The Zendesk Agent Workspace enables agents to work seamlessly across Zendesk channels, all within a single ticket interface. Agents can use the appropriate channels to address issues, without being restricted to the channel in which the customer originally made contact.
When activated by an administrator, agents can manage Support, Messaging, Chat, and Talk conversations within the same Support ticket. They don’t have to switch between dashboards to view and track customers issues. They have a full, customer-centric view of their work, enabling them to provide faster, better, and more personalized service.
Watch this video for an overview of the Zendesk Agent Workspace:
This article contains the following topics:
Sample ticket
The following is a sample ticket in the workspace.
Key elements of this ticket include:
- Ticket conversations can include Support, Chat, and Talk. Agents can also receive and reply to social messages and web messages.
- Messaging and chat notifications appear at the top of the page.
- Agents can open the Talk console at the top of the page and manage calls from the workspace.
- With omnichannel routing, you can automatically direct agent workload across multiple channels to ensure that the highest-priority tickets are assigned to the agents who are most available to work on them.
- Agents can set their status from a single, unified menu.
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Customer context information, including
interaction history, appears on the right side. Agents can use the context panel to toggle between customer context and apps.
If your account includes a help center, agents can use the Knowledge panel to search, link, and quote your help center content in tickets.
If your account has side conversations activated, agents can use the context panel to create and manage side conversations on a ticket.
If your account has custom objects activated, agents can use the context panel to preview custom object records related to the ticket.
- To be compatible with messaging and chats and provide a more natural conversation order, ticket comments are arranged from oldest to newest, with the newest comments at the bottom. For customers with plans that support custom layouts, you can change the order.
- The visitor path shows a list of websites the requester has viewed. The interaction history shows a list of Support events.
Sample workflow
Here’s the sample workflow shown in this ticket:
- While working with Support tickets in her queue, Agent Jackie receives a chat notification from her customer Maggie. Maggie wants to know the status of a refund.
- From within the ticket, Jackie replies to Maggie by chat to let her know her refund has been processed. Jackie promises to email Maggie the reference number.
- Instead of keeping Maggie waiting online, Jackie ends the chat and takes a few minutes to look up the reference number for the refund.
- When Jackie finds the reference number, she sends an email reply to Maggie. She includes the refund reference number and details about the refund status.
- If Maggie has questions about the refund, Jackie can use the Talk console in the workspace to call Maggie and explain details.
Benefits
Jackie likes the workspace because she doesn’t have to swap between her Support tickets, the Chat dashboard, and her office switchboard. She has a clean, unified record of her interactions with Maggie to solve her issue. Jackie can swap seamlessly between channels, picking the best one as appropriate. She uses chats for quick, timely, interactive conversations, relies on email for longer, follow-up communications, and uses phone calls for urgent, sensitive, or complex matters.
Additional features
Additional capabilities in the workspace include:
Feature | Description |
---|---|
|
Agents can see the customer’s chat and messaging status in their Support tickets. See Using ticket tabs to manage conversations. |
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Agents can serve or end a chat from the ticket. |
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Agents can set their status for multiple channels from a single, unified status menu. |
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Agents can switch to a call and start it directly from within a ticket conversation. |
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Agents can forward, pause, or end calls from the ticket. |
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Agents can use the Talk console to receive and place calls. |
Messaging support in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
Social and web messaging are supported in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When configured, agents can receive and reply to social and web messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. These messages appear as part of a unified conversation within the ticket. For more information, see Receiving and sending messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Messaging channels for the Zendesk Agent Workspace are configured in Zendesk Admin Center. For more information, see Getting started with web and mobile messaging and Getting started with social messaging.
Agent copilot support in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
For customers with the Advanced AI add-on, agent copilot is supported in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When activated by an admin, agents can use the powerful auto assist feature to help them solve tickets quickly. Agent copilot also includes other features, such as
- Ticket summaries
- Suggested first replies
- Suggested macros, and more
For more information, see About agent copilot.
136 comments
Dane
We don't see it happening in the near future. We are recommending all accounts to switch to Agent Workspace for all the major improvements are available on that interface. But a good suggestion nonetheless.
-6
Cathy Grim
Is there really any benefit here if we only use web and email for support?
There seems to be simply a lot more noise in this case - for us at least.
5
Lisa Kelly
Hi Cathy,
Going forward, new features Zendesk adds to the agent interface will only be available in the Agent Workspace, including the context panel, panel resizing, native ticket redaction, color support, and more. See What new features are available after upgrading?.
-5
Jimmy Rufo
Hi Lisa Kelly,
That may be so, but if the workspace clutters up daily operations for messaging, thats not a reason to upgrade. We are also an organization that specialize in web and email support, and are likely in the same boat as Cathy, and have not migrated as a result.
4
Cathy Grim
<angry eyes>
Just hit the snag that I can't use custom ticket status' until I enable Agent Workspace.
This is a LOT of effort for very little reward.
1
Arno (EMEA Partner)
Anyone found a workaround for this in Agent Workspace? When working with multiple brands "incorrect" receiver information on ticket causes unnecessary confusion for agents. For some reason also with multibrand the Zendesk account name is shown as receiver of the ticket. It is surely common, that main brand is the same or similar to company name, so account name looks like one of the brands, and when you receive emails to other brands, with quick look, it looks like brand was incorrectly set on ticket. Is there a way to change that somehow so, that actually receiving brand name, or correctly receiving address name, would be shown as receiver correctly on the ticket view?
Changed account name to "Account name shown here?" to test it, to be sure, that it really is account name shown, not the email address name nor correct brand name:
![](/hc/user_images/q2N2tSJHWG1qMy5ZQir97A.png)
It would nice to see brand or email address name as receiver:
Is there a way to achieve this or reasonable workaround? All I could think is to change the account name to something so general and unrelated, that does not mix with the brands at all now.
0
Derek Feswick
All of the shortcuts we'd previously added don't appear to be available... do we need to recreate them all as Macros? Was handy to simply start typing and have suggested shortcuts pre-populate- has this disappeared?
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Derek,
![](/hc/user_images/lb3tYtGEG2JQGf3yLXJ5yA.png)
Are you talking about Chat shortcuts? In the Agent Workspace, when you type a / in the composer, you should see both macro keyboard shortcuts and chat shortcuts. See Applying macros with a keyboard shortcut. However, you need to make sure it's enabled for your profile. See Activating and deactivating macros keyboard shortcuts.
1
Darren Bell
We have been notified that our account is going to migrated over to the Agent Workspace in August.
Looking at the screenshots on this article against our Sandbox - then our Agent Workspace looks out of date.
The Ticket fields do not have the dark grey background and the Macro button is still aligned to the left.
Whereas other commenters have posted screenshot and theirs is different.
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Darren,
Your Sandbox account is up-to-date. The Macro button moved when we rolled out the ability to resize the ticket properties panel. Also, you may find this article useful for comparisons.
0
Hannah Lucid
Hello Zendesker,
Is anyone who uses this able to tell me if the agent workspace allows Agents to create articles or be suggested articles from another brand?
We have our "live" brand where end-users enter support tickets and our Agents work them, and then we have a separate brand that is our "internal knowledge base" for system support.
We wanted to keep these separated so our Agents have a designated spot separate from our "self-help" center available on our "live" brand.
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Hannah,
The Zendesk Agent Workspace doesn't change how Zendesk Support and Zendesk Guide work together. See Using Zendesk Support and Zendesk Guide together. If you have a specific question about Guide setup, you can post your question there, or contact Zendesk Customer Support.
0
Marguerite Cummings
When you are in Guide Admin, you can choose the brand with the pulldown in the upper left corner. Once you are on the correct brand, then add your article.
0
Hannah Lucid
Hi Everyone, thank you for your quick responses. I understand how to change the brand in Guide. My question is specifically about Agent workspace and how it will suggest specific articles when agents are working on a ticket. Will it show articles from a different brand than what the current ticket is assigned?
Example: A ticket is assigned to "ABC Soup" brand and there is an article that goes over the resolution process in brand "Chicken Noodle". Would Agent Workspace offer the suggested article from the brand "Chicken Noodle" even though an Agent is working on a ticket assigned to brand "ABC Soup"?
0
Dane
If you are pertaining to the Knowledge section in the context panel, you have the ability to designate a default filter to it so that it will only show tickets on a specific brand. You can also remove ticket brand filter to show all related articles on all your brands.
0
Kenya Roberts
Can you forward emails in Zendesk to an outside email inbox?
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Kenya Roberts you definitely can forward emails in Zendesk to an outside email inbox :) There are a few ways to do this which you can find here: How do I forward tickets to an external user?
I hope this helps! :)
0
Vicky
We tried the Agent Workspace. We support via Email, not Chat. My team hated it and complained A LOT. I have since switched us back. These are some of the complaints:
5
Cheeny Aban
We appreciate that you took the time to let us know about your experience and feedback. Rest assured that this will reach our Product Managers. Your feedback helps us grow – thanks so much for sharing it with us.
0
Sebastian Silva
I like to point out the lack of "space" when you are adding inline images, previously this wasn’t an issue thanks to the formatting, but it seems that it’s no longer working.
This experience is way worse if you are editing a long text where you need to use images.![](/hc/user_images/JrMJympuqAty79gi1mhSUw.png)
1
Khoa Le
While the advantages of agent workspaces are apparent for accounts that provide support using multiple channels, this is a severe step back for those of us who only use email. The layout of agent workspaces does not mimic the workflow/layout of email.
It's obvious that agent workspaces is catered towards accounts using multiple channels for support; and so this feels like a con to upgrade/add additional channels to make the most of the "feature."
Agent workspaces can obviously exist without it being a mandatory layout (it has since its introduction), and so it makes no sense to push this onto those of us who do not need/prefer it.
1
Lisa Kelly
Hi Khola,
I'm sorry to hear that you don't like the Agent Workspace interface, but there are plenty of enhancements unrelated to multiple channels that Agent Workspace supports. This includes AI summarizations, Custom layouts, Custom ticket statuses, Native ticket redaction, Essentials card configuration, Composer resizing, Color text in the composer, Ticket properties panel resizing, Ticket translation for email messages, and more. See What new features are available after upgrading? All these enhancements are possible because the Agent Workspace is built upon a newer code base.
0
Marianne H
Irony is when you name something "Agent workspace" and you have not consulted any actual agents who use this. with this design.
At first glance, after using this horrific update for 6 hours, here are a few issues that we are seeing:
If you copy the email address of a customer by highlighting and copying like we do in all other programs we use, (now found all the way on the right for some odd reason) this will actually insert a space before the email address when pasting it in other programs. We have to bend to your rules and click on it which will copy it but not paste it in other programs so you've just lost your harmony across other programs. Super!
New agents are taught to create an email draft internally and if approved by a manager over shoulder, toggle to Public reply, if not save it and work on it using the suggestions from mgr. This is fabulous, now it just disappears.
You can not easily copy and past the links that are in macros or amend them. There are extra steps in each one now where we have to click on edit and then can not see the whole link. This gets fun when we are using macros where an agent just has to pop in their voucher code for a customer to use to get a discount and replace the XXXXX in the link. This was EASY to see before and now impossible. This means we are sending customers dead links. Awesome.
Sometimes "Whatsapp" comes up as an option to message the customer. We don't have Whatsapp as a customer service tool so I am wondering how this is going to go. Can't want to see what happens on these. Exciting.
Scrolling in a long ticket has been compared to sitting backwards on a train. This is a great analogy as it makes some people sick and others just don't want to. Perfect.
The chats after ending are confusing when they pop up on the left side in the tickets area especially with agents who take 3 chats at once. Agents who take 3 chats at once are chatting with the wrong customer sometimes with the new layout and offering the incorrect steps. Isn't this fun?!?
I hope the takeaways are not "super, fabulous, awesome, exciting, perfect and fun."
Wednesday, July 19th - update
CHAT
It has gotten worse.
I accidentally just took a chat when I was attempting to see who took the chat. OK, challenge accepted. I continued with the chat and these are coming up as one liners within the email area like a new email for each line. Are you kidding me?
There was no "ping" when the customer answered so I had to be in there and watch and wait.
My agents have at least 4 other windows open as they need these programs to answer the customer's questions. Do you know how hard it is to get back in that one chat if you have more than one opened?
Honestly, you are forcing everyone to make the switch at some point in the next month or so.
I can confidently say that this is not usable for us.
I know I am only Zendesk 42 licenses at the moment in this company, 5 in the second and a handful in the 3rd company that that I am overseeing the customer service but this is really not a viable solution for us going forward.
10
Lisa Kelly
Hi Marianne,
Thank you for the detailed feedback. We recommend contacting Zendesk Customer Support so they can help you with your issues and properly log your concerns.
A couple comments and clarifications:
0
Welcome Break Holdings Ltd.
Hi there,
Is it possible to OPT out of the mandatory upgrade?
Zen never really has been an ITSM tool, but a post sales Q&A platform... ideally we'll be moving to a more suitable tool and I'm not keen in faffing around trying to get various items to work as we need until then.
1
Michael
Hi there, having some troubles with the new view...
1) We could see the location of the user who raised the ticket in the old view, which was super useful for detecting spam. Is there a way to get this information in the new workspace?
2) We were easily able to update/link the users details form the old view and now it is a much longer process. Is there a way to link messages to the user directly from the new workspace?
0
h_sz_ke
Today, we switched to the new interface. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but we're trying to embrace the necessity.
In summary, this is the worst update we've experienced lately, and we're deeply disappointed.
2
Lisa Kelly
Hello h_sz_ke
We're sorry you don't like the new interface. Zedesk is aware of the conversation thread issues. It's a common request from customers.
For your Talk issue, this may help:
![](/hc/user_images/01H98PC1BM574112YF9M4NQP5H.png)
If you aren't using Talk for tickets (or any other purpose), you can deactivate Talk in your account. Then, you will not see Calls as an option in the Channels menu for tickets.
To deactivate Talk
1
h_sz_ke
Another work-slowing change: In the new workspace interface, after I have written the text in the "Internal note," if I switch to "E-mail," the entered text disappears.
The issue of placing the text box at the bottom is no longer relevant; we will develop our own Google Chrome plugin to finally achieve the old, well-established functionality along with the reordering of comments – it seems we cannot expect assistance with this here. :(
Can we expect changes from Zendesk, or do we really need to make the interface usable again with a custom-developed Google Chrome plugin? If it's a Beta version, why was it released?
1
Ross Malyon
they want you to use drafts but we ALWAYS default to internal note and want to write in internal then once happy hit the public option but we now have to copy and then paste into public
we default to internal so mistakes are not made.
you just added extra work!
4