Current and upcoming Zendesk betas

At Zendesk, we value the feedback of our customers and consider it an important part of the our process. That's why we offer early access for some features in development, so that you can try out the feature in advance and give us feedback or report issues. 

In addition to participating in betas, you might want to join our Experience Research Panel to learn about UX research opportunities where you can help shape our products.

These are our products that have current and upcoming betas:

• Zendesk Support
• Zendesk Guide
• Zendesk Explore
• Zendesk Sell
• Zendesk Talk
• Cross product
• Sunshine
• Developers
• Apps and integrations

Zendesk Support

The following betas are available for Support:

• New email spam filter for Support
• Web Widget performance
• Zendesk messaging

New email spam filter for Support

Zendesk uses a combination of our own internal spam prevention rules, and an outside vendor. We are now exploring a new open source tool for spam prevention that will give us new options for fighting spam. We are building our own instance of a tool called Rspamd. Rspamd uses a number of factors to determine the legitimacy of email, but most importantly, because this is our own separate instance, we can tweak the results ourselves.

Sign up for the spam filter early access program 

Web Widget performance

The Web Widget performance beta provides early access to performance optimizations that will be released in stages. The first phase of this beta includes a re-architecture to the way we serve the Web Widget. 

This beta is great for anyone interested in staying informed about Web Widget performance improvements, getting early access to enhancements, and providing feedback as we roll them out. 

Learn more about the Web Widget performance beta

Zendesk messaging

Zendesk messaging provides customers the flexibility to pop in and out of the conversation at their leisure, while giving CX teams the tools to automate repetitive conversations.

This beta is available to customers using Zendesk Suite, or Zendesk Chat + Support with the Agent Workspace enabled.

Learn more about the Zendesk messaging beta

Zendesk Guide

The following betas are available for Guide.

• Guide knowledge base reporting in Explore
• Content blocks
• Federated Help Center search
• Individual users in Guide user segments

Guide knowledge base reporting in Explore

This update extends Explore by enabling you to report on your Help Center articles. You can report on article views, sections, translations, article votes, and more. The EAP includes a new Knowledge Base pre-built dashboard and also gives you access to the underlying metrics and attributes so you can write your own reports.

Learn more about the Guide knowledge base reporting EAP

Content blocks

We know that our customers want a better way to create, manage, and update content that lives across multiple articles or help centers. We are addressing this need by introducing content blocks, a Guide Enterprise feature that allows you to do just that.

With this functionality, you’ll be able to capture things like common troubleshooting steps, rules and regulations, disclaimers, etc. as a content block, and then insert into multiple articles and across multiple help centers. 

Learn more about the Content Blocks EAP

Federated Help Center search

Until now, when you searched a Guide Help Center, the content that you could find to help you resolve your issue was limited to Guide Articles and Gather community posts. However many Zendesk customers have great self service content on websites, blogs, other Knowledge bases, learning management systems, and on other community platforms. 

The Guide Federated Help Center search EAP enables you to surface all that great content hosted outside Guide and Gather in your Help Center search results.

Learn more about the Federated Help Center Search EAP

Individual users in Guide user segments

This EAP allows you to select individual users to add to a user segment.

Selecting individual users makes it easy to grant users access to an article, topic, or moderator group in Zendesk Guide and Zendesk Gather. User segments are central to many use cases and we want to make segmentation simple to work with for all customers.

Learn more about the individual users in User Segments EAP

Zendesk Explore

The following betas are available for Explore:

• Guide knowledge base reporting
• Aggregation level functions
• Improved large query performance

Guide knowledge base reporting in Explore

This update extends Explore by enabling you to report on your Help Center articles. You can report on article views, sections, translations, article votes, and more. The EAP includes a new Knowledge Base pre-built dashboard and also gives you access to the underlying metrics and attributes so you can write your own reports.

Learn more about the Guide knowledge base reporting EAP

Aggregation level functions

This update gives you more control over the level of aggregation for your Explore metrics. Currently, when you add a metric and multiple attributes to a query, the metric is sliced by all of the attributes. With these new functions, you’ll be able to specify exactly which attributes will slice your metrics. If you used Insights, you’ll recognize this as similar functionality to the BY keyword. 

Learn more about the aggregation level functions EAP

Improved large query performance

This EAP increases the amount of rows you can export from a query to 500,000 rows. Additionally, when you reach the limits of a visualization (like a bar chart), Explore automatically displays it as a table instead to make sure you can view up to 50,000 rows in Query builder.

Learn more about the improved large query performance EAP

Zendesk Sell

The following betas are available for Sell:

• Sell voicemail
• Sell conference calling
• Sell roles and actions permissions

Sell voicemail

Voicemail in Zendesk Sell allows your customers to leave a message for you while you are not available to pick up your phone. This EAP is available on all Sell plans.

Learn more about the Sell voicemail EAP

Sell conference calling

Conference calling in Zendesk Sell includes new features that help you to:

• Include an extra person on the Sell Voice call, from either inside or outside your organisation
• Handle a warm transfer situation by putting your customer on hold, including another caller, and leaving the call early without ending it
• See the logs and recordings of such calls differentiated on the activity log

Learn more about the Sell conference calling EAP

Sell roles and actions permissions

Permission enhancements for roles and actions in Zendesk Sell help you to manage your users:

• Actions permissions provide a broader range of settings to allow you more control and security around who can do what with your data. Admins can restrict a user from modifying, creating, deleting, or changing the owner of leads, contacts, and deals.
• A role determines what users can do with lead, contact, or deal in Sell. You can create custom roles, where you specify how users assigned this role can view, create, and manage their own, and other users' records in Sell. 

Learn more about the Sell roles and actions permissions EAP

Zendesk Talk

Talk additional numbers now available

We are happy to announce that Zendesk Talk can now offer additional number coverage for the countries listed in the form. Note: These numbers are still in beta and not yet generally available as we want to see how they preform.

Register your interest here

Cross product

Focus mode for live channels

When enabled, Focus Mode allows agents to be online on both Talk and Chat but will only serve the agent one channel at a time. In other words, if an agent is on a call, they will not be offered chats until the call (and wrap-up) has ended. Likewise, if an agent is responding to a chat or multiple chats (up to max chat limit), then no calls will be offered to that agent until all their chats have ended.

Learn more about the Focus Mode early access program

Sunshine

The following betas are available for Sunshine:

• Sunshine Objects change events API
• Zendesk standard events
• Guide Events app

Sunshine Objects change events API

The Sunshine Objects change events API is a new custom objects endpoint. It allows custom object events to the created, updated, and deleted.

Learn more about Sunshine objects change events API beta

Zendesk standard events

The Zendesk standard events makes events from Guide, Talk, and Support available in  Sunshine. They can be retrieved using the Sunshine events API, or viewed in the customer context in a ticket. Guide events can also be viewed in the Guide Events app.

Learn more about Zendesk standard events EAP

Guide Events app

The Guide Events app displays a customer’s interactions with your Help Center content in a ticket. It provides insights on what articles a customer has viewed, allowing more personalized support by recommending unread articles, and also identifying articles that result in customer tickets.

Learn more about the Guide Events app EAP

Developers

The following betas are available for developers:

• Zendesk SDK for Unity
• New mobile Chat SDK
• Side conversations API

Zendesk SDK for Unity

The Zendesk SDK for Unity allows your game development teams to integrate the complete Zendesk support capabilities natively into your Unity 3D game. It makes it as simple as dragging and dropping.  We’re offering this Early Access Program to give some of our customers early access to the new SDK. The objective is to work closely with you to make improvements to the integration experience and get your feedback as we continue to build the core functionality.

 Learn more about the Zendesk SDK for Unity

New mobile Chat SDK

The current version of the Chat SDK has been around for a couple of years. Based on your feedback, we've completely re-written the Chat SDK for Android and iOS to improve reliability, stability, and performance. The new Chat SDK is built on top of our new Unified Messaging Interface, which allows for the interoperability of the Chat SDK with other Zendesk SDKs.

Learn more about the Chat SDK

Side conversations API

Side conversations were introduced in June of 2018, and customers use them to start conversations with vendors, partners, and other departments directly from their tickets. The API for side conversations enables these conversations to be created programmatically.

The API provides most of the functionality available in the UI and also introduces an incremental export endpoint that provides all of your side conversation data for archiving or analysis.

Learn more about the side conversations API

Apps and integrations

Shopify integration

The new Shopify integration rationalizes and updates the Chat and Support apps into a single integration which is managed in the Admin Center. You can add the Web Widget to your Shopify store from the Admin Center, so customers can contact your support team whilst they’re on your website. 

The integration now includes some new features: 

• Refunds and cancellations: Agents can now action a Shopify order refund or cancellation through the Support sidebar app without leaving the context of their ticket. This new feature includes both full and partial refunds for orders that have been fulfilled, and full cancellations for orders that haven't been dispatched.
• Shopify events and profiles for Sunshine: Shopify events and profiles can be imported into Sunshine and then displayed in customer context when viewing a Zendesk Support ticket. This provides a single view of information between Zendesk and Shopify. Customer context can be used, for example, to help you understand customer behavior, look at sales trends, and identify improvements to your business.

Learn more about the new Shopify integration early access program

Zendesk Support Discord integration

Zendesk is releasing an integration with Discord. This integration allows you to install a "Support Bot" into your Discord server that allows gamers to request help directly via any Discord channel in your server. This creates a ticket in Zendesk, so your agents can easily respond.

Learn more about the Discord Integration early access program and request access 

Salesforce integration logging

The integrations logging EAP is available for all admins using the Salesforce integration. This feature provides a centralized logging experience in Admin Center. It displays data syncing activities between Salesforce and Zendesk. This helps to identify and diagnose any issues and have greater visibility into the integration's performance.

Learn more about the Salesforce integration log feature