At Zendesk, we value the feedback of our customers and consider it an important part of our process. That's why we offer early access programs (EAPs) for some features in development so that you can try out the feature in advance and give us feedback or report issues.
In addition to participating in EAPs, you might want to join our Experience Research Panel to learn about UX research opportunities.
We are offering early access opportunities for you to give input in the following areas:
- Zendesk Support
- Zendesk Explore
- Zendesk messaging
- Zendesk AI agents
- Zendesk Knowledge
- Zendesk Quality Assurance
- Zendesk Workforce Management
- Developers
Important considerations
Participation in EAPs is completely optional, and availability may be limited. Be aware that pre-release features and functionality:
- May not always function as expected or meet your particular needs.
- Are not subject to any Zendesk Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that may be applicable to your Service Plan.
- Are not considered “BAA Covered Services” or “HIPAA-Enabled Add-Ons” under your Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Zendesk if you are entitled to and have signed one.
- May be discontinued or significantly modified at Zendesk’s discretion.
When an EAP ends, Zendesk will often make the feature or functionality generally available to all eligible Zendesk customers. The feature or functionality may be included in an existing Service Plan, or it may require the purchase of an Add-on. Upon general availability, EAP participants may be required to upgrade Service Plans or purchase an Add-on to continue accessing the feature or functionality.
Zendesk Support
The following current and upcoming EAPs are available for Support:
- End user separation
- Data masking
- Action Builder
- App Builder
- Sandbox configuration management
- Custom objects in Explore
End user separation
The End User Separation EAP is part of the department spaces feature launch. This follow-on launch allows admins to segment agents' access to end users based on the agent’s department membership. This ensures focused support, enhances data privacy, and promotes specialized product knowledge. Agents' ticket access AND end user access will depend on their department membership. Zendesk admins automatically belong to all departments.
Learn more about the End User Separation EAP
Data masking
The Data Masking Production EAP provides advanced privacy and security controls to Zendesk by allowing organizations to control which agents can access personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers. This feature helps companies comply with privacy regulations and reduces the risk of data exposure by masking end-user information for selected custom roles.
Administrators can define permissions to ensure only authorized agents view sensitive data, promoting customer trust and enhancing data governance. The EAP is available for Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans with custom roles. Participation requires sign-up by a Zendesk admin.
You can sign up for the Data masking EAP.
Action Builder
The action builder provides a new and simplified way for teams to manage and automate workflows across multiple systems without requiring any coding. This enables non-technical admins and users to customize and use integrations with Zendesk like never before.
Learn more about the Action Builder EAP.
App Builder
The App Builder EAP is a new and powerful feature leveraging generative AI to empower admins to create custom apps without the need for developer resources, making it faster and more cost-effective than ever to tailor your Zendesk experience to your unique business needs.
Features of the App Builder include:
- Conversational UI: Lets you to describe your desired app using natural language.
- Example prompts: A small collection of prompts to help you get started.
- Iterative app development: Continuously refine and build applications using LLM, allowing you to adjust the app according to your specific requirements.
- Version control: Save different versions of the created app, enabling easy navigation between various iterations.
- Real-time visual preview: Preview the app visually in real-time as you build.
- Data integration: Create apps that utilize data from Zendesk, your company's internal system, and third-party platforms such as Shopify, Jira, and others.
- Code accessibility: View the generated code for the app, which can be reviewed by more technically skilled admins or developers.
- Testing environment: Test the app within your Zendesk Lotus environment prior to installation to ensure proper functionality.
- Publishing and deployment: Publish and deploy the app to install it within your Zendesk account, including an app permission flow.
- Error resolution: Utilize LLM for error fixing if you encounter any unexpected issues.
- Feedback submission: Use the feedback form to report bugs, request features, or share general comments.
Although the EAP is currently limited to a small group of users, we are actively working to make it available to a larger audience in the coming months. Support or Suite Professional or above is required.
If you would like to try out App Builder when it becomes more widely accessible, we encourage you to join the App Builder EAP waitlist.
Sandbox configuration management
The Sandbox Configuration Management EAP provides early access to features that streamline the management of configuration settings across your Zendesk environments. The EAP will consist of multiple phases, beginning with inspection, which gives admins a near-complete overview of an environment's configurations. It also supports saving snapshots of your configuration settings, and deploying configurations from production to sandbox environments.
Future phases of the EAP will include deploying configurations from one environment to another, such as sandboxes to production.
Learn more about the Sandbox Configuration Management EAP.
Custom objects in Explore
The Custom objects in Guide and Explore EAP provides early access to multiple enhancements to custom objects. First, lookup fields pointing to custom objects can be included in your help center request forms. Second, you can configure end user permissions to view and interact with each custom object's records. Finally, you can also leverage expanded reporting on lookup relationship fields in Explore. Together, these features allow you to integrate custom objects into your end-user's experience and collect more complete data about how lookup relationship fields and custom objects are being used.
Learn more about the Custom objects in Guide and Explore EAP.
Zendesk Explore
The following current and upcoming EAPs are available for Explore:
Real time monitoring dashboards
This EAP introduces three new reporting dashboards that combine data from various channels to provide visibility into your business. These new reports combine both real-time and historical views of your data to give you a clearer picture of your business.
Learn more about the real time monitoring dashboards.
New report builder
The new report builder is a redesigned reporting experience that makes data exploration and report creation more efficient and intuitive for both beginners and advanced users.
Learn more about the new report builder.
Quick Reports
To help you go from your data to decisions more quickly, we’re excited to introduce Quick Reports, which harness the power of OpenAI to enable you to write simple prompts to generate the reports you need in seconds.
Learn more about the Quick reports EAP.
Zendesk messaging
The following current and upcoming EAPs are available for messaging:
Engagements reporting API
The omnichannel engagements reporting API has been launched as an Early Access Program (EAP) for eligible customers to access the engagements dataset.
Engagements represent individual legs of agent interactions in the overall ticket lifecycle.
Learn more about the Engagements reporting API.
Redesigned messaging notifications
Zendesk is introducing a redesigned notifications experience for messaging conversation updates. This notification center will serve as a centralized event center to keep agents up to date on new conversation assignments, new replies from end users, and @mentions from other agents.
Sign up for the EAP here. To learn more, see Using the notifications list to manage conversations.
Zendesk AI agents
The following current and upcoming EAPs are available for AI agents:
AI agent tickets
Conversations between your AI agents and end users that were never escalated can now be viewed as read-only tickets in Support and Agent Workspace. These tickets provide you with better visibility into AI agent performance, automated resolutions, and ticket history for returning end users.
In the event these conversations are escalated to a human agent, your existing workflows for handling tickets apply as they do today.
Learn more about the AI agent tickets EAP.
Zendesk Knowledge
The following current and upcoming EAPs are available for Knowledge:
Knowledge Builder EAP
Knowledge Builder uses generative AI to automatically create help center articles that address the most common challenges your customers face. Specifically, Knowledge Builder analyzes your Support ticket data from the last 90 days to identify your most common customer issues, then combines it with your audience and brand information (including problems that you know your customers are experiencing), to generate a new or enhanced help center.
Learn more about the Knowledge Builder EAP.
New request list experience
The help center, by default, offers the option for end users to submit requests. End users who submit requests can also manage their support requests in the customer portal.
The new request list experience improves the way in which end users can manage large numbers of requests in the customer portal. When you enable the new request list experience in your theme, end users can use the new combinable filtering options to refine the requests they want to manage as well as new column configuration options to show/hide columns.
Learn more about the New request list experience.
Zendesk Quality Assurance
The following EAPs are available for Zendesk Quality Assurance (QA). This section was formerly Klaus.
Prompt-based AI insights
Zendesk QA prompt-based AI insights leverage the latest AI models, allowing you to customize AI-powered prompts using natural language for quality autoscoring and risk detection.
Learn more about the Zendesk QA prompt-based AI insights EAP.
Zendesk Workforce Management
The following EAPs are available for Zendesk Workforce Management (WFM). This section was formerly Tymeshift.
- Define a rotation period for automatic shifts
- Combined workstreams and workstreams prioritization
- Forecast vs Actual report
- Unassigned shifts
- Staffing panels week and month views
- Performance and leaderboards
Define a rotation period for automatic shifts
This EAP lets admins define rotation periods for automatic shifts. By defining rotation periods, agents' shift start times are automatically rotated based on the time period you defined, which frees managers from having to decide a specific order in which to rotate shifts.
Learn more about the Automatic shifts rotation period EAP.
Combined workstreams and workstreams prioritization
Admins can combine workstreams, as well as prioritize workstreams so that you can ensure that you’re covering the right work at the right time.
Learn more about the Combined workstreams and workstreams prioritization EAPs.
Forecast vs Actual report
The Forecast vs Actual EAP unveils a dynamic new reporting feature, offering users the ability to directly compare forecasted data with actual performance metrics within their operations. This reporting page is tailored to enhance decision-making and operational analysis by providing insights into Inbound Volume, Staffing, Average Handle Time, and Service Levels.
Learn more about the Forecast vs actual report EAP.
Unassigned shifts
Unassigned shifts are created without being assigned specific agents, allowing managers to ensure optimal coverage without focusing on individual team members. Once created, unassigned shifts can be shared with a group of agents who can apply to take them.
Learn more about the Creating and managing unassigned shifts EAP.
Staffing panel week and month views
This EAP allows you to view staffing panels in both week and month views in the WFM Schedule page. Staffing panels have provided key information in the Schedule page day view. With this EAP, staffing panel capabilities are being extended to the week and months views to help you analyze and perfect your teams' shifts on a broader scale.
Learn more about the Accessing the WFM schedule staffing panel.
Performance and leaderboards
This EAP allows you to create performance boards, which are sets of reporting metrics that you can use to track your teams' performance and also share them with your teams. By sharing performance boards with your teams, you give agents visibility into how they're doing across the metrics you define. You can also optionally turn on leaderboards, which are associated with performance boards and rank agents within a team based on the performance board metrics and the agents’ performance.
Learn more about the Performance and leaderboards EAP.
Developers
The following early access program is available for workforce management (WFM).
WFM reports API
The WFM reports API is a powerful new tool for you to harness your data more effectively. This endpoint allows you to extract data from both default and custom reports by specifying the ID of the desired report template. The WFM reports API is currently in an Early Access Program (EAP).
You can sign up for the WFM reports API EAP.