Using structured messages in Zendesk Chat

The structured messaging feature in Zendesk Chat allows you to provide elements that enhance and simplify a customer's chat experience. These elements include quick reply buttons, gifs (as image in a template), and persistent panel templates, among others.

Currently, accounts use the Chat Conversations API to add structured messages to their chats.

You do not need to manually enable the structured messaging feature. If your account meets the requirements described in this article, you can begin using structured messages in chats. This article includes the following topics:

• Requirements and restrictions
• Structured message types
• Using structured messages in chats

Requirements and restrictions

To use structured messaging, you must meet the following requirements:

• Your Zendesk Chat account is Enterprise or Premium (Legacy)
• You are participating in the Web Widget integrated Chat Experience limited availability program.

  OR

  You are using the Chat SDK version 1.6.0 or above. See Structured Message Payload for details.

• You have access to the Zendesk Chat Conversations API.

Note that structured message is not currently supported in the Chat Android SDK or Chat iOS SDK at the moment.

Structured message types

The available structured message types are:

• Quick replies
• Button templates
• Panel templates
• Panel template carousel
• List templates 

Quick replies

Quick replies allow an agent to send a message with a number of option buttons for an end user to choose from. When the end user clicks a button, it sends a pre-defined reply to the agent.

Button templates

A button template allows an agent to send a message along with a list of buttons. When clicked by the end user, these buttons can:

• Launch a quick reply, as described above, or
• Open a URL in a new tab

Panel templates

A panel template allows an agent to send a message with a panel and a list of buttons.

The panel can include an image, title, and subtitle. When clicked by the end user, the panel can:

• Open a URL in a new tab

When clicked by the end user, the buttons can:

• Launch a quick reply, as described above, or
• Open a URL in a new tab

Panel template carousel

A panel template carousel allows an agent to send an array of panel templates as a carousel.

List template

A list template allows an agent to send an array of items with an optional button.

The item can include an title, subtitle, and an optional image. When clicked by the end user, the item can:

• Open a URL in a new tab

When clicked by the end user, the button can:

• Launch a quick reply, as described above, or
• Open a URL in a new tab

Using structured messages in chats

To use structured messages in chats, you must use the Chat Conversations API. To familiarize yourself with this, see Getting Started with the Chat Conversations API.

We recommend you write an application that can act as an agent using the Conversations API. For a step-by-step walkthrough on writing this application, see the section Getting Started. Once this is completed, instead of using the sendMessage mutation to deliver a text message to the end user, the application can use the following mutations to send a structured message:

Note: These mutations support a fallback parameter, which is used in situations where structured messaging is not supported (see Requirements and restrictions, above).

Table 1.

Structured message type	Conversations API mutation name
Quick replies	sendQuickReplies
Button templates	sendButtonTemplate
Panel templates	sendPanelTemplate
Panel template carousel	sendPanelTemplateCarousel
List template	sendListTemplate

Refer to the Conversations API schema documentation for the full API details.