Enabling Zendesk messaging (beta)

In this article, we'll walk you through the steps to enable messaging and activating it throughout your account. The tasks described in this article must be performed by an account administrator.

This article includes the following sections:

• Enabling Zendesk messaging in your account
• How enabling messaging changes your account
• Activating messaging in a Web SDK
• Updating Chat settings
• Disabling Zendesk messaging

Enabling Zendesk messaging in your account

Once you confirm that you meet the requirements for Zendesk messaging beta, you can enable it in your account.

Zendesk messaging is enabled through the Admin Center's Channels page. You can disable it at any time.

Note: Enabling Zendesk messaging at the account level updates your account in a number of significant ways. See How enabling messaging changes your account for more information.

To enable Zendesk messaging on your account

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon (). The following message should appear:

   

2. Click Sign up for messaging beta.
3. On the Messaging beta page, click Enable messaging.
4. Read through the Terms and conditions. At the bottom of the page, check I agree to the messaging beta terms and conditions, then click Enable messaging. You're automatically returned to the updated Messaging beta page:

   

5. Click Manage channels. When the Channels page reloads, you should see the Web SDK listed as an active channel:

   

How enabling messaging changes your account

Zendesk messaging is enabled at the account level as described above. When enabled, a number of changes occur throughout your account that impact related functionality. In this section, we’ll go over the changes to the following account areas:

• Web Widget
• Answer Bot
• Social messaging channels
• Agent Workspace
• Chat

Web Widget

Enabling messaging on your account gives you the option to convert an existing Web Widget to the Web SDK on a per-brand basis, or create a new Web SDK for a brand that did not previously use the Web Widget. Like the Web Widget, the Web SDK is an embeddable customer support channel. But the Web SDK allows you to include a more powerful, customizable conversational bot to interact with your customers, thanks to the new Flow Builder tool.

Further changes occur when you activate the Web SDK, which we’ll discuss in Working with messaging in the Web SDK.

Answer Bot

Enabling messaging also activates Flow Builder, a tool that lets you to click-to-configure Answer Bot. With Flow Builder, Answer Bot continues to be the first responder to customers, but gains a lot of new abilities as well.

Importantly, Flow Builder includes a default conversational flow, which is published and visible in the Flow Builder page. The default flow begins functioning immediately through the Web SDK when it’s enabled.

If you have multiple brands in your account, Flow Builder is activated on every one of those brands. Each brand has a separate default flow that can be configured independently. 

See About Answer Bot for Zendesk messaging for more information.

Social messaging channels

If you have social channels configured within your account, when messaging is enabled, Answer Bot is automatically integrated into those social channels. The flows you build with Flow Builder will run on all configured channels, social included.

It’s important to note that currently, if you are using multiple brands, only the flow created in your default brand is used across all social messaging channels.

Agent Workspace

Agent Workspace gains some increased functionality as well, including enhanced conversation history and responding to messaging conversations at any time. See Receiving and sending Zendesk Messages in the Agent Workspace for more information.

Chat

When you enable messaging, there are a number Chat-related changes that apply to both agents and administrators.

For more information, see How the Zendesk messaging beta release impacts Chat settings.

Activating messaging in the Web SDK

You can activate messaging in the Web SDK from the Channels page in Admin Center. Messaging will need to be activated for each brand that will use the new Web SDK. Any brand without messaging activated will continue to use the classic Web Widget if one was previously enabled. If you’re enabling messaging on a brand without a previously-enabled Web Widget, you’ll need to create a Web SDK from scratch.

Note: Zendesk messaging is only functional on brands created prior to enablement. If you add a new brand to your account after enabling messaging, you can activate the Web SDK on that brand, but it will not be able to access Answer Bot or Flow Builder automated messaging functionality through either the Web SDK or social messaging channels.

To enable messaging in the Web SDK

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the left sidebar. Your active channels appear.
2. Click the brand you want to activate.
3. On the brand's Edit Web SDK page, check Enable messaging for [brand name].
4. Click Save.
5. Repeat these steps for each active brand you want to use with the new Web SDK.

Once enabled, you can begin customizing the Web SDK. You can disable messaging for an SDK at any time.

Updating Chat settings

A Chat administrator needs to perform the following tasks:

1. Organize your agents into groups. For example, you can create a group of agents who handle specific channels, such as messaging, See Adding agents to groups.
2. Set up Support Triggers to route messaging conversations to these groups.
3. Configure Chat limits settings on the Chat dashboard to control how many active messaging conversations your agents receive.
4. Educate agents on the Agent Experience.

Disabling Zendesk messaging

If you wish to roll back to the existing experience, we recommend that you disable any active Web SDKs first and do so in an off-peak period. Please note that when you convert a Web SDK back to a Web Widget (Classic), any active messaging conversations will end & any in-progress tickets will remain pending. Before doing so, we recommend that you close out any active live chats, take agents offline, and close any tickets that were submitted through the messaging channel.

If you disable messaging in the SDK for a brand, it removes messaging functionality for that brand, but retains any SDK and Flow Builder messaging settings you have configured. Disabling messaging at the account level deletes these settings, and the following changes occur:

• Any migrated Web SDKs revert to their previous Web Widget configurations.
• New Web SDKs are converted to Web Widgets.
• Social messaging channels no longer have Answer Bot functionality, and revert back to their previous configurations.
• Conversational bots created in Flow Builder are no longer functional.

If you no longer want to use Zendesk messaging, but may return to it in the future, we recommend leaving messaging enabled at the account level, so you can reinstate it in the future with your previously-configured settings intact.

To disable Zendesk messaging for a brand

1. First, disable messaging at the SDK level. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the left sidebar.
2. Hover your cursor over the brand you want to update, click the options icon (), then click Edit.
3. Deselect the checkbox next to Enable messaging for [brand name].

If you do not want to use Zendesk messaging in the future, you can disable it at the account level as well.

To disable Zendesk messaging at the account level

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the left sidebar.
2. Click Learn about messaging beta.
3. On the Messaging beta page, click Disable messaging.