Getting started for administrators in the Zendesk Agent Workspace

This topic describes how Zendesk administrators work with the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Other than enabling or disabling the workspace and mapping Chat departments to Support groups, there are no special Chat, Talk, or Support settings required to administer the agent workspace. For example, business rules for routing, triggers, automations, and macros that you set in Support are enforced; Chat agents receive incoming chat requests based on the settings you selected for chat routing; and, if all Talk agents are away, incoming calls continue to be queued and the values you have set for maximum queue size and maximum queue wait time are in effect.

For Social Messaging and Zendesk Messaging, there are special configuration tasks for the Zendesk Agent Workspace that differ from configuration tasks for Support. See Messaging tasks for administrators for details.

If you haven’t done so already, make sure Support, Chat, and Talk are set up on your account to get the full Agent Workspace experience. Topics in this article include:

• Support tasks for administrators
• Chat tasks for administrators
• Talk tasks for administrators
• Mapping Chat departments to Support groups
• Messaging tasks for administrators
• About the agent experience

Support tasks for administrators

To use the agent workspace, make sure Support is set up on your account. This includes:

1. Add email addresses.

   Use the Email administration page to add any additional email address you want to use on your site, set email preferences, or customize your email templates. For more information, see Getting started with email.

2. Add Support agents.

   Use the People administration page to add and manage Zendesk users, groups, and organizations. Each new agent you add receives a welcome email and verification link. For more information, see Adding agents and administrators.

Chat tasks for administrators

To use Chat in the agent workspace, make sure Chat is set up on your account. This includes:

1. Set up the Web Widget.

   Set up and embed the Web Widget. To use Zendesk Live Chat with the Web Widget, enable Chat on the Web Widget and configure Chat settings. For more information, see Configuring components in the Web Widget and Setting up Chat in the Web Widget.

2. Add Chat agents.

   Make sure Chat is enabled for agents who serve chats. See Setting roles and access in Zendesk Admin Center. Also, make sure your agents are upgraded for both Chat and Support. The agent workspace does not support agents with Chat only or Contributor roles.

3. Set up operating hours.

   Set up chat operating hours for your agents. See Creating a schedule with operating hours.

4. (Optional) Enable Chat ratings.

   Set up Chat ratings for your account. To allow visitors to rate their chats with your agents, open the Chat dashboard and select Enable satisfaction ratings from Widget > Settings. See Enabling and viewing Chat ratings.

5. Enable Chat departments.

   Make sure any Chat department with agents that need to send or receive transfers is enabled on the Chat dashboard. To enable a Chat department, open the Chat dashboard and select Settings > Departments to edit the department.

   

6. (Optional) Enable authenticated visitors.

   You can configure your integrated Web Widget to authenticate visitors on every page load using the Javascript API and JWT token. Visitor authentication is enabled through the Chat dashboard. See Enabling authenticated visitors in the integrated Web Widget and Working with authenticated Chat visitors in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Talk tasks for administrators

To use Talk in the agent workspace, make sure Talk is set up on your account. This includes:

1. Select a phone number.

   To use Talk, you'll need to purchase a phone number from Zendesk. You can purchase this number from directly within Talk. For more information, see Adding Zendesk Talk numbers.

2. Enable Talk on the Web Widget.

   To use Zendesk Talk with the Web Widget, create a configuration that defines how to handle Talk requests that originate from the Web Widget. For more information, see Configuring Zendesk Talk settings for the Web Widget.

3. Manage Talk settings.

   Once your number is set up, you can configure or change Talk settings. For details about all of the things you can do with Talk, see Zendesk Talk resources.

4. Add Talk agents.

   Make sure Talk is enabled for agents who take calls. See Controlling access to Zendesk Talk.

Mapping Chat departments to Support groups

For Chat transfers to work properly, make sure the Chat departments in your account are mapped to Support groups. Use the Agent Workspace migration wizard to automatically do the mapping when you first enable the agent workspace. For more information, see Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Also make sure any Chat department that needs to send or receive chat transfers is enabled on the Chat dashboard. You can enable Chat departments before or after migration.

Messaging tasks for administrators

Important: This section describes some additional tasks administrators need to do to set up social messaging or Zendesk messaging in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. You must have the Zendesk Suite or an account with Support and Chat to use messaging in the agent workspace.

To configure support for messaging in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, do the following:

1. Verify you have a Zendesk Suite account or an account with the Social messaging add-on.
2. Migrate your account to the Zendesk Agent Workspace and enable the workspace.
3. Add one or more messaging channels to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

   For social messaging add a social messaging channel. For Zendesk messaging, use the Web SDK.

   Unlike social messaging channel setup for a standard Support account, social and Zendesk messaging channel setup for the Zendesk Agent Workspace is done through Admin Center.

4. Enable Chat for each agent that will participate in messaging conversations and assign the agent a Chat role. See Setting roles and access in Admin Center.
   • To work with messaging conversations, agents only need a paid seat for Support and a Chat Agent (limited) role. The Chat Agent (limited) role allows agents to serve messaging conversations without requiring a paid Chat seat.
   • To use the Agent (limited) role, assign the Agent (limited) role to one of your Chat agents, then you can assign this new role to any agent with a Support only role.

     

5. Organize your agents into groups. For example, you can create a group of agents who handle specific channels, such as WhatsApp or Messaging, or you can create a group of agents who handle all types of messaging tickets. See Adding agents to groups.

   Agents with new Agent (limited) role will be treated as Chat agents and will start getting both the chat and messaging conversations.

   If broadcast routing mode is enabled in Chat, you can avoid routing Chats to messaging agents by creating a new group (department) for agents who only serve chats and create a trigger that assigns chats to this new group.

6. (Optional) Use Support triggers to assign messaging tickets to groups.

   This is useful when you have agents dedicated to handle messaging channels. For more information, see Setting triggers, automations, and views for messaging.

7. Set up Chat routing to control how messaging tickets are routed to your agents.

   Routing for messaging is based on the Chat routing rules defined for your agents. This includes:

   • Messaging tickets created when agents are online are routed via the Accept button in the ticket interface.
   • Messaging tickets created when agents are offline are sent to the Unassigned tickets view or the agent’s Group view.
   • Offline messaging tickets can be assigned to agents as part of triaging or they can be manually picked up by agents themselves.
8. Configure Chat limits settings on the Chat dashboard to control how many active messaging tickets and live Chat tickets your agents receive. Also, configure Chat operating hours to manage your messaging business hours.

   A messaging ticket is Active if the ticket conversation has been updated in the last 10 minutes.

In addition to these steps, administrators can use Chat file sending options to manage what types of attachments agents can send. Some of these file types (for example, .mov) are not enabled by default.

Setting triggers, automations, and views for messaging

To help you route messaging conversations to the correct group of agents, you can use the Channel conditions in Support triggers and automations to set up the routing. For example, when you create a trigger or automation, add a Channel is condition, then choose the messaging channel you want to include. You can pick a specific messaging channel type, or add multiple channels. See example below.

Trigger name, description, and conditions

Trigger action

For more information on creating triggers, see Creating triggers. For more information on creating automations, see Creating automations.

If there are multiple accounts defined for the same channel type (for example, WhatsApp), tickets can be routed by only by channel type, not by a specific integration account.

You can also use Channel conditions to create messaging views for agents to share. You can pick a specific messaging channel, or add multiple channels. See example below. For more information on creating views, see Creating views to manage ticket workflows.

Note: If your account has multiple brands, you'll also need to add a Brand is condition and choose the brand associated with that channel.

About the agent experience

When the Zendesk Agent Workspace is enabled on your account, the change applies to all your agents. Here's what your agents will see:

• Agents with Support, Chat, and Talk enabled will see a fully-unified conversation experience. They have access to all existing Support features, but they can also use Chat, and Talk controls directly from the Support ticket interface. For more information, see About the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
• Agents with Support and Chat enabled will see a fully-unified conversation experience, but without the Talk controls. They have access to all existing Support features, and they can also use Chat controls directly from the Support ticket interface. Chats are served from the agent workspace, instead of the Chat dashboard.
• Agents with only Support enabled will see a standard ticket interface - with two exceptions. For ticket comments, the most-recent replies appear at the bottom of the conversation, instead of the top. This change is necessary to keep conversation flows consistent across chats and emails. Also, the customer context information appears on the right side of the ticket interface, instead of the left.
• The workspace does not support agents with Chat only or Contributor roles. You need to upgrade these agents for both Support and Chat. Light agents cannot serve chats in the agent workspace. They need to be upgraded to agents.
• Markdown formatting is not supported in conversations. It has been deprecated in the Zendesk Agent workspace. Instead, agents can use the rich text features available in the Composer window to format messages.
• If you set up Social Messaging or Zendesk Messaging for the agent workspace, agents with Support and Chat enabled will be able to receive and send messages directly from the conversation interface. (See Receiving and sending messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.) Support agents can serve messaging conversations if they have a Support Agent role and a Chat Agent (limited) role (or a full Chat agent role).