If enabled by an admin, end users can send messages to agents through the Web Widget, and agents can manage these conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Similar to social messaging, it provides a native, persistent messaging channel you can use to talk to your customers. This article provides an overview of messaging in the agent workspace. For details on how to send and receive messages, see Receiving and sending messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
This article contains these sections:
- About Web Widget messages in the Agent Workspace
- Messaging flow
- Information at your fingertips
- Working with attachments
About Web Widget messages in the Agent Workspace
Messaging for the Web Widget lets you deliver rich, modern, and automated conversation experiences out-of-the-box on your website. It gives customers the unique flexibility to pop in and out of the conversation at their leisure so they can get help on their own terms.
With messaging in the Web Widget:
- Customers can start and pick up conversations anywhere, any time, without losing their history.
- Agents can take advantage of the automated flows and data capture that their admins have built into the messaging flow, so they can step in and answer a message at just the right time with all the relevant information they need to help a customer.
- Similar to social messaging in the agent workspace, agents can manage messages as part of a unified conversation experience.
Messaging flow
Customers use the Web Widget to send messages, and agents use the Zendesk Agent Workspace to respond. These messages become tickets in the workspace. Also, if enabled by your admin, customers may interact with a bot first, before requesting to talk to an agent. Your Zendesk admin configures the types of messages you can receive and how these messages are routed to your queue.
When you’re working online in the agent interface, you’ll see an active Accept button at the top of the interface when a new messaging ticket comes in.
This Accept button works for live chats, social messaging, and messages from the Web Widget.
When you accept a message, you’ll see the channel type (via messaging) in the conversation header. Just like live chats and social messages, you can use the composer to reply on the messaging channel, add an internal note, send an email, or make a call. You can use Chat shortcuts in Zendesk messages, but Chat shortcuts with options or dynamic content are not supported. You cannot change from a messaging channel to a social messaging channel.
You will be able view the conversation (if any) that occurred between a bot and the customer before it was handed off to you. So, you’ll have the full context of what’s going on.
If the end-user and bot conversation included carousels, lists, or other rich text messages, a fallback text-only version appears in the Agent Workspace.
Information at your fingertips
While you’re working with Web Widget messages in the Agent Workspace:
- Customer information captured by a bot is visible in customer context and other information captured from the customer is available in custom ticket fields.
-
Similar to social messaging, Web Widget conversations with your customers are enhanced by leveraging all the features available in the agent workspace. This includes:
- Targeted, channel-based business rules and ticket tags to help admins route tickets quickly to the right agent at the right time.
- Views and macros to help you manage your tickets and reply quickly.
-
Ticket tabs and a notifications list to show you which conversations are active. Also, typing, sent, and received indicators to keep you up-to-date.
- Ticket assignments and changes to ticket assignments work the same as with social messaging.
- When the ticket is Closed, control is handed back to the bot which means that the customer will be greeted by that bot when they send a message.
- Targeted, channel-based business rules and ticket tags to help admins route tickets quickly to the right agent at the right time.
Working with attachments
Admins can determine whether customers can attach files and images to messaging conversations. See Configuring the widget frame for more information.
Agents and, if allowed, customers can attach files and images to messaging conversations in the Agent Workspace or Web Widget, respectively. Files and images can be attached to conversations in two ways:
- Clicking the paper clip icon (
) in the workspace or widget, then browsing to and selecting the file(s) they want to add to the conversation.
- Selecting the file(s) they want to add to the conversation, then dragging them into the workspace or messaging conversation window.
File attachments for both customers and agents have the following limitations:
- The file size limit is 50 megabytes.
- The file sending options that admins manage from the Chat dashboard apply to live chats, but they do not apply to web, mobile, or social messaging.
- Messaging supports a fixed list of file types, including 3g2, 3gp, 7z, aac, amr, avi, bmp, csv, doc, docx, eml, gif, heic, heif, ics, jfif, jpeg, jpg, key, log, m4a, m4v, mov, mp3, mp4, mp4a, mpeg, mpg, mpga, neon, numbers, odt, oga, ogg, ogv, opus, pages, pdf, png, pps, ppsx, ppt, pptx, qt, svg, tif, tiff, txt, vcf, wav, webm, webp, wmv, xls, xlsx, xml, yaml, yml. Zip files (zip) that include other file types are also supported.
- Private attachments are currently not available in messaging.
24 comments
Phil Andrews
Hi there 👋
Is there a timeframe for customers to be able to add attachments in Zendesk Messaging?
Even in the screenshots on this page there is an attachment icon in next to the chat - this seems a bit confusing/misleading if customers can't attach items in Messenger?
Thank you
1
Miranda Burford
Hi @...,
Good timing! We are actually very close to releasing support for end user file & image uploads. This will be made available within the next 2-3 weeks. Stay tuned!
- Miranda.
2
Phil Andrews
Great to see end user attachments on the web widget!
Will attachments for end users be coming to the Mobile SDK too?
1
Miranda Burford
Thanks @.... We're excited too! 🎉 iOS is available today. Android should be following up with a release before the end of the October.
- Miranda.
1
Phil Andrews
Amazing! Thanks so much for the response @... 🎉
1
Phil Andrews
Hi there 👋 Is there any further update on timeframe for end user attachments for Android Messenger SDK?
1
Miranda Burford
Hi Phil Andrews,
End user file & image uploads for messaging is now live & available (Android 1.2.0 release). 🎉.
- Miranda.
1
Badura
Hello,
it's nice to have attachments via the web widget - but it looks like focused on private users and B2C by the limitation of file types for images/audio/video/pdf/...
Our B2B business with machines using logfiles and data in .tar and .tar.gz.
The setup was prepared for this (in Chat, settings, file sending, file types) with no impact today :-( It can not be send - even renaming the extension.
Is there a plan to add this in the near future?
Or a backdoor to activate it?
thank you and regards,
2
Miranda Burford
Hi Rolf-Stephan Badura,
Thanks for your message! That's useful feedback. We don't have plans to support .tar and .tar.gz files within the next 9 months. But I'll record this feedback on our side and we'll definitely consider it in the future.
- Miranda.
1
Somos Sokso
Buenas tardes,
Segun se indica en el articulo si se admite el archivo xlsx como adjunto en mensajeria, requerimos enviar un archivo en excel mediante un ticket de whatsapp y nos aparece un mensaje de error, se adjunta pantallazo.
1
Max
Good afternoon, it is giving me the following issue when trying to use version 1.2.0
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However, when i try to install the related library, is not found in the jfrog repo.
Looks like the specified version is not found and does not exists.
2
Serg Mois
Started getting 403 Forbidden error during sending files using
https://api.zopim.com/web-sdk/#zchat-sendfile-file-callback
Request URL: https://us40.zopim.com/client/widget/upload?__messageID=2&ts=1638434665584
Request Method: POST
Status Code: 403
Is it related with update to the messaging?
update:
I found that zendesk returns 403 when there is no active chat session. The session starts only with a message, not with a file, so if the user decided to send the file as a first 'message' we had to send some 'dummy' message from the user (e.g. Start ), wait a few seconds, and only then send the file.
1
Giuseppe
Hi Max,
The jfrog repo should now have the 0.8.0 library:
For more information, please see this documentation - Android SDK Getting Started
1
Daniel Bechtel
Hi Zendesk,
We are dealing with B2E customers and being able to upload Zip and Tar files is crucial.
Can you please add these extensions?
1
Lisa Kelly
Hello Daniel,
Thank you for the feedback - for better visibility to our Product team, would you mind creating a post in our Feedback - Chat and Messaging topic, using this template to format your feedback? Thanks!
0
dave.passaro
Hello,
I am attempting to add messaging to our zendesk plugin translation app, the method we usually use for sending chat messages is not working after enabling messaging
client.invoke('ticket.sendMessage', { channel: 'chat', message: text})
however, all our other functionality is still working. Is this expected, I see the chat API is recommended for messaging, is that the only way?
0
JJ Miclat
Hey dave.passaro!
As of a couple weeks ago, the ticket.sendMessage endpoint now works with Zendesk Messaging, and Social Messaging channels (through Sunshine Conversations), in addition to live chat conversations.
The syntax would be as follows:
Cheers,
JJ
0
Sydney Neubauer
I don't see it explicitly stated but is Answerbot required for Messaging?
0
Walter
Hi Sydney,
It's the other way around. Messaging is required in order for AnswerBot to work when you have Agent Workspaces. If your instance is still on the legacy Zendesk, then Messaging is not required because it's not even available.
However, if your instance is using Agent Workspaces, and you only want to use Messaging, you don't need to activate AnswerBot.
That's how it was the last time I checked.
0
Sydney Neubauer
Thanks @Walter That was what I figured - I knew about the Answerbot needing Messaging but in all of ZD's documentation, it states set up Answerbot as part of the activation process. Appreciate your insight! Hopefully it hasn't changed
0
Allie
Hi there! Is there a plan to include file sending options like Chat for Messaging? As a software company, we have our own file type and we use Zendesk as our support tool for troubleshooting with our user base. Not being able to attach those file types prevents my team from being able to efficiently do their job.
1
Shawna James
0
Efrat Barak Zadok
Is there a reason why the accept button does not work for live agents who are being approached via sunshine conversation web widget?
0
Gintare Remeikė
0