This article describes Zendesk support for popular, industry-standard browsers that restrict how cookies are recognized and used. Browsers that restrict cookie usage include recent versions of Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.
To prevent any issues caused by signing into Zendesk from a cookie-restricted browser, Zendesk has a streamlined sign-in process for the agents and end users who work on accounts with host-mapped domains.
To sign in
- For agents and end users, click the Sign in link in your help center.
A sign-in page appears.
- Enter your sign-in credentials.
For end users, sign in with a username and password, or use a social or business account to sign in. For agents, click I am an Agent to sign in. - After signing in, agents and end users are automatically directed to the appropriate page in their account.
Agents will see their agent dashboard where they are signed in and can work on tickets.
End users will return to their help center as a signed-in user.
84 Comments
Our yearly renewal is also coming up but this issue has made us look into other solutions.
Still an issue and now it affects Edge as well.
Again as has been 2.5 months since this was asked...
Max McCal Caroline Kello When can we expect to see this resolved properly?
Asking our customers to turn off or add exceptions for 3rd party cookies is not merely suboptimal, it's something that most will simply not do, and both we and our customers suffer greatly as a result.
Max McCal You wrote on July 16, 2021 that zendesk intending to fully cease using third party cookies as part of the login experience for host mapped accounts. 9 months have passed so can you please give us an update on the status of that plan.
I had a customer furious with me (my company) the other day because of this exact issue. Their attitude was, that the entire experience left them frustrated and angry. They were not placated by the knowledge that this was zendesk's fault. They felt like we had let them down.
Michael Bierman I had the same issue also again and again in the past. A client wants to log in to zendesk to create a support case. In such a situation the client is already stressed with the issue that he wants to report and gets seriously frustrated if he first has to click 5 times till he finally is allowed to enter his credentials.
One of the most important features of a helpdesk system should be, that it is easy for users no matter which browser they use to access it, right?
Hi everyone, thank you very much for posting your questions and concerns on this thread, your feedback is important to us. We at Zendesk constantly strive to improve our product based on customer research and feedback received through the community. My name is Barkha Bhatia, I'm a Principal Product Manager at Zendesk, taking over and leading the Zendesk authentication experience.
Over this thread, we notice two concerns regarding the user’s login for a Zendesk host mapped account for the browsers which have blocked the usage of third party cookies:
If you want to know more, I am happy to set up a 1-1 chat with you. I look forward to sharing our early design, listening to feedback, and maintaining an ongoing conversation with you on this topic.
I have lost track of how many times a Zendesk representative has said this.
Hi Barkha Bhatia
Thank you for your offer but I really don't need 1-1 chat. What we need is Zendesk delivering on the promise from July 16, 2021 to fully cease using third party cookies as part of the login experience for host mapped accounts.
Honestly Barkha Bhatia, you know any product other then Zendesk where a user has to click 5 times before he is allowed to start with the login process??? The Zendesk login process is broken, and it's broken for years, and you guys need now to act swiftly on this. I just checked my activities with zendesk support and actually found the ticket I created on October 15, 2019 about that issue with the title "Users can't login into zendesk with Safari" (ID: 4930495). This is now 2.5 years ago!
Hi Barkha Bhatia
I agree with Tobias Linder, your post provides no updated information on how and when this will be resolved. Please provide us with an actual update on progress here as was promised on July 16, 2021.
Zendesk clearly has no intention of addressing this. It's time to look elsewhere.
Chet Farmer's comment describes my dilemma: I had been considering using Zendesk for my consulting practice, but I abandoned that plan because most of my clients are Mac users – I certainly won't subject them to this long-standing problem.
I actually discovered this discussion when I encountered the login hassle as a user seeking tech support from a vendor using Zendesk.
The sad fact is Chrome, the browser with the largest market share by a substantial margin, won't be impacted until mid to late 2023. I get the impression this is the due date for Zendesk, regardless of what we say here in the comments.
Barkha Bhatia, you kind of activated a landmine with your "update" as it provided no new information. So everyone was waiting quietly for a real update, only to be fed a giant plate of nothing.
Someday, maybe, "product managers" will learn that honesty and forthrightness are better moves than trying to spin a non-update or "won't fix" message.
Jon Yergatian I guess you are right. But for a helpdesk product only focussing on the browser with the biggest market share is really not a reasonable approach. About 20% of all users are using Safari and all these are stuck in this "klick 5 times before login"-experience.
My company is managing 100'000 apple devices so I guess about 90% of our users are using Safari to access our helpdesk.
The problem is actually much worse than that. If a proprietary solution exposes its clients to the joys of Zendesk, the clients can just ditch the solution and find a more respectful one. It is not so easy with open source clients; for example, KDE uses GitLab and GitLab uses Zendesk. Assuming that ditching KDE is not an option, there really is no way out.
Hey, all – We have closed the comments on this article. Your feedback is valid, and we agree that there is much we can do better here. Our development team is working on improvements to the login user experience, targeting release by the end of September 2022 (timelines are based on best of our knowledge as of today and are subject to change). We will update this comment thread and our documentation when this happens. I truly appreciate everyone's concern here, but the conversation has stopped being useful for the average user who is looking to understand the way the product functions today. We welcome your feedback, but would prefer if you direct it to our community.
Is there any update on this issue? Its November
Hi Andi,
Yes. We have updated the experience and it's rolling out to accounts now. See this announcement for details: Announcing improved experience for cookie-restricted browsers
Hi Everyone,
First of all, our apologies to everyone waiting for answers on this thread. And we truly appreciate your feedback and patience on this.
To recap, we have already fixed Cross-site tracking back in 2020 for Safari (incl. iOS), Firefox, and Edge. With the latest fix, we have proactively fixed it for Chrome too. The other problem was the login experience, where users had to click multiple places before they could finally log in - that is also fixed. We are rolling it out for all customers; General Availability for all customers is planned by Nov 15 - please refer to this product announcement for more details.
Dear Zendesk team,
Web Widget(Classic) installed via the installation script doesn't load in Mozilla Fire Fox (version 108+) when Enhanced Tracking Protection is turned on for the website (Enhanced Tracking Protection is a browser security setting. It can be turned on and off by clicking on the Shield button in front of the address URL > click On button). It seems to only affect macOS and Linux systems; Windows systems are not affected. And it doesn't affect when Web Widget (Classic) is loaded in Zendesk Help Center.
We would like a response from Zendesk product management team on whether or not this can be better controlled from Zendesk's side because this potentially can affect any user who has been using Fire Fox from MacOS or Linux platform after have upgraded the browser to the version of Fire Fox where Enhanced Tracking Protection is turned on (it is turned on by default).
Thank you.
Best regards
Hi Julien Maneyrol
Thanks for your comment, I would request you create a ticket for this, and someone from the support team will be able to help you. If you already have a ticket please bump that up.
If the feature "Enhanced Tracking Protection" on Firefox is active, the chat snippet for classic web widget is declared as tracking script and gets blocked, so the widget is in this case not usable. The problem is, this feature is active by default so a standard firefox user won't even notice, that there is a possibility to contact via chat or contactform.
Is there any client side solution for that ?
Hi Barkha Bhatia,
I have already sent a ticket and support has recommended posting here. The ticket ID is #11052510.
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