As an alternative to email-based side conversations, agents can use side conversations in a ticket to initiate and participate in Slack threads. The Slack side conversations you initiate are viewable in the ticket and in the Slack application. Like email conversations, Slack side conversations are recorded as ticket events and you can use them as trigger conditions.
Creating a side conversation using Slack
When you create a side conversation, you choose between using email or using Slack.
To create a side conversation using Slack
- From the upper-left portion of a ticket, click the plus sign (+) next to Side Conversations.
- Select Slack (instead of Email) as the
conversation type.
- Enter the Slack channel and your message. You can also add
attachments.
For more information about the composer, see Rich text editing in the side conversation composer.
You start a side conversation in one Slack channel at a time. You cannot combine Slack and email conversations. If you have a lot of Slack channels, it may take a few moments to display the list of available channels.
If you have multiple Slack workspaces connected to Zendesk Support, the workspace appears before the channel address. For example. Slack Workspace 1 - #general, Slack Workspace 2 - #general, and so on.
- When you’ve finished composing your message, click Send.
The team in the Slack channel can view your message and reply to the thread directly, without logging into Support.
The Slack replies are automatically included in the ticket’s side conversation. The conversation can continue back and forth, as long as necessary, until you get the information you need.
Note: You may experience some delay in updates that occur between Slack and ticket side conversations. Typically, the delay is about 5 seconds, but can be 30 seconds or longer. - When the side conversation is complete, click Mark done.
Deleting a Slack side conversation
To delete a Slack side conversation, you must be the agent who created the Slack side conversation or an administrator.
To delete a Slack side conversation
- From the upper-left portion of a ticket, click Side conversions to see a list of conversations.
- Select the side conversation you want to delete.
You can only delete Slack side conversations. You cannot delete email side conversations.
- Click the action menu icon (
) on the right side of the
conversation, then select Delete message.
- When a confirmation message appears, click Delete to
confirm the deletion.
When you delete, the side conversation is removed from the ticket and it is also removed from Slack. Messages edited or deleted on the Slack side are also reflected in side conversations.
About limitations and breaking the link between Support and Slack
You can add attachments to Slack side conversations, but you cannot insert ticket comments or initiate macros. The following Slack features are not supported:
- Direct messages
As a workaround, the administrator can set up private Slack channels that only have one member. For example, #lkelly-private and add them to the Slack for Zendesk integration.
- @mentions
Slack @mentions are not supported, but you can include @here to notify everyone currently logged in or @channel to alert every member of a channel.
- Emoji reactions
- Typing indicators
If the link breaks between Zendesk and Slack, for example, if an adminremoves the Zendesk app from a Slack channel or if they archive or delete a Slack channel that you used for side conversations, you can still open and view these side conversations in a ticket, but you can no longer use that Slack channel to send or receive updates to side conversations.
47 Comments
Installed and setup the Slack side convo Collaboration feature. Created a new side conversation but realized I needed to create a new channel. Go to Slack, create new public channel #Support. Go back to Zendesk, create side conversation > Slack > but the #Support channel does not appear.
I've logged out of slack, zendesk. Even 5min later, #support does not appear in the list of channels I can write to.
Hi Wendy,
Since it's a new channel you added, make sure the Zendesk app is invited to the channel. Click here for more information and refer to "To add the app to another channel."
Got it working. Thanks!
Glad to hear you got it sorted, Wendy. Thanks for letting us know!
Hi! This feature is great! Is there a way to search in Zendesk (either in the Search field or creating a Query in Explore) to find tickets that have Slack Side Conversations?
We want to be able to find all tickets that have Slack Side Conversations so we can write internal documentation about the issues brought up on these tickets.
Thanks!
is it possible to turn side conversations only for slack (without email option)?
Hi Mindaugas,
You can chose which type of side conversations to enable (Email, Slack, or both) by navigating to Admin > Settings > Tickets > Side Conversations.
For details, see Enabling and disabling side conversations.
Sounds like a great addition!
If I understand correctly, at the moment, within Zendesk, we can work with Triggers to notify people in the conversation that there's an update. (As mentioned here: Using side conversations in Tickets add-on) But in Slack, there's only @channel or @here that would work? As this would halt my entire support team to go check out that slack:
Are there any plans of adding the option for outgoing @mentions. In other words, will it in the future be possible to send a slack message from Zendesk mentioning @someonenotinzendesk? If so, when do you approximately expect this functionality?
Thanks in advance!
Hey Stefanie,
I reached out to our Product Managers and they think this is a fantastic idea! However, the current integration does not support searching for Slack users at this time. I've passed this feedback and your use-case along to the appropriate team.
Appreciate you sharing this with us :)
First of all many thanks for this very helpful new feature. One question: is it planned to make tagging of people in the slack integration possible? This would be extremely useful for the workflow in our company.
Is there a way to view the person who was part of the slack conversation?
We want to be able to view and create reporting around the person who answered the slack conversation in the slack channel. I see at this time ZD shows it in two places
1. Internal comment: "Note added from a Slack message by Agent Name in #channel.
2.title comment: Agent ZD Name > Today xx:xx > with Zendesk, Slack Agent Name.
Is there anyway to direct the message to a thread within the channel
@Luz it's not currently possible to tag individual people in Slack conversations. Slack requires knowing the ID of an individual person, so tagging them from within a side conversation within a ticket would require being able to search all Slack users for autocompletion so we can include the ID, which we don't have access to with the integration. We're investigating what it would take to add this in the future, but we don't have any timeframe for it.
@Silviana we've spoken, but at this time I think the best way to be able to report on participants in side conversations would probably be to use the incremental export endpoint available in the API EAP. You would be able to get the data about exported side conversations and who was involved, though it would likely be the Slack user IDs as mentioned above. Also, it seems like you may be referring to both notes created from the Slack integration using message actions as well as Side Conversations for Slack? Is that the case?
@Jacob do you mean a Slack thread that already exists? If so, there's no way to direct a side conversation to use an existing Slack thread instead of creating a new one in the channel.
Hello,
1) can you use macros to initiate a slack side conversation?
2) if yes can you use placeholders in the slack side conversation?
We have a bot built in our slack with a series of commands (sentences that we need to type every time), if we were able to use macros we could pre-build these commands into macros and so have to avoid to manually write the long sentences
is there any plan to add the "send a message via slack" as a macro action?
Hey Antonio, give it a try again, we actually just rolled this out. When you add a macro action you should now have the option for "Side conversation via Slack" if you have Slack enabled. And yes, you should be able to use placeholders for the recipients/channel field as well as the body field.
Hi Toby,
This is great news but I have a problem or probably what I want to achieve is not possible
I use a macro to send a predefined message to a slack channel.
In this channel I have a custom bot app, and if you ask him something, it gives you a response. Looks like the response from this bot is not included in zendesk side conversation.
From what I can see messages are sent as threaded conversation. So that when the bot responds to the command, the response does not go into the threaded conversation and therefore it does not go into side conversation
Steps I follow
1) I initiate a side conversation with a macro that sends a "command" to the slack channel where I have the bot:
2) The response I get from the bot does not go into side conversation, as the response is not included in the threaded conversation. The response from the bot is a new non-threatened message:
3) Side conversation does not have the response from the bot app: "event sent, please query again the order info".
@Antoniounfortunately the integration will only bring messages in the threads back into the side conversation. Otherwise there's no way for the bot to know the message is intended to be a response to the original side conversation message. Could the custom bot be updated to reply to these messages in the thread? I believe it's a matter of including the message it is responding to in the API call to Slack (at a high level).
Heya, Any plans on showing Microsoft Teams some love with this integration? We chose this over Slack.
Hey Dave,
I'm not aware of anything on the roadmap currently, but I was able to track down a feedback post related to this need: Side Conversations - Microsoft Teams Integration
I recommend adding your feedback to that post and I'll be sure to pass this along to the appropriate team so they're aware.
Thanks!
Toby Sterrett Hey Toby,
I have tried mentions in side conversation with @here and @channel based on the info below but it seems that both do not work.
Slack @mentions are not supported, but you can include @here to notify everyone currently logged in or @channel to alert every member of a channel.
Can you please tell us what we are missing?
Hi Armen Saghatelian thanks for the report! We're going to be rolling out a fix to return this functionality very soon. It will hopefully be out later today but should be in place by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest.
Toby Sterrett Hey Toby,
Thank you so much. It worked. I have two more questions:
1. Would it ever be possible to change the ticket status based on a reply in Slack thread?
2. If not, can you please make the side conversations new reply notifications more visible? Maybe you can add the new notification circle on the tickets view?
Hey Armen Saghatelian glad it worked!
Hi Toby Sterrett,
We are facing performance issues with integration. Can anyone have a look? Our Zendesk subdomain is tenweb.
The side conversations started in Zendesk don't appear in Slack threads right now.
Hello Armen Saghatelian,
Due to the nature of the issue impacting you, I'm going to open a ticket on your behalf. You should receive an email shortly followed by a response from our Advocate team.
Best regards.
Hi Devan - Community Manager,
Thank you. All fixed now :)
Glad to hear you got things working, Armen!
Hiya - is slack for Zendesk free?
Hi Sophie,
Yes, it is a free app. Here's the listing for it in our marketplace: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/slack/
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