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Managing agent groups in the Zendesk Agent Workspace

Lisa Kelly
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

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This article contains the following sections:

About groups in the agent workspace

Groups collect agents together, allowing administrators to manage agent ticket assignments and workspace conversations, as well as provide access to tools like views and macros, at the group level. Agents can be in more than one group at a time. It’s easy to change group members and assignments without messing with group settings.

As part of the migration to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, all agents are managed in Support groups, instead of Chat departments. All activities associated with adding, updating, and deleting groups of agents are controlled by Support settings. For more information, see Creating, managing, and using groups.

All other department-related settings, such as Operating hours, are on the Chat dashboard and the administrators can manage these settings from the dashboard. For more information, see Using the Chat dashboard with the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Adding a new group to the agent workspace

To create a new collection of agents, you add a Support group, instead of a Chat department. Administrators can view and manage all groups from the Groups page in Admin Center.

To create a group

  1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Groups.
  2. Click Add group.
  3. Enter a group name and description.
  4. Select the agents you want to add to the group.

    When you create a new group, you can see which agents have access to which products.

  5. If you want this group to be the default group that all new agents are added to, select Make default group.
  6. Click Create group.

Viewing groups from the Chat dashboard

When you create a new group in Support, you are able to see it, along with all the Support groups, listed in the Departments page in the Chat dashboard. You can see Chat agents within all your groups, and other Chat-specific settings, but you can’t add a new group.

Only Chat-enabled agents appear in the Chat agents column. Other types of agents who are assigned to a group do not appear in the Chat dashboard interface.

You can use this group as a Chat department, to set up Chat operating hours, triggers, and more. For other changes, like editing the group name, editing group description, or editing group members, you are redirected to Support.

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12 Comments

  • Ahmad Yousef

    Hi Team,

    We have 3 websites, and in the web widget, we are filtering chat departments for each website using the "$zopim.livechat.departments" Javascript API.

    Since the departments will be merged with Groups, will these overrides get affected if we migrate to Agent Workspace? 

    1
  • Michael Froeming
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Ahmad,

    Yes, those APIs aren't expected to work on Agent Workspace. You should use these APIs instead: https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/settings#departments.

    Best,

     

    0
  • Jen K.

    Hi team, is there a way to enable the agent workspace for just one group, and not others?

    0
  • Lisa Kelly
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Hi Jen K.
    Unfortunately, no. You have to enable it for the entire account. 

    0
  • PAUL STRAUSS

    So now that Departments are Groups, how do you route chats to specific Groups? Or do I have to used Skill Routing to do that?

    0
  • Ahmad Yousef

    @... all the support groups will be listed in the departments' section in Chat. You can enable the chat only for the groups you need in the chat settings under "Departments"

     

     

    And you will be also able to set up the department triggers in Chat like you used to do before.

    0
  • Carman Okon

    When I go to Agent workspace, If I have a department that gets set automatically by the web widget in the web site , will departments get go away?

    0
  • Rosie B.
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Carman,

    Those Chat Department after the Agent Workspace migration will essentially be linked with your Support Group. As long as the chat department isn't changed after accepting and serving a chat will safely keep that ticket's group in Support.

    0
  • Bill Reed

    So if there are no Chat Departments, is the customer still required to choose a group/department from the widget? And if so, we can set which groups appear in this field by enabling the groups for chat?

    0
  • Gab Guinto
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Bill,
     
    Users will still have to select a value from the field if you require them to select a department. And yes, you can head over to Settings > Departments to enable a group/department for Chat; only those that are 'Enabled for Chat' will appear in the widget's Department field dropdown. 
    0
  • Ryan Pisuena

    When Departments merged with support groups, did department IDs get changed or did d they stay the same numerically but just changed to support group ID?

    0
  • Tony
    Hi Ryan,
    before answering to your question, after some tests, I can say the department IDs and the Support group ID have the very same ID on creation. For instance, by using the department endpoint for chats, I see:
     
    {
      "id": xxxxxxxxx95193,
      "settings": {
        "chat_enabled": false,
        "support_group_id": xxxxxxxxx95193
      }
    }
     
    That said, back to your main question, as far as I can see in this article, I believe the group ID was inherited by the department ID, and I believe that's why you have a reference in the department endpoint of it.
     
    I hope that helps!
    0

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