Serving chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace

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
• Answering a chat
• Transferring a chat
• Receiving a transferred chat
• Using shortcuts in Chat
• Adding chat attachments
• Rating chats
• Setting Chat notifications
• Security limitations
• Chat limitations

Setting your chat status

You can set your chat status directly from the ticket interface.

To set your status

1. Click the agent chat status icon in the top bar.
2. Select a status from the drop-down menu.

   

   Status choices are:

   • Online: Signifies you're available to answer chats.

   • Away: Signifies internally to other agents that you're away from your computer. You can still serve chat requests when your status is Away.

   • 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.

There are two options for how incoming chats are sent:

• For broadcast mode, agents can see the number of chat requests. The top bar shows a Serve chat button with the number of chat requests.

  

• For assigned mode, incoming chats will appear on the top-right corner of the workspace (instead of a pop up tab). The top bar shows an Accept chat button.

  

To answer a chat

1. Click Serve chat or Accept chat 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.

   

2. To learn more about the visitor before you chat, click User to see the visitor’s essentials card and interaction history.
3. Enter a reply and click Send.
4. 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

1. In a ticket, make sure your ticket fields are saved before transferring the chat.
2. Click the Assignee field (near the upper left of the ticket).

   A list of groups appears.

3. 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.

   

4. Click Assign.

   If the transfer is successful, a confirmation message appears.

   

Receiving a transferred chat

When you receive a transferred chat, a message appears in your chat queue with the name of the person who assigned the chat to you.

• Click Accept chat to take the chat.

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

1. In a chat, start typing a shortcut, or type a slash (/) to view all shortcuts. The matching shortcut options appear.

   

2. 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

1. In a ticket, click the paperclip icon in a Chat conversation and browse to select a file (or drag a file into the field).

   

2. Click Send.

You can include multiple attachments in a chat. To delete an attachment from the list, click the X icon.

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.

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.
  • Support apps and 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.
• The Knowledge Capture Support app is available to link articles to the editor during a chat. The app is accessible from the Apps panel, but not from the ticket editor.
• 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, 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.
• Agents can send and receive attachments via chat. To match standalone Chat, attachments are public even to anonymous visitors. The setting for Support > Settings > Tickets > Attachments > Require authentication to download is not enforced.
• Chat tags (shortcuts with tags included) are hidden. Chat shortcuts with options are also not supported.
• Agents must end all chats before logging out.
• Markdown formatting is not supported. It has been deprecated in the Zendesk Agent workspace.
• 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.
• Chatbots are not fully compatible on the agent workspace. Accounts with transfer-only ChatBots may intermittently experience missed chats.
• 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.