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 for some features in development, so that you can try out the feature in advance and give us feedback or report issues. We may also provide other feedback opportunities during the development process.
In addition to participating in betas, you might want to join our Experience Research Panel to learn about UX research opportunities where you can help shape our products.
We are offering opportunities for you to give input in the following areas:
- Zendesk Support
- Zendesk Explore
- Zendesk Guide
- Zendesk Talk
- Zendesk messaging
- Trust and safety
- Developers
- Apps and integrations
Zendesk Support
The following current and upcoming betas are available for Support:
- Deploying automations to production from premium sandboxes
- Data importer
- Custom objects
- New customer profile page with activity timeline
- New email spam filter for Support
- Bring your own server
- Custom layouts for tickets - Layout builder
- Summarization and text enhancing
- Conversational commerce
- Agent Home
Deploying automations to production from premium sandboxes
Zendesk is expanding the functionality to create, change, and test business rule configurations in premium sandboxes and then deploy them directly to production. In addition to deploying triggers, with is generally available, you can now deploy automations from premium sandboxes created after May 23, 2022.
Learn more about the Deploy automations beta
Data importer
Zendesk is progressively replacing the current bulk data importing functionality with the data importer. This new, more intuitive tool will provide a consistent experience across types of imports, logging of import activity, and supports imports of files up to 1 GB in size. The Data importer page in Admin Center currently supports the import of new organization data.
In future releases, we'll add support for using imports to update existing organizations as well as importing custom object and user data, too.
Learn more about the new data importer
Custom objects
Zendesk provides many types of native data objects for storing and managing your customer data, including tickets, users, organizations, and more. We call these standard objects. However, standard objects can't provide every possible type of data object that your organization might want.
With the Custom Objects EAP, admins can create custom objects to capture data that doesn't fit into those standard objects. Extending the Zendesk data model with custom objects enables you to seamlessly integrate your custom data with tickets, triggers, and Explore analytics.
Sign up for the custom objects early access program
New customer profile page with activity timeline
Customer profile pages in Zendesk Support are getting a new look within the Zendesk Agent Workspace. The new page pulls together important data, actions, and context about the customer. Agents can focus on delivering support rather than collecting information from different places.
Learn more about the new customer profile page
New email spam filter for Support
Zendesk uses a combination of our own internal spam prevention rules and an outside vendor. We are now exploring a new open-source tool for spam prevention that will give us new options for fighting spam. We are building our own instance of a tool called Rspamd. Rspamd uses a number of factors to determine the legitimacy of email, but most importantly, because this is our own separate instance, we can tweak the results ourselves.
Sign up for the spam filter early access program
Bring your own server
Currently, Zendesk customers are required to use Zendesk's email servers and domains when using the email channel (note: ignoring the Gmail connector). The Bring Your Own Server feature will expand upon this and allow Zendesk's customers to connect their external mail servers to their Zendesk instance, thus making the integration with Support more seamless. In particular, we anticipate this will help with pain points around email forwarding, encryption in transit, and more.
Please note: We're currently in the discovery phase of this project and this does not mean that there will be a beta or EAP, but your input in the form below will help direct the prioritization of the features included with this project. We'd appreciate your input.
Provide your feedback/input for this feature
Custom layouts for tickets - Layout builder
With custom layouts, admins can use an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, called layout builder, to create and apply custom layouts to tickets. No Developer resources are required.
With layout builder, you can feature the apps that your agents use the most by moving them out of the context panel and into the main ticket interface. You can also rearrange, resize, and stack components (such as ticket conversations and ticket properties) to improve agent workflow and reduce the time agents need to manage tickets.
If you are an admin using Zendesk Agent Workspace on an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan, you can sign up for the early access program.
Sign up for the Layout builder early access program here
Summarization and text enhancing
Zendesk offers several AI-powered features that help agents be more productive while still providing a high level of customer service. These features, which harness generative AI powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, include:
- Summarization: Recaps the comments that have been added to a ticket so far, helping agents get up to speed and respond to customers more quickly.
- Enhancing: Automatically improves the content of agent-written comments by expanding or shifting the tone of an agent's response.
Sign up for the Summarization and text enhancing EAP
Conversational commerce
With conversational commerce, you can turn everyday support conversations into revenue generating opportunities. Agents will be equipped with product recommendations, promotion sharing, and payment handling, all within the conversation.
Sign up for the conversational commerce beta
Agent Home
Agent Home is the one-stop-shop for agents to manage all work, including tickets, messaging conversations, and conversations you’re CC’d on or following. Agent Home works in real time, showing you tickets assigned to you and their latest updates. The page includes read and unread indicators help keep you on top of the conversation and productivity tools help you keep your workspace well-organized and tidy
If you are an admin with the Zendesk Agent Workspace activated in your account, you can sign up for the open beta program. Agent Home is ideal for customers who have Omnichannel Routing (OCR) but it works for all Agent Workspace accounts. We don’t recommend this beta if you’re using Talk or Chat.
Sign up for the Agent Home open beta program.
Zendesk Explore
The following current and upcoming betas are available for Explore:
Data exporter
This open beta introduces the Explore data exporter, which lets Enterprise customers export data from Explore datasets without any filters. This means you can easily combine data from Explore with other data sources.
Learn more about the Explore data exporter open beta
New report builder
This closed beta introduces the new report builder, a newly redesigned reporting experience that makes data exploration and report creation more efficient and intuitive for beginners and advanced report builders alike.
Learn more about the new report builder closed beta
New dashboard builder
This beta introduces the new dashboard builder, a redesigned and streamlined experience for creating dashboards within Explore. The new dashboard builder makes it easier and more intuitive to create dashboards that give you the insights you need to optimize your service channels.
Learn more about the new dashboard builder beta
Zendesk Guide
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 (Beta) 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 open beta.
Zendesk Talk
Talk additional numbers now available
We are happy to announce that Zendesk Talk can now offer additional number coverage for the countries listed in the form. Note: These numbers are still in beta and not yet generally available as we want to see how they preform.
Zendesk messaging
Auto-accept for messaging and live chat
Auto-accept functionality automatically assigns messaging and live chat conversations and end-user queries to specified agents in the Agent Workspace. With this feature, agent capacity utilization will always be at maximum.
Trust and safety
Advanced Encryption
Advanced Encryption empowers enterprises with management and control over encryption keys, ensuring that Service Data stored in Zendesk Services can’t be read in plain text by an external party and is only decrypted just in time to enable our services. This feature also helps our customers comply with data protection and privacy obligations and strengthens their security posture.
This feature is commonly referred to as Bring Your Own Key / Hold Your Own Key / Customer Managed Key Encryption.
Advanced Encryption capabilities will be released incrementally, beginning with an Early Access Program (EAP) in early 2023. The first release will encrypt a subset of user fields and will only be available for sandbox use, with a production release coming later. Additional features and fields to be encrypted will be added throughout the coming year.
Learn more about the Advanced Encryption early access program
Developers
Messaging in the Unity SDK
In 2020, we launched our first native Unity SDK to give our gaming customers a quick and easy way to bring the power of Zendesk seamlessly into their games. Since then, Zendesk announced Messaging to help customers deliver rich conversational experiences connected across web, mobile, or social apps. The new version of the Unity SDK includes messaging capabilities.
Learn more about the Unity SDK early access program
Apps and integrations
Salesforce integration logging
The integrations logging EAP is available for all admins using the Salesforce integration. This feature provides a centralized logging experience in Admin Center. It displays data syncing activities between Salesforce and Zendesk. This helps to identify and diagnose any issues and have greater visibility into the integration's performance.
Learn more about the Salesforce integration log early access program
32 Comments
Adding new functionality to the Zendesk Agent Workspace!
Knowledge in the Agent Workspace
Agents can use content from your knowledge base, and community, to answer questions across tickets, chats, and social channels. This makes it a powerfully productive tool for agents to get information and answers that are relevant to the conversation they're engaging in - without having to leave the conversation or manage multiple browser tabs.
Sign up for the Knowledge in the Agent Workspace EAP here.
WhatsApp for Sell
New in! WhatsApp for Sell EAP
WhatsApp is the most popular mobile messenger app worldwide, used by more than 1.5 billion people in over 180 countries. WhatsApp for Sell allows businesses and users of the WhatsApp messaging app to interact via Sunshine Conversation’s functionality within Sell.
Sign up for the WhatsApp for Sell EAP here.
New EAP for Sell:
Custom objects in Sell
There are three native objects in Sell: Leads, Contacts, and Deals. However, it may be difficult to represent all of your business context using just those three objects. With Custom Objects, you can adjust Sell's data to your exact needs by defining new object types that are specific to your business, and link them to your Leads, Contacts, Deals.
Sign up for the custom objects in Sell EAP
New closed beta for Explore:
New Dashboard Builder
This closed beta introduces the new Dashboard Builder, a redesigned and streamlined experience for creating dashboards within Explore. The new Dashboard Builder makes it easier and more intuitive to create dashboards that give you the insights you need to optimize your service channels.
Learn more about the new Dashboard Builder closed beta
New EAP for Support:
Resizing the Context Panel in Support
This EAP enables functionality that allows agents to manually resize the width of the Context Panel in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Resizing enables agents to get an expanded view of the Apps, Knowledge, and Customer Context sections in the panel.
Sign up for the Context Panel Resizing EAP
New EAP for Support and Messaging:
New routing for tickets and messages by priority and agent availability
Zendesk has a variety of ways to route tickets, but the new Routing EAP provides a way to route tickets and messaging conversations based on both ticket priority and the availability of agents. The result is that the most important work items are routed to the agents most available to resolve them quickly.
Sign up for the routing early access program
NEW EAP for Guide:
Help center search crawler
The help center search crawler provides a way for search results to display links to relevant external content (such as webpages or blog posts) alongside help center results (such as articles, posts, and comments) when it is relevant to the query.
Until now, this functionality was made possible through the external content API, which required coding to implement. With the help center search crawler, you can now set up a crawler in a few clicks to achieve the same results with no coding.
Sign up for the help center search crawler early access program.
New EAP for Support:
Macro content suggestions
Macros are a valuable tool that save agents time and help provide end users with consistent support. But knowing which macros to create is not always straightforward. The new macro content suggestions EAP makes it easier to determine which macros will be most useful for your agents and end users.
Sign up for the macro content suggestions early access program
New EAP for Admin Center:
A unified way to set agent status across Support, Messaging, and Talk
Rather than needing to manually maintain separate statuses for Support, Messaging, and Talk, the Agent Statuses EAP provides a way for agents to set a single status that defines their availability across these products. In addition to the standard statuses, admins can also define additional custom statuses for their agents to use.
Sign up for the Agent Statuses early access program
New EAP for Support:
Access log API
The Access log API provides access to a 90 day record of what agents have accessed in your account. We call these the “read” events and the Access log API is your record of read events for your account. Creation, update, and deletion events for settings and configurations are captured separately in the Audit log.
Sign up for the Access log API early access program
Not an EAP or beta this time, but here's an opportunity to provide feedback to the Product team for the "Bring your own server" feature in the discovery phase. The team would love your feedback.
Bring your own server
Currently, Zendesk customers are required to use Zendesk's email servers and domains when using the email channel (note: ignoring the Gmail connector). The Bring Your Own Server feature will expand upon this and allow Zendesk's customers to connect their external mail servers to their Zendesk instance, thus making the integration with Support more seamless. In particular, we anticipate this will help with pain points around email forwarding, encryption in transit, and more.
Please note: We're currently in the discovery phase of this project and this does not mean that there will be a beta or EAP, but your input in the form below will help direct the prioritization of the features included with this project. We'd appreciate your input.
Provide your feedback/input for this feature here
Corrected link! We apologize for mistakenly sending a restricted link yesterday. It's been corrected below. Thank you!
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Not an EAP or beta this time, but here's an opportunity to provide feedback to the Product team for the "Bring your own server" feature in the discovery phase. The team would love your feedback.
Bring your own server
Currently, Zendesk customers are required to use Zendesk's email servers and domains when using the email channel (note: ignoring the Gmail connector). The Bring Your Own Server feature will expand upon this and allow Zendesk's customers to connect their external mail servers to their Zendesk instance, thus making the integration with Support more seamless. In particular, we anticipate this will help with pain points around email forwarding, encryption in transit, and more.
Please note: We're currently in the discovery phase of this project and this does not mean that there will be a beta or EAP, but your input in the form below will help direct the prioritization of the features included with this project. We'd appreciate your input.
Provide your feedback/input for this feature
New EAP for Support:
Automated triage
Automated triage uses artificial intelligence to enrich your tickets with intent and language predictions without the help of agents or admins. You can then use this information for setting up views for teams, automating with triggers or automations, and enhancing Explore reports.
Learn more about the automated triage early access program
New open beta for Guide:
New request list experience
The new request list experience (Beta) 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 open beta.
New EAP for developers:
Messaging in the Unity SDK
In 2020, we launched our first native Unity SDK to give our gaming customers a quick and easy way to bring the power of Zendesk seamlessly into their games. Since then, Zendesk announced Messaging to help customers deliver rich conversational experiences connected across web, mobile, or social apps. The new version of the Unity SDK includes messaging capabilities.
Learn more about the Unity SDK early access program
New beta for Support and messaging:
Omnichannel routing for email and messaging tickets
The omnichannel routing beta enables you to direct tickets from email, messaging, web form, and API to team members based on their availability, capacity, and ticket priority. Using omnichannel routing means that the highest priority tickets are assigned to the agents who are most available to work on them.
Learn more about omnichannel routing
Zendesk update: Please see our correction in the next comment below regarding this EAP.
New EAP for Explore:
Messaging dataset
The Messaging tickets dataset in Explore contains metrics and attributes that relate to all messaging channels, including web, mobile, and social messaging channels. This information includes number of tickets, resolution times, satisfaction, and more.
Correction:
The Messaging dataset EAP that we posted earlier today is currently restricted and not taking new signups. We'll let you know if that changes.
Sorry for the confusion!
New open EAP for Support:
Custom ticket statuses
All customers on Agent Workspace can now enable the ability to create new ticket statuses. The custom ticket statuses EAP allows you to create and manage new, more granular ticket statuses. New ticket statuses you create can also be used in triggers, automations, SLAs, macros, and views.
Learn more about creating and using new ticket statuses
New upcoming EAP for trust and safety:
Advanced Encryption
Advanced Encryption empowers enterprises with management and control over encryption keys, ensuring that Service Data stored in Zendesk Services can’t be read in plain text by an external party and is only decrypted just in time to enable our services. This feature also helps our customers comply with data protection and privacy obligations and strengthens their security posture.
Advanced Encryption capabilities will be released incrementally, beginning with an Early Access Program (EAP) in early 2023. The first release will encrypt a subset of user fields and will only be available for sandbox use, with a production release coming later. Additional features and fields to be encrypted will be added throughout the coming year.
Learn more about the Advanced Encryption early access program
New EAP for Support:
Macro suggestions
Macros are a valuable tool that save agents time and help provide end users with consistent support. But knowing which maros to create is not always straightforward. The new macro suggestions EAP makes it easier to determine which macros will be most useful for your agents and end users.
Sign up for the macro suggestions early access program
New upcoming EAP for custom layouts - Layout builder
Custom layouts for tickets - Layout builder
With custom layouts, admins can use an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, called layout builder, to create and apply custom layouts to tickets. No Developer resources are required.
With layout builder, you can feature the apps that your agents use the most by moving them out of the context panel and into the main ticket interface. You can also rearrange, resize, and stack components (such as ticket conversations and ticket properties) to improve agent workflow and reduce the time agents need to manage tickets.
If you are an admin using Zendesk Agent Workspace on an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan, you can sign up for the upcoming EAP. Visit the EAP Community site for layout builder to add your name to the waiting list. We’ll notify you when the EAP is ready.
Register your interest here
New EAP for developers:
Agent Activity APIs
The Agent Availability EAP is available for all accounts. The APIs provide a way to view real-time agent availability information across Zendesk channels and update an agent's status when needed. These APIs also enable better integrations and open up a variety of use cases, such as the development of custom monitoring, reporting, and routing flows based on real-time agent availability data.
Learn more about the Agent Availability early access program
New closed beta for Explore:
New report builder
This closed beta introduces the new report builder, a newly redesigned reporting experience that makes data exploration and report creation more efficient and intuitive for beginners and advanced report builders alike.
Learn more about the new report builder closed beta
New EAP for custom layouts - Layout builder
Custom layouts for tickets - Layout builder
With custom layouts, admins can use an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, called layout builder, to create and apply custom layouts to tickets. No Developer resources are required.
With layout builder, you can feature the apps that your agents use the most by moving them out of the context panel and into the main ticket interface. You can also rearrange, resize, and stack components (such as ticket conversations and ticket properties) to improve agent workflow and reduce the time agents need to manage tickets.
If you are an admin using Zendesk Agent Workspace on an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan, you can sign up for the early access program.
Sign-up for the early access program here
New EAP for generative AI:
Summarization and text enhancing
Zendesk offers several AI-powered features that help agents be more productive while still providing a high level of customer service. These features, which harness generative AI powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, include:
Sign up for the Summarization and text enhancing EAP
New beta for conversational commerce:
Conversational commerce
With conversational commerce, you can turn everyday support conversations into revenue generating opportunities. Agents will be equipped with product recommendations, promotion sharing, and payment handling, all within the conversation.
Sign up for the conversational commerce beta
New beta for Agent Home
Agent Home
Agent Home is the one-stop-shop for agents to manage all work, including tickets, messaging conversations, and conversations you’re CC’d on or following. Agent Home works in real time, showing you tickets assigned to you and their latest updates. The page includes read and unread indicators help keep you on top of the conversation and productivity tools help you keep your workspace well-organized and tidy
If you are an admin with the Zendesk Agent Workspace activated in your account, you can sign up for the open beta program. Agent Home is ideal for customers who have Omnichannel Routing (OCR) but it works for all Agent Workspace accounts. We don’t recommend this beta if you’re using Talk or Chat.
Sign up for the Agent Home open beta program.
New beta for bulk importing data
Data importer
Zendesk is progressively replacing the current bulk data importing functionality with the data importer. This new, more intuitive tool will provide a consistent experience across types of imports, logging of import activity, and supports imports of files up to 1 GB in size. The Data importer page in Admin Center currently supports the import of new organization data.
In future releases, we'll add support for using imports to update existing organizations as well as importing custom object and user data, too.
Learn more about the new data importer
New beta for Explore
Data exporter
This open beta introduces the Explore data exporter, which lets Enterprise customers export data from Explore datasets without any filters. This means you can easily combine data from Explore with other data sources.
Learn more about the Explore data exporter open beta
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