The Zendesk Agent Workspace enables agents to manage Support, Chat, Talk, and messaging conversations within the same interface. Administrators can enable or disable this workspace for their Zendesk account.
This article contains the following sections:
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Preparing to enable or disable
Before you can enable the agent workspace for the first time on an existing account, you'll need to migrate your Chat departments into groups. For details, see Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- For some new accounts created after July 28, 2020, the workspace may already be enabled by default and you don't need to migrate.
- For some larger, high-volume accounts, you may need to work with someone from Zendesk to enable the workspace and migrate your account. We provide a checklist to help you determine if your account is a good fit for migration.
The agent workspace is an account-wide setting that impacts all the agents on your account. You cannot enable or disable it for certain agents. When you enable or disable the agent workspace, agents must refresh their browsers to see the change. Make sure your agents wrap up any chats, calls, or unsaved tickets when you enable or disable this feature. Otherwise, unsaved ticket replies, ongoing chats, and call recordings may be lost. When the workspace is enabled, Chat tickets cannot be updated using the Support mobile app.
If you prefer, you can test out the migration on a Sandbox account first. This gives you time to try out the agent workspace and train your agents before using the workspace in a production environment.
Enabling the agent workspace
To enable the agent workspace
- In Admin Center, click the Workspaces icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Agent workspace > Agent interface. - In the Agent workspace section, select the Enable the Agent Workspace setting.
- Save your
changes.
When the workspace is successfully enabled, a warning message appears.
- Make sure to wrap up any messages, calls, or unsaved tickets, then click Switch workspace.
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. If you subsequently disable the agent workspace and you want to use the Chat app, you have to manually re-enable it.
To get the full agent experience, after you enable the workspace, you can set up social messaging channels and Zendesk messaging channels for the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Disabling the agent workspace
You can disable the agent workspace if desired and revert to a default Support interface without unified conversations. If your account has messaging channels, you'll need to delete the social messaging channels in Admin Center, disable the Zendesk messaging channels in Admin Center, and close out all your existing messaging tickets before you disable the workspace.
To disable the agent workspace
- In Admin Center, click the Workspaces icon () in the sidebar, then select Agent workspace > Agent interface.
- In the Agent workspace section, deselect the Enable the Agent Workspace setting.
- Save your
changes.
When the workspace is successfully disabled, a warning message appears.
- Make sure to wrap up any messages, calls, or unsaved tickets, then click Switch
workspace.
When you disable the workspace, a message appears asking you to provide feedback. Your feedback will help Zendesk learn more about how you use this feature.
Disabling the agent workspace automatically disables focus mode.
- To restore support for social messaging channels in your account, set up the Social Messaging functionality in Support > Channel integrations. (Optional).
19 Comments
When disabling the Agent Workspace, I'm not able to create new Departments in the Chat product - it redirects me to create a new group instead (as if AW was still enabled).
Is this expected behavior?
I was expecting it to return to pre-agent workspace behavior and allow me to create new Departments.
Hi Jacob -
The product manager says that yes, this is expected behavior.
Why did the viewers list on chat get removed? That breaks the UI on the web and the mobile app. That is a huge feature for us
Hello Josh,
I would recommend posting in our product feedback forums regarding this topic so our developers can better understand your use case. This is the part of the community where our development team often replies to product changes such as these.
Best regards.
Does this also include the forums, meaning allowing us to manage forum posts/replies from within a single support agent interface instead of a separate system?
If not, why not?
And if not, please don't point me to the feedback forums, it's a black hole where feature requests go to disappear never to be seen again.
We disabled the workspace. It was too annoying to constantly scroll down to get the latest updates as well the chat disconnection popping up all the time even though there was no tab open for chat. Also had to constantly scroll down when writing a reply. This feature has not been tested out well enough to roll out for our needs.
Jay - it does not include Gather, unfortunately.
💩
Would the focus mode for live channels work for us if we are using the Aircall integration instead of the Talk Zendesk feature ?
Hi Catherine
Probably not, but I'm adding the Product Manager for this feature, Volkan Akdugan, so he can comment.
Hi Catherine
Not at the moment. Focus Mode is scoped to work with only with Zendesk live channels initially. We will consider adding Talk Partner Edition or any additional channels later based on the feedback.
Thanks,
Volkan
Hi Volkan Akdugan,
Thank you for your response. Keep me posted if this ever works !
Thank you,
Catherine
Hi there,
In the Agent Workspace, why is the customer's email address so challenging to access? I can only view it by clicking on the customer's name in the upper left corner and opening a new page(!), or by scrolling down into the ticket history. It's very time-consuming, when compared to the old view, https://share.getcloudapp.com/o0uekAoz
Additionally, I am unable to submit chat tickets as "Solved" and get this error message every time. Any recs? Our team wanted to launch the Agent Workspace, but because of these two issues, we've had to revert.
Hi there, bumping my post above. Thank you.
Hi Jen,
Thanks for reaching out! Are you referring to the requester in a ticket in Agent workspace? If yes, the email address can be found in the ticket itself. Please see below screenshot:
If this is not what you are referring to, can you kindly provide me more details about your concern, please?
Thanks,
Shayne Traqueña | Associate Customer Advocate
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Hi Shayne,
1) Yes, I am referring to the email address of the ticket requester. If you check out my original post, I understand that you can view the ticket requester's email in the ticket itself, but it's pretty time-consuming when compared to the old view. Also, it looks like you didn't attach a screenshot, can you post again?
2) My second question wasn't addressed about the error message when attempting to solve tickets. Please see my original post, thank you.
Hi Jen,
Regarding your first question...You can view the ticket requesters' contact details while still viewing the ticket by opening the "User" tab, located in the top right corner of the ticket.
We are planning on launching Agent Workspace prior to Messaging to minimize the change impact on a large team. We were told that Chat will function properly in Agent Workspace, however, this article makes it seem as though it's not the case. Is there anywhere you can point me to see the "conflict and tracking issues"? If we do intend to still use Chat, is it just a matter of going in and turning it back on after moving to Agent Workspace?
Hi Michael,
This article will get you updated on current limitations:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500000106442
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