This article describes chat features that you can use in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When you chat, Chat apps and marcos are supported, with a few limitations. For more information about the workspace, refer to About the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
This article contains the following topics:
Setting your chat status
You can set your chat status directly from the ticket interface.
To set your status
- Click the agent chat status icon in the top bar.
- Select a status from the drop-down menu.
Status choices are:
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Online: Signifies you're available to answer chats.
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Away: Signifies internally to other agents that you're away from your computer. You can still serve chat requests when your status is Away.
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Invisible: Lets you log into the dashboard but not be visible online. You can still get incoming chat requests and serve chats if your status is Invisible.
Note: If a Zendesk administrator has enabled chat operating hours on your account, your chat status is set automatically. -
Answering a chat
This section describes basics of how to chat with visitors in the agent workspace. Agents can answer chats directly from the workspace, but they cannot start a proactive chat with a visitor.
Incoming chats appear on the top-right corner of the workspace (instead of a pop up tab). The top bar shows an Accept button.
To answer a chat
- Click Serve chat or Accept to open a chat conversation. When you start a chat with a visitor, the chat conversation appears in the ticket with the visitor name and status at the top.
- To learn more about the visitor before you chat, click User to see the visitor’s essentials card and interaction history.
- Enter a reply and click Send.
- When you're finished with a chat, click End Chat to end the conversation.
Transferring a chat
This section describes how to transfer chats in the agent workspace. Agents can transfer chats to other agents or to groups (chat departments) by using the Assignee field in the ticket. To use chat transfer, your administrator must set up mappings between Support groups and Chat departments.
When you transfer to groups, remember the following:
- You can transfer the chat to another group.
- You can transfer the chat to the same group you're in, provided you're not the only agent online in that group.
- Transferred chats are added to the bottom of the chat routing queue.
To transfer a chat
- In a ticket, make sure your ticket fields are saved before transferring the chat.
- Click the Assignee field (near the upper left of the ticket).
A list of groups appears.
- Scroll the list and select a group, or select an agent within a group. You can also enter a group name or agent name to filter the list.
A message appears asking you to confirm the transfer.
- Click Assign.
If the transfer is successful, a confirmation message appears.
Using shortcuts in Chat
With chat shortcuts, you can save typing time by inserting common phrases with just a few keys. For example, you might want to create a shortcut that says, "Hi there, how may I assist you today?"
Once you have created shortcuts for Chat from the Chat dashboard, you can use these shortcuts for serving chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
To use shortcuts in Chat
- In a chat, type a slash (/) to view all shortcuts. The matching shortcut options appear.
- Highlight the shortcut you want to insert either by clicking it, or you can scroll through the shortcut options by pressing the down arrow and then Enter.
The complete shortcut appears in your conversation. For more information on chat shortcuts, see Chat: Inserting common phrases with shortcuts.
Adding chat attachments
If enabled, agents and visitors can send and receive attachments via Chat. By default, agents and visitors can exchange the following file types: PDF (.pdf), PNG (.png), JPEG (.jpeg), GIF (.gif), and Text (.txt). The file size limit for attachments depends on your plan type. Administrators can manage file sending options from the Chat dashboard.
When file sending is enabled, a paperclip icon appears in Chat conversations in the agent workspace.
To send an attachment
- In a ticket, click the paperclip icon in a Chat conversation and browse to select a file (or drag a file into the field).
- Click Send.
You can include multiple attachments in a chat. To delete an attachment from the list, click the X icon.
If your administrator has enabled secure attachments, attachments are accessible while a chat is ongoing, but once the chat ends, customers can access the attachments only after they sign in to Zendesk. See Enabling secure chat attachments for more information.
Rating chats
If enabled by a Zendesk administrator, visitors can rate a chat as either Good or Bad during or after any chat session in the agent workspace. Chat ratings give you a better sense of visitor satisfaction. For more information about chat ratings, see Measuring visitor satisfaction with chat rating.
To rate a chat
- Visitors can click the thumbs up or thumbs down icon at any point during the chat. When they click a rating, a window appears prompting them to leave a comment.
- When either the agent or the visitor leaves the chat, visitors who haven't left a rating yet, or who have left a rating but not a comment, are prompted to do so.
- Agents can also choose to prompt visitors to leave a rating during the conversation by clicking the rating icon in the bottom of the chat window. The visitor sees a Rate this chat link in the widget.
Setting Chat notifications
The sounds and notifications you set up from the Chat dashboard are supported in the agent workspace. This includes:
- Chat desktop notifications
You can enable or disable chat notifications from appearing on your desktop. Notifications will only appear when Chat is not visible and your browser settings allow the dashboard to show notifications.
- Chat sound notifications
The dashboard alerts you of chat activity with sound notifications. You can modify or disable these in your personal settings.
To edit Chat notifications
- From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Personal > Sounds & Notifications.
For details, see Editing your Chat notification settings. These changes only affect your personal settings, not the entire account.
Security limitations
Unlike Support, Chat does not support the concept of restricted agents - all Chat agents have access to all Chat messages. If you are using restricted agents such as light agents in Support, it is possible for those agents to access Chat messages via unpublished APIs. Light agents can serve chats in the Chat mobile app, but they cannot serve Chats in the agent workspace.
Language limitations
The following issues may occur when typing Chat messages in some languages:
- In some languages, when you are typing an accented character in a Chat message, the editor inserts a duplicate, accented character, instead of replacing the original character. This includes Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, French, the Nordic languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian), Czech, and Polish.
- If you are typing in Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, or Korean in the editor during a chat, the input syntax may not render correctly, unless you have your profile language set to the same language as what you're typing.
Chat limitations
The following Chat features are not supported. As product development continues, Zendesk will add more Chat features to the workspace.
- If your account supports a high volume of chats or has a large number of chat-only agents, check with your Zendesk account representative before migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. For best performance, follow these guidelines:
- Do not exceed 1,300 online Chat agents actively serving chats.
- No more than 4,000 concurrent chats with 200,000 total chats per day.
- No more than 6,000 concurrent visitors with 300,000 total visitors per day.
- Apps and macros are available for chats, with the following limitations:
- Support apps have some limitations during chats. See the Ticket editor API . Some apps will not be able to add content in chats.
- Macros that switch the assignee value to an online agent do not initiate a chat transfer. When the original user submits the ticket, the ticket assignee is updated to an online agent and the chat is ended.
- Macros can post text into chats, but text indentions are not supported.
- To prevent application conflicts and potential tracking issues, Zendesk does not recommend using the Support Chat app with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When the agent workspace is enabled, the Support Chat app is automatically disabled on your account. See Enabling and disabling the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- Chat actions such as invite agent, start a conversion with another agent (no visitor), export transcript, and ban are not supported. Translate chat is also not supported. As a workaroud for translation, you can download the chrome extensions for Google translate and use it to translate text in a ticket conversation.
- Agents can transfer chats, provided an administrator has done the required Support groups to Chat departments mapping. See Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace for details.
- Chat shortcuts with options are not supported.
- Agents must end all chats before logging out.
- Markdown formatting is not supported. It has been deprecated in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- After migrating Chat departments to Support groups, App developers should update all public APIs for Chat department Create, Update, and Delete to public APIs for Support group Create, Update, and Delete.
- Agents with custom roles may not be able to use the agent workspace because of channel-specific settings. Make sure your custom roles allow for Chat access. Light agents cannot serve chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, they need to be upgraded to agents.
47 Comments
Hi there
I just migrated us over to the Agent Workspace. We did a test chat and it worked fine. However, when the agent tried to transfer the chat to me it didn't work. We are the only two agents (and in the same "group"). I was "invisible" and it didn't transfer, then I went "online" and she tried again. It showed in the ticket that I was the assignee but she never received the confirmation pop up and I never received the chat offered to me. Only when she ended the chat and set the ticket to open, did it say it was assigned to me now.
Not sure what we're doing wrong!
Thanks
Another question: I used the "visitors" tab in the Chat screen quite often to see how our web traffic is doing. I can't see anything there now - how can I continue to see that with the new workspace?
We are multi brand users and we receive chats from 3 different brands. Multi brand chat is not supported in agent workspace: what are the possible consequences of not supporting multi brand chats please? I want to understand what we might miss if we migrate over.
Is there a plan to add the translating feature? I don't see it under limitations.
Hi
I have some more questions:
- in the previous Chat window, even if all agents were invisible, a chat could still be offered and served if one came in. Is this still the case with the workspace? If all agents are invisible but a visitor requests a chat, will it be offered to all invisible but logged in agents?
- can an agent, during a chat, email that same visitor within that ticket? E.g. agent says to visitor that they will send more information by email but wants to continue the chat - how do they do that without ending the chat first?
- how can an agent see if other agents are online? I want to see if my colleague is online while I go offline for a break. How can I know without asking them or opening the Chat window as before?
- a chat I just ended has a customer rating and comment but this doesn't show in the ticket and doesn't show in my 'recently rated tickets' view. Is this a glitch?
I have some questions:
1) I read that chat tags are not supported! What if we are using chat skill routing? Is the chat skill routing based on tags going to work?
2) what do you mean by multibrand chat are not supported? Can we use chat tags to assign the brand or to perform a brand skill routing?
3) can you set any support custom fields directly in the new chat interface?
Inviting agents, translation, and banning are something that we make heavy use of. Do you know when you expect to have these available in Agent Workspace?
Another question: how can I initiate a chat with a visitor who is online? Use case: i had to end a chat with a customer due to a glitch that wouldn't allow me to type in the reply box. I then wanted to start a chat with the same visitor who was still online and there was no way to do so.
Another: how do I see where a visitor is from? Previously, I could see their country, now I don't and all the 'users' have the same time zone of Arizona, regardless of country.
Hi Fiona,
In agent workspace, chat dashboard visitor list is modified and you'll no longer have the information about the visitors that are only browsing your site.
In agent workspace, you can't initiate a pro-active chat with the visitors, as per use case that you highlighted the moment you end the chat it can't be resumed back. Until visitor types back there is no way for you to connect with the same user.
For the location issue, the only possible solution right now will be to go back to the chat dashboard and look at visitor list.
Hi Chris,
Chat actions like inviting agents, translation, and banning are part of our 2020 roadmap.
Hi Antonio,
1) Skill-based routing - skill-based routing will continue to work, with chat tags you'll not be able to apply any chat tags while a chat is ongoing also all the tags that got applied before chat starts will not be surfaced in agent workspace.
2) Chat tags can be used to define a brand and no impact on skill-based routing
3) You can set any custom support field in the new interface - but if a chat is ongoing adding a new field and pressing submit will cause the chat to end.
Hi Fiona,
1) Invisible chat agent behavior - if all the agents are invisible and still a visitor was able to initiate a chat it will be surface to all the agents and CTA will change to In Queue (Count) end user will also see the same
Agent view
Visitor View
2) Agent can't initiate email within ongoing chat, composer only let agent respond back to ongoing chat
3) Online status in agent workspace can be looked from assignee drop down, if agent searched is online a green badge is shown next to his name
4) Chat rating and comments are displayed as part of conversation log snapshot attached for reference
5) Ticket assignment during transfer - in agent workspace if agent is invisible then an ongoing chat can't be transferred, chat first ends and then assignee field is updated with the transferred agent credentials.
Hi Arpan Nagdeve. Thank you for the information. We're excited to start using this feature, so we'll keep an eye out for the updates that allow for inviting agents, translation, and banning.
Hi Arpan
Thanks for your responses.
You said that location is not visible except in the chat window, and you can't proactively chat with someone online - are those both future enhancements that are planned for the Agent Workspace?
For 2) "Agent can't initiate email within ongoing chat, composer only let agent respond back to ongoing chat" Is this a planned future enhancement?
For 3) it sounds like you can only see if another agent is online or not if you have an ongoing chat open (and that list is not realtime, it only shows what was true at the time the chat started, as per question 5). Is there no other way to see a list of agents and their status? Or could you open any ticket and look at the assignee drop down to see agent statuses? (Also, we just tried it and there's no status showing there - just our names)
For 4) chat rating not showing. I see it where you indicate, but not in the view "recently rated tickets" and not counted among the ratings on the home view. I opened a ticket with support and they said this should be fixed by switching off the Agent Workspace and switching it back on, which I will try later today.
For 5) transferring to another agent - even if that agent was invisible, then goes online to accept the transfer, it doesn't work. This seems like a flaw in the function of this feature - it should be updated realtime. Is there a fix planned for this? We just tested this with an agent who was online before the chat began - the chat would not transfer. There was no popup when the agent selected the other agent's name.
Another thing I have noticed: I use the Home page to serve tickets, and when I submit a ticket, I get sent back to the Views page, and not the Home page where I was before. This is annoying as I want to stay in the Home page where I can see my tickets. Is this expected behaviour?
Thanks
Hi Fiona,
My responses to your queries are as follows
Hi Arpan
Thanks for your reply.
1. OK, thank you!
2. Great!
3. We tested this and it still doesn't show - we also aren't able to transfer chats to each other. I will log a ticket.
4. It's still not working - my ticket has been escalated with support
5. As per 3, I will log a ticket for this issue.
6. When I wasn't using the Agent Workspace, I used the Home page (not Views) to serve my tickets and unassigned tickets. When I submit a ticket and it closes the tab (as that was the option I put), it put me back on the Home page so I could carry on. Now, with Agent Workspace, it puts me on Views so I then have to navigate back to Home to continue working on my tickets. This is kind of annoying - is it expected behaviour?
Thanks!
We are not getting the pop up window to transfer a chat or accept a transferred chat when we change the :select assignee: and change the name. I have submitted a support ticket.
Hey Jamie,
Thanks for submitting a ticket regarding this issue. Our Customer Advocacy team will contact you to troubleshoot further :)
Cheers!
Hi everyone,
We have the sound for incoming chats but if the chat is transferred, there is no sound. The chats are being transferred properly. Just the sound is the problem. Can anyone tell us how to solve this issue?
Hi Armen,
As of the moment we are not able to add a sound notification for transferred chats.
I've taken a look and found the following related discussions about the functionality you are looking for: Request for a sound alert when a chat is transferred to another department
I highly encourage you to vote for that request and then share your use case in the discussion. I'd also recommend subscribing to the article so you'll be updated with any further comments as well maybe found a workaround that other members might post.
Let us know if you have any further questions on this. :)
Hi Erika Camille Sundian,
I am sorry but the post you are referring to is from 2016! And there are no discussions below that post.
We think that this is basic functionality and should be added as soon as possible. All big companies have separate marketing and customer care teams. And transferring a chat from one department to another one is a standard procedure. Why the transferred chat can't have a sound if the standard chat has? How we can know that we have a new chat?
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Armen!
As of right now this is not an available functionality so we apologies for that. I would recommend upvoting and cross-posting your use case in the Chat Community feedback that I linked above to help provide visibility to our Chat Product Managers.
Hi,
Can you please confirm if chat rating should be working in Agent Workspace?
I can rate from the end user side and see the note in conversation (both sides), but the ticket is not picking up the rating or change in rating.
I've tried disabling and re-enabling Agents Workspace as mentioned above, but to no effect.
Hi Jacob,
We're creating a ticket to have our support team follow up with you about this, you'll see an email with that ticket link. Thanks!
I made a ticket about this and was told it's a known issue that Zendesk is working on fixing. I see the ratings show up in Explore but not in Support.
Hi Fiona,
Yes, there's a currently a problem ticket on the chat ratings for agent workspace. We've added Jacob's report to it on our side.
Hi All
When I try to perform a Chat Agent transfer when using the Zendesk Agent Workspace no option appears to Assign the chat to the appropriate agent as per the screengrab above
Seems it's either not working or I'm missing something.
Also, the Chat shortcuts don't appear in the Zendesk Agent Workspace when in a Chat by typing /. I can confirm I have 3 shortcuts enabled but when I type /, only the default "Hi, how can we help you today? =)" shows in the list.
Cheers
Chad
Hi Chad,
I've created a ticket for our team to look into specific examples with you. You'll see an email with the ticket link.
It says that "The Knowledge Capture Support app is available to link articles to the editor during a chat."
Will this capture article linking data via chat in Explore?
Hi Dennis, I haven't found anything in our current documentation on this so I'm creating a ticket for our support team to follow up with you about it.
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