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
Barbara Brauner
Is there a plan to address this limitation? How do other teams overcome this issue? Are there any workarounds?
Being able to add multiple Whatsapp accounts is of limited use to us, if we can't effectively do anything with them, i.e. can't differentiate from where the tickets are coming from.
Thanks.
3
Riah Lao
Hi,
Is there an update on when chat agents can use macros with dynamic content from the Agent Workspace?
Thanks
1
CJ Johnson
So, what happens then when a customer replies to a closed ticket that was started from a message?
2
Riah Lao
Any update on ability to use Dynamic content for chat shortcuts?
3
Dane
As of the moment, the only EAP available is for multi party/end-users conversations. The multi agent is already in the roadmap and is expected to be launched this year. We don't have a definite date for it yet.
@CJ,
It will create an entirely new ticket. It will not have a reference like "Follow-up to ticket #XXXXXXXXX".
@Riah,
We don't have any update yet regarding the utilization of dynamic content in chat shortcuts. Frequently visit our Zendesk page to be updated for any changes or improvements on our products.
0
JJ Miclat
Hey Chris Gregory, SS-Admin, & Andrew Lo
We're shooting to rollout the following features by the end of this year (2022), we'll keep you posted:
For Support-only customers that have under 25 agents, we'll be auto-activating them over to Agent Workspace in Q3 of this year (2022). We won't start auto-activating customers that have Chat over to Agent Workspace until Q2 of next year (2023) at the earliest, we want all major feature parity gaps to be accounted for before we do so.
Cheers,
JJ
0
Dan Savage
We've recently moved to Agent Workspace and have noticed a big impact to performance, with increased latency, hangtime and timeout errors. This seems to impact chat Agents in particular, so I am curious as this article seems to imply that when we were using the legacy agent interface that our Chat data was hosted in the same location as our Support instance. Is this a correct reading of this?
1
Gil Atlan
Feedback - we're using Zendesk Support only
the good:
the bad:
- we've found a closed ticket that's missing parts of it so unreadable
- the translation button isn't always available for some reason
- in some tickets, when users forward an email and they have an attachment, a visual bug appears
Deactivating it for now, but I'll keep an eye out for how it changes
Overall only 1/3 of the people responded positively to the change
1
Lisa Kelly
Hi Daniel,
For issues with Chat latency and questions about data hosting for your account, contact Zendesk Customer Support.
-1
Lisa Kelly
Hi Gil,
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback on the Agent Workspace! I have forwarded your comments along to our Product Management team. You can also post and vote for features on our Ticketing System - Community site.
0
Jabez Guanga
Lisa Kelly
Checking in to see if there's been an update to the following chat limitation.
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Jabez,
I don't have any new information about this. It's still a limitation.
-1
Lila Kingsley
Hi, I have a few questions on the limitations--hoping someone can clarify a few things!
Chat Limitations Section:
Security Limitations Section: can you clarify what you mean when you say it is possible for light agents to access chat messages via unpublished APIs? Trying to understand if this is something we need to care about.
Messaging Limitations Section:
1
Sachin Kotekar
Do we have an update on when our agents can see browser/device information (User Info) when a user initiates a live chat? When this will be available in the Agent Workspace? In our business those details are really useful to help customers in resolving their issue. Please advise.
6
Socios Luciano P
It would be extremely useful for us to have visibility of end-user information such as location, browser, device, and IP address in the Agent Workspace as it will save agents valuable time to gather these details directly from the customer.
6
shelley
Hi,
After recently moving over to AWS I have discovered some other Chat limitations, which should be added to the article
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4408860643354-Agent-Workspace-Notification-when-chat-is-transferred-to-agent#:~:text=Thanks%20for%20the,Regards%0AAyush
0
Jozsef Hajdu
hi, before Agent workspace (AW), we could see the device or OS the end-user is using, which is important in our business. Since we activated AW we no longer see in the tickets interface this information. Is it a limitation?
3
Julio H
Hi Shelley,
Thanks for your feedback.
Currently, Messaging tickets support sound notification when the ticket is being transferred to another agent (only possible with omnichannel routing).
However, chat tickets using AW, currently does not have this feature.
In regard to shortcut tags viewed as manually added by an agent. This is expected, as the shortcut was manually added by the agent, however, you should be able to filter this in Explore. As per the following documentation, in the correct dataset.
Reporting with tags
I will recommend creating a new ticket with Zendesk Support in case you are unable to report with tags.
Sincerely,
0
shelley
Hi Julio H
Thank you for your comment. The link to Reporting with Tags goes to marketplace for an App call Smart End-users Merge app. I am thinking this is not the document you were referring to?
I have already contact ZD Support about this issue when I first came across it. We discovered that this is a limitation when we moved over to AW, which meant reconfiguring all the custom reports we had set up that uses the shortcut tags. It would have been nice to know this is expected behaviour when for AW so this task of updating the reports could have been added to the prep list for the changeover. No matter for me now, hopefully it will help someone else.
0
Amie Brennan
hey JJ Miclat and team,
Is there any update on when multi-agent conversation might be available in agent workspace? Last update was a while ago on this one. Keen to know if it's on the horizon soon. Will be a very nice re-addition back into agent workspace. :)
Best,
Amie
0
Kolten Kittleson
Hello Amie Brennan (and anyone else of course),
We are still working hard to bring multi-agent conversation to Agent Workspace, and hope to have some really exciting news in the first quarter of 2024, so stay tuned.
Sincerely,
Kolten
0
NIkita Kadri
Hi Team
How does reporting work for Chat? Can we extract the Chat monitoring report from Explore now which was earlier available on the Zopim dashboard? Along with the charts and metrics that would show up there?
1
Amie Brennan
Hey ZD team,
The following 2 items need to be removed from the limitations list as they are now existing GA features of the messaging platform.
Best,
Amie
0
Lisa Kelly
Thank you, Aime,
The article is updated to remove these two Messaging limitations; SLAs and Visitor metadata.
0
Nicolas
Bonjour, lors de test sur la sandbox de la migration vers l'espace de travail agent, les raccourcis chats existant au préalable ont disparu. Comment cela se fait-il ?
0
Salim Cheurfi
Je suis navré certains raccourcis (ceux avec options) ne peuvent être transférés vers le nouvel espace de travail. Vous devrez les recréer.
Bien cordialement,
0
Shawna
WE shifted to Agent workspace, and were told that Chat is no longer supported. Only messaging. Reading this updated article, it suggests that chat is indeed an option? Messaging is not ideal for our call center. Chat can be disabled outside of business hours, while messaging lets the customer think there is an agent who is going to assist them shortly. This is even with the pre-programed message that someone will assist 8-10 est.. Please provide more information around the chat feature that we were told was no longer supported.
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Shawna, I don't think that is entirely correct. I can't comments on your specific account circumstances or what you were told. But, Chat is still supported for existing legacy accounts that have the Agent Workspace activated.
0
Shawna
Who can I reach out to this about? We were told for Agent Workspace, Omnichanel (Sunshine) routing, chat feature is no longer supported. Only Messaging, Email, API.
0
Lisa Kelly
Hi Shawna,
I'm not sure what you mean by "Omnichanel (Sunshine) routing, chat feature" vs “using Chat in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.” I recommend contacting Zendesk Customer Support so they can provide clarity on this issue.
0