This article describes some current limitations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. As product development continues, Zendesk will work to add more features and remove limitations. To learn more about items to consider before you migrate to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, see Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
This article contains the following sections:
Chat limitations
This section describes some important Chat limitations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- If your account supports a high volume of chats or has a large number of chat-only agents, check with your Zendesk account representative before migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. For best performance, follow these guidelines:
- Do not exceed 1,300 online Chat agents actively serving chats. If necessary, you can have up to 2,000 Chat agents actively serving chats, but you will need to reduce the number of concurrent chats served on your account to prevent potential performance degradation.
- No more than 4,000 concurrent chats with 200,000 total chats per day.
- No more than 6,000 concurrent visitors with 300,000 total visitors per day. Concurrent visitors is the sum of all visitors on your website who have the Web Widget open to chat.
- Apps and macros are available for chats, with the following limitations:
- Support apps have some limitations during chats. See the Ticket editor API . Some apps will not be able to add content in chats.
- Chat apps cannot be downloaded in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- Macros that switch the assignee value to an online agent or group do not initiate a chat transfer. When the original user submits the ticket, the ticket assignee is updated to an online agent or group and the chat is ended.
- Macros can post text into chats, but text indentions are not supported.
- To prevent application conflicts and potential tracking issues, Zendesk does not recommend using the Chat app with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When the Agent Workspace is enabled, the Chat app is automatically disabled on your account. See Activating and deactivating the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- Chat actions such as invite agent, start a conversion with another agent (or visitor), and export transcript, are not supported.
- After migration to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, chat transcripts are no longer counted as end-user comments in Explore which may impact your Explore reports.
- Agents can transfer chats, provided Chat departments are mapped to Support groups. See Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace for details. Agents cannot transfer chats to Sell users, unless the Sell user also has a Support license.
- Chat shortcuts with options are not supported. Dynamic content is not supported in Chat shortcuts.
- Agents must end all chats before logging out.
- After migrating Chat departments to Support groups, App developers should update all public APIs for Chat department Create, Update, and Delete to public APIs for Support group Create, Update, and Delete.
- Agents with custom roles may not be able to use the Agent Workspace because of channel-specific settings. Make sure your custom roles allow for Chat access. Light agents cannot serve chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, they need to be upgraded to agents.
- Agent idle timeout is available on accounts that turn on omnichannel routing with unified agent status. Chat-specific idle timeout isn't available and agent idle timeout settings carried over from the Standard agent interface after migration to the Agent Workspace cannot be changed.
- Because chat conversations are served as tickets in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, when an account migrates to the workspace, it breaks the ability for Support agents in Support to transfer chats to Sell users in Sell. Sell users must have full Support and Chat licenses to work on chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- To create a clickable link in a Chat conversation in Agent Workspace, you must use a complete URL. Hyperlinks are not active.
- Transferring chats in bulk to a new group is possible but not recommended. When doing so, the tickets associated with chats are transferred to the new group, but the chat conversations remain in the original group's queue. Therefore, only agents in the original group are notified when a customer responds to the chat. This limitation applies only to chats transferred in bulk. When transferring a chat individually, both the ticket and the chat conversation are transferred to the new group.
Security limitations
Unlike Support, Chat does not support the concept of restricted agents - all Chat agents have access to all Chat messages. If you are using restricted agents such as light agents in Support, it is possible for those agents to access Chat messages. Light agents can serve chats in the Chat mobile app, but they cannot serve Chats in the Agent Workspace.
Dashboard limitations
This section describes some important limitations for the settings-only Chat dashboard in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Limitations for administrators include:
- Administrators will not be able to initiate proactive chats.
- The Visitors List only has information about ongoing chat conversations. Visitor-level browsing information is not available. Instead, refer to Visitor path in the Agent Workspace.
- The Visitors List is a legacy Chat feature. It does not apply to messaging.
- Tags are not visible in chat history. Admins will be redirected to the Agent Workspace to view or edit any tags associated with that chat.
Limitations for agents include:
- Multi-agent conversation options are not supported and agents will not be able to initiate chats.
- The export transcript option is not available for ongoing chats.
- Custom chat apps are not available, but you can create custom Support apps and use them for chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Messaging limitations
This section describes some important messaging limitations for social and web messaging in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. See also Chat limitations.
- You cannot create follow-up tickets for messaging.
- Administrators can manage routing settings for messaging tickets from the Chat dashboard. Chat’s Skills-based Routing only supports live Chat. It is not supported for messaging tickets.
- Incidents can link to problem tickets, but when the problem ticket is solved, public comments are sent via email only if the user has an email address in their user profile.
- All ticket-based reporting works except for metrics such as Unreplied tickets, % One-touch, Two-touch solves, Comments (all user types), and Agent updates. These metrics only consider email replies on the ticket.
- Sunshine Conversations channels do not receive events from WhatsApp if the business number is blocked by an end user. In this case, the events log will not show the delivery status of an agent message sent to the end user.
- To create a clickable link in a messaging conversation in Agent Workspace, you must use a complete URL. Hyperlinks are not active.
- Instead of banning visitors from the Chat dashboard, you suspend messaging users from the ticket interface. See Suspending messaging users.
Data Center Location (DCL) limitations
Currently, certain messaging features in the Zendesk Agent Workspace are not supported by Zendesk's Data Center Location (DCL) offering. Our Regional Data Hosting Policy lists all covered features. This topic describes the current DCL limitations in the Agent Workspace, specifying covered and uncovered features within the Agent Workspace. Zendesk is working to remove these limitations and ensure that Agent Workspace fully supports DCL.
In the Agent Workspace, Ticketing System Helpdesk features (formerly known as Support) are covered by DCL. This includes tickets, users, attachments, and the Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) channels you activate through Facebook pages and X accounts in Admin Center.
Live chat features (formerly known as Chat) are covered by DCL with exceptions listed in the Regional Data Hosting Policy. These are the live chat features you activate from the Chat dashboard. See Location of Service Data in Zendesk Chat for details.
Messaging features that you activate in Admin Center > Channels > Messaging setup may not be covered by DCL, although data locality support for all messaging customers is a current priority for Zendesk. Until then:
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Accounts created with messaging enabled after April 17, 2023 may have Service Data hosted in any of the AWS Regions where Zendesk hosts data. For now, Zendesk does not currently support transfers of this service to other supported regions. If your account is not currently hosted in the desired region of choice, a new instance will need to be created. Reach out to your account representative for more assistance.
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Accounts created before this date will require hosting in both the US and EEA regions, unless customers have selected a data locality hosting region. In which case only customers based in the US will have full data locality support on messaging.
You can confirm whether messaging has been activated in your account on the Chat dashboard by checking for a banner at the top of the page:
61 comments
Via Consulting
Olá Lisa,
Obrigado pelo apoio.
Temos alguma novidade? Receberemos algum retorno via email?
Att.,
Bryan Munekata
1
CJ Johnson
Just curious, what happens if they don't? Like, what if they have a power outage mid-conversation? What happens to the chat?
4
Nour Abdulla
Hello,
Is there an ETA for a solution of being able to use the Multi-Brand function of integration for WhatsApp?
Thanks
0
Amie Brennan
@... Any update on when multi-agent capabilities on agent workspace will be introduced considering we're now nearing the end of H1 2021?
5
Brad Marshall
We default our compose to "internal" so that an agent composes their response, reviews it, and then toggles it to public when it looks good enough to send to the customer. It has saved us from accidentally sending messages to the customer that should have been internal or was not ready to be sent to the customer. At least that is how we used to do it before Agent Workspace.
In Agent Workspace, if you toggle to Public, it resets the form field and you have to start from scratch. Is this a bug or a feature?
8
Rudolph
Brad - It's a feature from ZD's perspective. If you toggle back to Internal the text will still be there, so agents composing in an internal note would need to copy and paste the message as they toggle over to Public.
1
Brad Marshall
Is the feature to allow a user to post both an internal and public comment at the same time?
Also, does the Apps panel always open up for you on refresh, even though it has been collapsed?
2
Rudolph
I'm not sure of ZD's reasoning behind it, but my guess is the idea is the agent could take notes and respond and have both messages simultaneously composed. Also, since you can also select other channels like Chat, they might just be viewing Internal Notes as another channel. I'm just guessing, though.
And to be honest, we haven't moved to Agent Workspaces yet, so I can't answer your second question. I've tested it in our sandbox and we'll be moving to it soon. Ctrl + alt + A is a quick hot key to collapse/open the Apps section, though.
1
Sydney Neubauer
From what we experienced, we use internal notes to jot down the conversation of a call or chat but need additional verification via email. The issue we ran into was that you had to submit your internal note before you could type up that public reply. Agent workspace allows you to continue typing notes without needing to pause on following up in an email.
With that being the case, I don't know why you are unable to submit both an internal and public reply at the same time
2
Joan
Why is dynamic content for chat shortcuts not supported in the New Agent Workspace? Do Zendesk want us to use macros instead?
4
CJ Johnson
Does this mean you can set up triggers for routing for Messaging? Or does this mean I cannot do any routing at all for Messages from say, Instagram DMs?
2
Fernando A
Hello, will the migration to the agent workspace be mandatory at some point? If so, when?
2
Permanently deleted user
When we could expect the limitation on chat routing to be solved? Why this limitation is not mentioned in this article at all? We operate across different countries, so our Groups are language based and we need chats to be routed according to the language of the user. The chat routing in agent workspace is completely unreliable, it does not work well as with former department in Chat. When are you solving it?
3
Anton Verhelst
Is this something that will be supported in the future or is there a workaround somehow?
1
Jay Clementson
What is the plan for having another agent join the chat? Before this was a good product and this option helped prevent some issues if the original rep hit a roadblock. Now I just get to watch the train crash and fix any issues with customers after the fact.
0
Arpan Nagdeve
Hi Jay,
We intend to support multi agent conversation on the agent workspace, it's part of our committed roadmap and it should be live in H2 21.
-2
Arpan Nagdeve
Packlink Shipping SL
We have full parity in terms of functionality around routing on agent workspace, we would like to know more on the exact use case that's breaking. Can you raise a support ticket for us to look into the same?
-1
Arpan Nagdeve
Amie B
We have to move Multi Agent support to H2 21, and we intend to release the same in this year.
0
Permanently deleted user
@... Unfortunately the full parity you mention is not the case in practice. There is an ongoing ticket going on for months now: #6522890 Thanks!
1
Ayush Upadhyay
Hi @...,
Shortcuts with options will not be supported in Agent Workspace.
There is a workaround available for Zendesk messaging (not for chat) where Sunshine Conversations shorthands syntax can be used as a shortcut template to send a list of options to the end user.
For example, a shortcut with text
can be used to share a list of options to end-users which would look like the following.
This workaround only works for messaging at the moment.
0
Jay Clementson
Thank you for providing feedback after this comment thread continued with no feedback from Zendesk for 6 months.
0
Lauren Slack-Chen
Hi Fernando A. Encinas! The Agent Workspace ticket interface is the new experience for all agents, and at some point, all accounts will need to migrate to this version.
We do not have a forced migration date set at this time, but should it be required to do so in the future, we can commit to giving accounts ample notice. As "ample" notice is relative, I'd love to get your feedback on how much notice would make you feel the most comfortable? Cheers!
-1
Permanently deleted user
Hi any comment regarding my previous comment:
1
Chris Gregory
Hello, what is the timeline for being able to ban a chat visitor from a ticket tab? In our sandbox we are able to ban from the chat app view, but we would ideally like to have this hidden from agents in a prod setting.
0
Carissa
Hi there! I see proactive chat listed as a limitation, but I was hoping to ask if it would ever be made available for Agent Workspace in the future, and if there is a timeline?
Thank you!
2
Anna
Agree with a lot of comments on here. Removing the ability for agents to begin chats is one of the biggest issues we are seeing. Chats are disconnected and when the customer comes back we can't prioritize them. Agents cannot select visitors to start chats with if they are already working with that customer. There is no way for an agent to start a proactive conversation with someone who has been sitting on the site. I see a lot of comments around this and I hope you'll be making this update quite soon as it really inhibits the value of Agent Workspace.
2
Andrew
Hi Lisa,
For the Security limitations part specifically "all Chat agents have access to all Chat messages". What does this entail?
Would upgrading to Agent workspace not follow a Custom Enterprise Role with Accessible tickets = All within this agent's groups? / Introduce a security risk if we want to keep these tickets siloed?
Is this only an issue for light agent role? (also Accessible tickets = Group only)
Thanks!
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Andrew
Users on the Enterprise Chat plan can limit chat visibility by department by implementing custom roles But, this limitation isn't enforced in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
When you have a Chat account that's integrated with Support, the agent might still be able to view the ticket in Support, depending on your settings there.
If you have any further questions, I recommend contacting Zendesk Customer Support to discuss your specific situation.
1
SS-Admin
Hi Arpan Nagdeve,
Is there any product timeline or update on multi agent conversation on the agent workspace ?
Thanks
5
Andrew Lo
It is now 2022.
Any update on when multi agent conversations will be supported in the Agent Workspace?
When will it be required to move to the Agent Workspace?
Simply put, these is functionality missing that is stopping us from moving to the unified Agent Workspace.
3