Managing offline form settings

Edited March 17, 2023 20:09

Zendesk Documentation Team

When your widget is offline, visitors can leave a message with their contact information in the offline form.

Note: If you’re using Chat with an integrated Zendesk Support account (all Chat versions), you can use either the offline form or the contact form component of Web Widget (Classic). For details on the contact form, see Using Web Widget (Classic) to embed customer service in your website.

This article discusses the following topics:

Editing the offline form message
Enabling messaging channels

Editing the offline form message

By default, this form is enabled with the message shown "Sorry, we aren't online at the moment. Leave a message and we'll get back to you." You can edit the message that appears or disable the form completely.

The process for setting up the offline form is the same for both Chat Standalone and integrated Chat + Support accounts; however, if you are on an integrated account, the offline form is disabled automatically if you are using the contact form in the Web Widget (Classic).

To edit the offline form message

In your Chat dashboard, go to Settings > Widget and click the Forms tab.
In the Offline Form section, make sure the form is enabled by toggling it On.
Edit the text in the Offline Greeting field, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

To disable the offline form

In your Chat dashboard, go to Settings > Widget and click the Forms tab.
In the Offline Form section, click Off, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Enabling messaging channels

If you want to link out to your social messaging channels when the widget is offline, you can toggle on the following channels:

Facebook Messenger
Twitter Direct Messages

Facebook Messenger

To add your Facebook account, you will need to specify your Facebook username or page ID. We recommend using the page ID because it is constant whereas you can change your username.

To get your page ID

Open your Facebook page and click on the About tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the More Info section and you will see the specific Page ID. Copy and paste that number into the offline form settings page.

Note: If you are using the Zendesk Message product and have already connected a Facebook account, double clicking on the field will reveal a drop-down that allows you to select which page/account should be visible on the offline form.

Twitter Direct Messages

To add your Twitter account, you will need to specify your Twitter User ID.

To get your Twitter User ID

Log in to your Twitter account.
Go to Your Twitter Data page.
Under the Username field, copy and paste the User ID number into the offline form settings page.

When turning on Twitter Direct Messages on the widget, you will want to ensure that you have turned on "Receive Direct Messages from anyone"in your Twitter account.

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25 Comments

Nicole Saunders
- January 14, 2021 23:09
Zendesk Community Manager
Hi Smith,

If you are on a Team, Professional, or Enterprise plan, you can edit the message as described in the article above under "Editing the offline form message". If you are on an Essential plan, you will not be able to edit this message.

0
Demo CNL1
- February 06, 2021 13:46
How do I make sure that I have different translations for the Offline form text ? The default text is 'Sorry, we aren't online at the moment. Leave a message and we'll get back to you' but we have visitors from all over the world.

0
Elissa Tikalsky
- February 08, 2021 22:52
Zendesk Digital Resources Team
HI @...,

Unfortunately the offline message text doesn't auto-translate, but you can override/localize this string with the API as described here: https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/settings#offlineform.

I hope that helps!

-1
Camilo Gomez
- August 13, 2021 16:05
Is there a way to localized the language of the offline form so that it gets translated to the user's language settings?

0
Michael Froeming
- August 14, 2021 23:01
Zendesk Customer Care
Hi Camilo,

By default, the Web Widget embedded in a website displays text in the end user’s language, based on the language of their browser. For example, if the end user's browser language is set to de for German, the widget will appear in German for that user. If the widget is embedded in a Help Center, it displays text based on the Help Center language setting.

For more information on language settings in the widget, see the articles: Displaying the widget in a different language and How do I change or set the language in the widget on my website?

0
9307-8509 Quebec Inc
- November 20, 2021 03:02
This is to share an extremely frustrating situation I’ve been experiencing in the past few weeks and I hope you will be able to assist us as soon as possible.

So the help support line of Zendesk have been modified for the past 2-3 weeks.

We now cannot chat with any agents. There is a chat bot/widget that initiates a conversation when inquiring about any support on the website.

It links us to articles but when wanting further help, the widget mentions that a ticket is automatically created and that an agent will contact us through the widget or email (both)

I’ve opened 3-4 tickets in the past weeks and NO agents have reached out to me

The last three, of the same urgent issue, are #9794255, #9794259 and #9794249

I received one email signaling that they’ve received my request and a ticket was created, followed by another ticket confirming that an agent is reviewing my request.

But then, nothing, no follow ups. I went on the tickets itself and not updates are shown.

My company, APP GROUP, is launching our biggest sale of the year today at 8pm, and I needed the WIDGET OFFLINE to be activated to properly inform our clients of the business hours and other important info. We are receiving a huge flux of contacts and I need to get this fixed as soon as possible.

I’ve done everything that the article has asked me to do as its really straightforward but no changes are shown on our site.

Can you please assist me or refer me to an actual human support?

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Ramin Shokrizadeh
- November 20, 2021 08:56
Zendesk Product Manager
9307-8509 Quebec Inc Thanks for posting your question and I am sorry you didn't receive a response from our advocacy team. It isn't the experience we normally aim to deliver so I am sure an advocacy manager will look into the issue.

For your product question, I can provide some guidance on what you want to achieve for your holiday sale. Since you are using the Web Widget, you should be using the contact form over the offline form in Chat. Offline form is designed more for our legacy Chat standalone customers.

You can enable the contact form and temporarily disable Chat in the Web Widget by looking at these articles:

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836216218#topic_yj3_sv2_wfb

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408824462106

If you want Chat to be available only on certain pages, you can look at using the suppress Javascript API instead of disabling the channel completely in Admin Center: https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/widget/settings/#suppress

Since you are using Guide in the Web Widget already, some of our customers create a help center article with a specific label associated with it and you can then tell the Web Widget via Javascript API to suggest that article when visitors click on the launcher. In the article, you can detail expected response times or when live chat will become available again. You can learn more about the article suggestion API here: https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/widget/help-center-api/#helpcentersetsuggestions

Hope that helps and good luck with your upcoming sale, apologies again for the poor response time from the messages you sent to the advocacy team.

Thanks,

Ramin

0

Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr

April 11, 2022 06:10

Dear Zendesk Community,

With this piece of code we succeeded to have a different offline greetings for each language on our guide helpcenter (even using dynamic content!) but it is not working on our website, do you have a solution/tips please?

}
}
}
}
};
</script>

Thank you & best regards

Tipene Hughes
- April 12, 2022 21:03
Zendesk Developer Advocacy
Hey Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr,

Thanks for reaching out!

Just to clarify, you're seeing the greetings appear correctly on the web widget in your help center, but the web widget embedded in your external website is not displaying the appropriate language greetings?

0
Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr
- April 13, 2022 09:02
Hi Tipene Hughes,

Exactly! It is displaying the one we can set up in Chat>Widget>Offline form greeting that doesn't accept dynamic content

0
Tipene Hughes
- May 02, 2022 18:51
Zendesk Developer Advocacy
Hi Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you!

Thanks for clarifying this for me. To confirm, have you also added the code snippet you shared above to the JavaScript code of your website? Adding it to the JavaScript file of your help center will only affect the web widget as it appears in your help center.

0
Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr
- May 05, 2022 15:51
Yes I did but I found another way: using the custom form and switching his name by a dynamic content. It is easier than the offline form + it allows the customer to add an attachment,

Thank you!

0
Tipene Hughes
- May 05, 2022 18:06
Zendesk Developer Advocacy
Glad to hear you've got it working!

Have a great day :)

Tipene

0
Ryan K.
- October 05, 2022 20:33
Hi there!

I'm wondering if there's a way to remove the offline form and just place text for the end-user to read? For example:

"Our live chat support is closed at this time. Please submit a ticket here:"

It seems like I cannot remove the textfields that are there.

If I can't replace the text, can I at least change out the text that says "Sorry, we are not online at the moment"?

Thanks!

0
Christine Felicia
- October 06, 2022 06:40
Zendesk Engineering
Hi Ryan,

Using the Classic Web Widget, you can disable the Contact Form if you don't want to present the Ticket Form to end-users. But please note that this applies when the widget is both online and offline. There's no way to configure the form to be presented only when the widget is online, because this setting applies to both online and offline widget status.

Then you can replace the Offline Greeting text here:

Navigate to the Chat dashboard > Settings > Widget > Forms > Offline Form

The widget will appear similar to this:

Hope this helps! See Editing the offline form message for more details.

0
Ryan K.
- October 06, 2022 19:54
- Edited
Hey Christine Felicia,

Thanks for your quick response!

Two things:
1. I'd need to keep the contact form active (it's a tool I use to route tickets to appropriate departments).
2. The text I'm referring to is when I access a direct live chat link (example). When live chat is closed for my team, there's just one big screen that says "Sorry, we are not online at the moment". It also isn't the text that I presently have in my offline form's greeting.
Image attached below to illustrate the screen:

I'm wondering if I can change this specific screen's text.

Thank you!!!
0
Christine Felicia
- October 07, 2022 03:57
Zendesk Engineering
Hi Ryan,

Currently, there is no way to customize that string and the only solution for custom text is to use the offline form.

If you have some time, I recommend that you start a feedback post on Feedback - Chat and Messaging (Chat) using our Product Feedback Post Template. Our Product Managers are constantly reviewing feature requests submitted in our forum to be considered in our future updates. Thank you!

0

Jeroen Mulder

October 26, 2022 06:30
Edited

Hi,

I used the above example in the document_head.hbs on the Help Center template.

I did manage to change the offlineform text but I can't manage to change the concierge text as well.

Do I make an error in the {} position?

I forgot a ',' as can be read below in the comment of Dave Dyson.

Fixed the error in the script so people can copy it.

<script type="text/javascript">
  window.zESettings = {
    webWidget: {
      chat: {
        offlineForm: {
          greeting: {
            '*': "We are not online right now, please leave a message and we can get back to you shortly.",
         fr: "Nous ne sommes pas en ligne pour le moment, s'il vous plaît laissez un message.",
      nl: "we zijn nu niet online, laat a.u.b. een bericht achter. Dan nemen we spoedig contact op." }
                                      },
        concierge: {
          avatarPath: "https://example.com/img/avatar.jpg",
          name: "Jane Doe",
          title: { '*': "Live support",
      nl: "text."}
        }
          }
      }
  };
</script>

Dave Dyson
- October 26, 2022 02:26
Hi Jeroen,

I think you might be missing a comma after the closing curly bracket before "concierge:" ?

1
Jeroen Mulder
- October 26, 2022 06:28
Thanks! That did the trick.

0
Dave Dyson
- October 27, 2022 01:40
Awesome Jeroen, glad I could help!

0

Jeroen Mulder

November 07, 2022 21:21
Edited

once again I added a form. The pre chat form. Can't get it to work. Did I forget a , or a {}?

OK. I found it. Not 1 comma but a lot :-). It works now.

<script type="text/javascript">
  window.zESettings = {
    webWidget: {
      chat: {
        offlineForm: {
          greeting: {
            '*': "We are currently not online, please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible.",
         fr: "Nous sommes actuellement hors ligne, veuillez laisser un message et nous vous répondrons dans les plus brefs délais.",
      nl: "We zijn momenteel niet online, laat alstublieft een bericht achter dan we nemen zo snel mogelijk contact met u op.",
        pt: "No momento não estamos online, deixe uma mensagem e retornaremos o mais breve possível.",
        tr: "Şu anda çevrimiçi değiliz, lütfen bir mesaj bırakın, mümkün olan en kısa sürede size geri döneceğiz." }
              },
        concierge: {
          title: { '*': "You can ask us anything...",
          nl: "U kunt ons alles vragen...",
            fr: "You can ask us anything... ",
            pt: "Você pode nos perguntar qualquer coisa...",
            tr: "Bize her şeyi sorabilirsiniz..."}
                              },
        prechatForm: {
          greeting: {
            '*': "In order to provide better service, we would like to know your name and email address.",
            fr: "Afin de mieux vous servir, nous aimerions connaître votre nom et votre adresse e-mail.",
                        nl: "Om u beter van dienst te kunnen zijn, willen wij graag uw naam en e-mailadres weten.",        
                        pt: "Para melhor atendê-lo, gostaríamos de saber seu nome e endereço de e-mail.",
                        tr: "Size daha iyi hizmet verebilmek için adınızı ve e-posta adresinizi bilmek isteriz."}
                                       }
         }
              }    
                              };
</script>

Greg Katechis
- November 08, 2022 18:42
Zendesk Developer Advocacy
Glad you found those, looks good now! If you don't have a prettifier/linter in your IDE, I recommend something like https://jshint.com/, where you can plunk your JS to see if it returns any errors. Just make sure to remove any HTML (the script tags in this case) otherwise it will return a bunch of errors.

0
Mark Pryshliak
- December 22, 2022 16:28
Hey guys! Our team is trying to set up offline chat triggering instead of online for specific GEO, is this possible?

0
Jeroen Mulder
- December 23, 2022 22:04
- Edited
When I would like to set my local fixed to one language According to the API documentation I could use: zE('webWidget', 'setLocale', 'de');

WHERE would I add it to the code?

I found where to add it...

Just follow this example

https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/classic-web-widget-sdks/web-widget/quickstart-tutorials/web-widget-javascript-apis/
```
    
<script id="ze-snippet" src="https://static.zdassets.com/ekr/YOUR_SNIPPET_KEY">    
</script>    


<script type="text/javascript">
  zE('webWidget', 'setLocale', 'fr');
</script>
```
0

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