This article describes chat features that you can use in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When you chat, Chat apps and marcos are supported. 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:
-
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.
-
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.
Chat limitations
For information about Chat limitations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, see Limitations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. See also Before you migrate.
56 Comments
Hi there
With regards to this comment "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." What does that mean? I have a trigger set up to add a tag to a chat when certain conditions are met. How do I see that tag in the Agent Workspace? Or do I only see it in Explore when I pull that tag's data?
Thanks
Hello there,
Quick question. I was just looking at the agent workspace and it seems that the shortcuts don't seem to work without starting with the slash. Any idea?
Thanks
Arpan Nagdeve Gail L Hi there, my team uses a process where we add keywords to the Notes section in active chats, and a trigger then adds specific tags for an automation to solve (non-escalated) chat tickets a few hours later. It saves us a lot of time. If we migrated over to the new workspace, would the issue affecting tags or any other limitation potentially impact our workaround to auto-close chat tickets? I understand that pre-existing tags won't be visible in the agent workspace, but everything else running behind the scenes remains intact, correct?
@Fiona, while the tags won't show in the agent workspace, if you have chats generating tickets then the tags would show up both there and Explore.
@Matthew are you able to replicate this in an Incognito window using Chrome? Both typing the title of the shortcut and entering "/" should work. Let me know if you still experience issues and I can create a ticket on your behalf.
@Britt I believe the trigger should still add the tag to the Chat ticket if I'm understanding you correctly. These tags are just hidden in the Agent Workspace. Are you experiencing anything different on your end?
Let me know!
@Brett , Icognito doesn't matter. I can simulate and talk to myself for testing, but I mean for the agent chatting IN The ticket view, typing the shortcut does not populate or show anything. Shortcuts ONLY display if you type "/". This is definitely by design, broken, or just never built :-) Thanks!
Thanks for the update Matthew! I'm going to get a ticket created for you as I don't believe that is expected behavior.
You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Cheers!
Looks like pasting images is not supported in this unified chat - something our agents find very convenient about classic chat. I'm also seeing no way to see the visitor's browser information in the new chat. Combined with a potential bug I have an open ticket about, it doesn't seem like this product is quite ready. We've reverted back. I'm excited for it though and look forward to improvements.
Hi
We have recently migrated to workspace and seem to be having the same issues that Chad mentioned above.
No option appears to Assign the chat to another agent like it does in the screenshot on this page
To explain the need - we are wanting to be able to have other agents online view the chat and assist if required like we were able to before in chat. At times a consultant may get tied up on a call or another chat and when a different agent is free they could take over the chat to assist our customers with getting served promptly.
We also cannot get our chat shortcuts to work, however I can still see them all in the chat dashboard.
Hi Amanda,
If you've completed the chat department migration to groups we would expect the transfer option to work, so please chat in to our support team from your account to look at this in more detail (along with the issue with shortcuts).
I been reading a lot about this agent workspace now and it sounds great. But has there been any progress on google translate chat? As well as shortcut/options? and finally and most importantly when you mention proactive chats, we use chat triggers that pop up based on x amount of time spent on our help page. Will this be affected or is it considered proactive chat? Most of our chats come from triggers actually.
I am trying to transfer a chat to another agent in the agent workspace.
I can't get the "assign and leave box" to come up to transfer a chat. It just closes the chat.
Hi Darren,
Product inputs on the queries
Hi Marie,
Once you change assignee to initiate a transfer you must get an option to assign and leave the chat, can you check whether the other agent has support or chat seats. Also, make sure that you have groups enabled for the chat so that you can initiate the transfer. If groups are not enabled you'll face the problem that you just highlighted. If the issue still persists please open a ticket so that we can deep dive into it further.
Hello there,
we are using Agent Workspase for two weeks and faced problem with viewing user`s data. How can we import information about user`s device and IP from visitor list to the user`s ticket?
And one more issue - with Agent Workspace to check what data user pointed out in the chat fields is not possible utlill the chat ending. In the chat space an active chat displaying only in Visitors, where this data are unavailable.
And one more question - why not all shortcuts are avalible in Agent Workspace? Agents type / and see only part of them.
1. Agent signatures show up in Workspace double spaced. On the end user/email side it appears single spaced. This makes responses in Workspace double length and it's hard to tell if it looks right on the end user side. Also add-ons that create tickets in Workspace have double-spaced text (e.g. contact form 7 add-on to create tickets from contact forms in wordpress). This is likely the same bug as the agent signature double-space bug, and neither is expected behavior.
I have submitted a ticket on this but it's been weeks and I'm hoping that upvoting here will get this higher priority. Agent signatures and the mentioned types of add-ons are currently unusable because of this.
2. I am also noticing that in new workspace Chat shortcuts with / are only showing the default shortcuts and not any that I have created. When using the non-supported Chat add-on plugin the shortcuts work correctly. This is non-expected behavior.
Hi Chad,
Can you check whether the group under which the second agent was present is enabled for Chat? We were hiding shortcuts with tags and options. The shortcuts is with tags are now supported on the agent workspace.
Is there a way to see which agents are online? I could not see that option on chats on Agent Workspace
Hi Maja Epps. Yes you can, using the Chat dashboard. Refer to this topic: Viewing other agents' online statuses
Hi Lisa Kelly,
I know I can view that when using chat functionality, but I have switched to Agent Workspace and this view is no longer available there on the dashboard.
Do I need to have a separate window open for chat as well just to view which agents are online?
Thanks
Maja
Hi Maja,
You should still be able to see this from the Chat Dashboard (Teams > View all) even if you have the Zendesk Agent Workspace enabled on your account. You have to open the Chat Dashboard in a separate window to see which agents are online in the Agent Workspace. You can't view them directly from within the Agent Workspace.
Are you saying that you can't see any agents online when you open the Chat Dashboard for an account that has Agent Workspace enabled? If so, then I recommend contacting Zendesk Customer Support.
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for that, yes, I can see this from Chat Dashboard, but was hoping to view them within Agent Workspace.
Thanks for explaining that is not possible.
Maja
These are all great features from the classic interface that help our agents be more efficient. Are there any workarounds for now, or planned fixes for the new Agent Workspace?
I was wondering if there is any way using Triggers to add location into an internal note on an incoming/new chat?
Hi Sarah Thompson
Thank you for your comments. I have forwarded them along to our Product Management team.
Thanks Lisa Kelly. Are those considered feature requests now, or is there a place I can track status of those requests?
Hi Sarah Thompson I forwarded your comment to the PM team as an FYI. For trackable feature requests, you can post them on our Community site or contact Zendesk Customer Support.
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