to the ticket based on the brand of the ticket.

    For example
    Brand 1 signature:
    You may contact us at ### or support@us.com.

    Brand 2 signature:
    You may contact us at different ### or support@thisbrand.com.

    0
  • Sander Scheer

    We have fixed that with the following solution, based on the "Create ticket for brand app":
    1. Create a dynamic content, where you have a different signature for every brand (while the brand is a custom field with this "Create ticket for brand app")
    2. Create a custom app that has no display, that inserts the dynamic content placeholder in your reply, everytime you reply to a ticket (we've called it the "Add signature for brand" app)

    The dynamic content looks something like this:
    {% case ticket.ticket_field_option_title_24431341 %}
    {% when 'Brand A' %}
    Kind regards,

    {{current_user.name}}
    Brand A
    {% when 'Brand B' %}
    Kind regards,

    {{current_user.name}}
    Brand B
    {% endcase %}

    The content of the app.js looks something like this:
    (function() {
    return {
    events: {
    'ticket.save':'onTicketSave'
    },

    onTicketSave: function() {
  var comment = this.comment();
  var original = comment.text();
  var placeholder = this.setting('placeholder');
  if (original.length > 0 && comment.type() == 'publicReply' && original.indexOf(placeholder) < 0){
    comment.text(original+'\n\n'+placeholder);
  }
  return true;
}

    };
    }());

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    Thanks for sharing your solution, Sander!

    0
  • Maria Nørgaard

    Hi Jennifer

    We've simply set it up as triggers, but of course this puts the brand specific info at the bottom of the e-mail notification to the end user rather than straight into the agent signature. However, our brand info is long enough that it actually makes more sense only putting it once at the end of the message rather than in every reply (we often have longer correspondences with our end users).

    Simple but efficient. :)

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    @Maria - Simple, efficient, and elegant. Thanks for sharing!

    0
  • Maria Nørgaard

    Hi again

    I know I just gave one solution to this above, but I'm also helping other ZD accounts in my group with their setups and one of these accounts would like to use the placeholder {{ticket.brand.name}} in the agent signature.

    Is there any update on this?

    0
  • Max McCal
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi, Maria -

    That's something I'd like us to explore soon. We have a number of open issues with Multibrand and we're looking into them all, but that one hasn't bubbled up to the top of the list just yet. Lately we've offered the ability to require a brand field selection for agents creating tickets, and very soon we have a few more things in development. That particular issue is on a shrinking list of fixes we need to investigate.

    0
  • Sander Scheer

    Hi everybody!

    The "Add Signature for Brand" App we have written is now open source available on Github: https://github.com/drukwerkdeal/zendesk_addsignatureforbrand

    If you are interested in custom signatures per brand, please check it out there!

    Zendesk update: Adding branded signatures is now an option in the UI when you set up (or edit) a brand.

    0
  • Jennifer Rowe
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Sander, this is really, really awesome! Thanks for sharing your app with everyone. I'm sure it'll be useful.

    We'd love have it as a tip in our community (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200132086-Tips-Tricks), if you have time. :) Thanks!

    0
  • Marybeth Sklar

    Sander,

    I have three questions about 'Add Signature..." that I hope you can answer.

    1. Does the agent need to choose the brand in order for the variable dynamic content to display?

    2. Please verify that the Add signature app replaces the need to create the custom app you reference in your July 23 post. (I don't need to install Ruby and the gem, right?)

    3. The dynamic content shown in your example is clearly more than html, which along with css, is the limit of my abilities. Can you point me to a reference for the syntax you use in your dynamic content example?

    Thanks very much -

    Mary Beth

    0
  • Charles Magnuson

    This article has a broken link. The "Setting up business rules for multiple brands" link points to an admin URL that's not accessible to us. Instead, I think it should point here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204382423-Setting-up-business-rules-for-multiple-brands-Professional-Add-on-and-Enterprise-

    0
  • Bob Novak

    Thanks for pointing that out Charles - I've let our documentation team know.

    0
  • Mark Fly

    If you already have separate brand desks that were to be combined with a "hub" account, is it now possible to designate one as the main or master account and attach the second, third ones as a "brand"? How do you migrate if you were already creating this setup before the new feature was available and have two separate accounts?

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    Hi Mark!

    You can find documentation on this here:

    Check out the Migrating from Hub and Spoke to Multibrand section in the Documentation part of that guide.

    Hope that helps!

    0
  • Mark Hinson

    We are looking at using Zendesk Brands to support a single service desk selling/supporting multiple product ranges, so we would have a parent domain (parent.zendesk.com) and a brands of product1.zendesk.com, product2.zendesk.com.  We have an integration with a MAGENTO (eCommerce site Sales/Order System).  Question:- Does  each Magento system integrate to the parent.zendesk.com site or to each of the branded product1.zendesk.com, etc sites, or is either approach possible?

    0
  • Christopher McLoughlin

    Hi Mark,

    The Magento app installs in the "parent.zendesk.com" and can be used by all brands. This link goes through how you can get the integration going.

    If you are looking to setup multiple Magento instances with each brand (Store A with Brand A, Store B with Brand B, etc.) this currently cannot be done with Multibrand. There may be ways to get this done, but they are unfortunately not currently supported by Zendesk. If you'd like to discuss this point more, please open up a ticket with us.

    0
  • Francis Lau

    Is there anyone else here who's seeing issues with inline headers, after adding links to the trigger messages?

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    Hey Francis!

    Can you describe what you're experiencing in more detail?

    0
  • Peter Hochstrasser

    We had to change the brand for the current default external support mail address.

    Be advised that this works only after making another e-mail temporarily the default address.

    P.

    0
  • Philip Argy

    Why can't people on Team plans just have the option to add another brand knowledge base for an add-on fee? For a small business, it doesn't make sense to have to upgrade all the way to a Professional plan just to have one extra knowledge base.

    0
  • Nicole S.
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hey Phil - 

    Thanks for your feedback, and welcome to the Zendesk Community!

    0
  • Christopher Rehn

    Hello. Quick question:

    Can I hide the "Brands" ticket field in the default ticket form? I want to use two different brands in Zendesk, but set which brand a ticket belongs to with triggers rather than offering our agents the ability to change it manually.

    At the moment, whenever I activate a second brand it shows up in the top of our ticket forms and we don't want that.

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    Hey Christopher!

    There isn't a way to disable that field in the agent interface, I'm afraid. What you might be able to do instead is to set up a series of triggers that automatically change the brand back to what it's supposed to be if an agent submits an update where they've changed it.

    0
  • Patrick Hauser

    Hi,

    I´ve set up 2 brands a couple of months ago. Now I want to create a simple insights report showing me how many of the solved tickets had the value "brand1" and "brand2". Sadly I can´t find any brand or ticket value options. Can you please give me a short tutorial on how to setup this?

    Thank you.

    0
  • Nicole S.
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hey Patrick - 

    I'm looking for the right documentation to point you to, but in the meantime, you could also post your question to the Insights Q&A section in the Community, and you may have better luck getting an answer over there. 

    0
  • Nicole S.
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hi Patrick - 

    I poked around a little and the Ticket Brand is a default attribute. When you run a report looking for tickets solved during X time period, it should list them broken down by brand. 

    0
  • Jamie Noell

    Does the logo set-up for the brand appear anywhere besides the drop-down for brand in the left sidebar on the ticket?  

    0
  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk team member

    Hi Jamie!

    If you have Help Centers active for your brands, those logos will be visible there, but otherwise I believe that's it. Are you seeing something odd?

    0

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