If you never used live chat, see Creating a messaging Web Widget or Creating a messaging Web Widget in accounts prior to November 2021, depending on when your account was created.
If you currently use live chat and Web Widget (Classic) in your account, and want to move to messaging, you need to activate messaging and convert your Web Widget (Classic) to a messaging Web Widget. You also need to make some updates to your live chat settings. You must be an admin to perform these tasks.
This article includes the following sections:
Activating messaging and the messaging Web Widget
After you confirm that you meet the requirements for using messaging, you can activate it in your account.
To activate messaging in your account
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > Messaging.
- Click Manage settings.
- On the Manage settings page, click Turn on messaging for your account.
If you see an onboarding page, you need to click Get started before you can activate messaging.
- Select Turn on messaging for Web Widget (Classic) to convert your Web Widget (Classic) to a messaging Web Widget. If you support multiple brands, use the drop-down menu to select the brands where you want to activate messaging.
Any brand that was previously using Web Widget (Classic) will continue to use that widget until you convert it, so you can do this later if you need to. When converting the Web Widget (Classic) to Web Widget, most settings are automatically migrated to the new widget settings. See Understanding how Web Widget (Classic) settings convert to the Web Widget.
- Click Save.
After you activate messaging, it appears in your Channels list with Web Widget listed as an active channel. Activating messaging updates your account in a number of significant ways. See How activating messaging changes your account.
Understanding how activating messaging changes your account
When messaging is activated in your account, a number of changes occur that impact functionality in the following areas::
Web Widget (Classic)
Web Widget (Classic) is the original iteration of the Web Widget, configured through Zendesk Support, that allows you to offer live chat and other Zendesk features to your customers. If you have previously configured Web Widget (Classic) on your account, turning on messaging gives you the option to convert it to the messaging Web Widget on a per-brand basis, or create a messaging Web Widget for a brand that did not previously use one.
Android, iOS, and Unity SDKs
Activating messaging does not change any previously-configured or deployed SDKs you might be using for Android, iOS, or Unity. After messaging is activated, you can create new Android and iOS SDKs with messaging. These are separate SDKs from the Classic Zendesk SDKs you've been using so far, and need to be configured and deployed separately.
Zendesk bots
When messaging is activated, more automation tools and options are available to you. You can access bot builder, a tool that lets you click-to-configure a conversation bot. With bot builder, this conversation bot is the first responder to customer requests, and gains a lot of new abilities as well.
Importantly, bot builder includes a default conversation bot, which is published and visible in the bot builder page. As soon as it's activated, the default bot begins functioning through the Web Widget.
If you have multiple brands in your account, bot builder is activated on every one of those brands. Each brand has its own default conversation bot that can be configured independently.
See Adding a bot to your messaging channels for more information.
Agent Workspace
Agent Workspace gains some additional functionality as well, including enhanced conversation history and responding to messaging conversations at any time. See Agent Workspace for messaging.
Live chat
When you activate messaging, there are a number live chat-related changes that apply to both agents and administrators.
Understanding how Web Widget (Classic) settings convert to the Web Widget
When you convert Web Widget (Classic), you're essentially switching off the Web Widget (Classic) and migrating to the messaging Web Widget. Many of your Web Widget (Classic) configuration settings are automatically migrated to the new widget settings, including:
- Widget position: The widget and launcher will appear wherever you've placed it on your help center or web page.
- Theme color: The color setting for the launcher, contact button, and header are applied to the Web Widget frame.
- Web Widget button text: During migration, this becomes the launcher text. As in Web Widget (Classic), it is the text that appears in the launcher button.
- Web Widget snippet: The new messaging Web Widget and Web Widget (Classic) use the same snippet, so there’s no need to update it in order for messaging to work.
- Help center activation: If you've activated the Web Widget (Classic) in a help center, the Web Widget replaces it. The widget and launcher will appear wherever you've placed it on your Help Center or web page.
Some Web Widget (Classic) functionality is not available in the messaging Web Widget:
- Talk is not activated. You can still receive calls through the Agent Workspace.
- Existing Javascript API code may not be supported. We do recommend that you test any API code not documented as supported by the messaging Web Widget and let us know of any issues.
Updating live chat settings after activating messaging
After activating messaging, a Chat admin needs to perform the following tasks:
- Organize your agents into groups.
For example, you can create a group of agents who handle specific channels, such as messaging. See Adding agents to groups.
- Set up Support triggers to route messaging conversations to these groups.
- Configure Chat limits on the Chat dashboard to control how many active messaging conversations your agents receive.
- Educate agents on the agent experience.
29 comments
Clik Rogan
Hello!
In regards to Social Channels - when initially enabling Messaging (not converting web widgets to SDK at this stage) will this impact our social channels? Or will we have the ability to toggle the functionality on/off?
If it will change the state of our social channels, do we know exactly what the behavior will be?
I am currently completing a test by plugging in a staging website into our production agent workspace but do not want to impact the 19 other brands we have connected to Social channels.
Any advice? Also - Starting a trial account to test this is not ideal and I do have an understanding that at this stage the compatibility of testing this in the sandbox is not there.
Any help would be great! =]
0
Daniel Aron
Hi Clik, yes enabling the messaging beta (even without converting the web widget to the messaging web sdk) will impact your social messaging channels - Answer Bot will become the first responder. There is no way to toggle Answer Bot by channel currently. You can learn more about it here. Please note however that we are working on disabling Answer Bot for social channels so this impact will be removed in the next couple of weeks. My advice would be to wait until this change goes out before enabling messaging.
0
Yen Tran
Can I segment people by URL for every flow of chat?
0
Ingrid R.
Hi Yen,
You can use brands as a way to segment how your end-users can get in touch with different aspects of your business, and create a specific flow for each.
You've to be on the Suite plan or on the Zendesk Support Enterprise plan to have multiple brands in your account. Once you do, Flow Builder is activated on every one of those brands. Each brand has a separate default flow that can be configured independently.
Hope it makes sense to you. Let us know if you have more questions about it.
Regards,
Ingrid R. | Technical Support Engineer - EMEA | Zendesk Certified Support Admin & Guide Specialist
0
HelloMyBot
Is it possible to disable AnswerBot on Zendesk messaging ? Can we integrate an third party bot with ZD Messaging ?
Regards
0
Juraj Jarmek
Hello @...,
Hope you saw my reply to your other post for the same question, but I'll repeat it just to be sure.
With Zendesk Messaging and Flow Builder, we cannot use external bots.
You would need to use Answer Bot because the integration is built around it.
1
HelloMyBot
Thanks @... for your answer. I will continue with the older web chat.
0
CJ Johnson
"For example, you can create a group of agents who handle specific channels, such as messaging"
How can I do this? There's nothing in group settings that allows you to use a group to restrict access to tickets based on type. Would I have to change every other group to not use a specific channel?
0
CJ Johnson
It would be extremely helpful if Zendesk published an article on how to Enable Messaging on an existing account, with the steps in the logical order one needs. For instance, this article doesn't tell me how to set up the groups for routing, which I imagine I need to do BEFORE I switch it on. I also probably don't want to switch it on, before I have set up Flows. At what point in setup should I disable chat triggers that fire before the agent joins, as apparently that's not supported? If I do it after will it break things? There's no set of steps to easily follow to get from an active account on chat, to Messaging. This is helpful, but doesn't actually give me anywhere near enough information to know how to successfully swap over from Chat seamlessly.
3
Aimee Spanier
CJ Johnson:
You may find the following articles useful:
Migrating from live chat to Zendesk messaging
Resources for migrating from live chat to Zendesk messaging
There is a lot of overlapping information in these articles, so start with whichever appeals to your learning style. Hope this helps!
0
BlackCircles (smooch-cus_JCyCBILAGx0jMj)
Hi all
I am trying to establish how messaging works in terms of routing in the below scenario.
Customer comes through to an agent who then responds, after a few minutes of no response there is no customer reply (for Whatsapp for example they may be out doing things), therefore would the agent mark the ticket as pending awaiting reply? When the customer replies does it only notify the assigned agent who can then pick up the reply? If they are offline what would happen?
We see messaging as a near real time channel but giving customers the flexibility to respond when they can, therefore it wouldn't be feasible for an agent to keep potentially 10 tabs open waiting on replies.
Thanks!
0
Brenda Cardinez
Hi there,
I'm going to bring this into a ticket so we can look into this further with you. You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Thank you!
-1
Jeremy Watkin
If a customer sends us a message and we don't message them back until much later, is the customer required check back on our website? Or do we need to move the conversation to email or perhaps create a trigger to notify the customer that we've responded? Is there a best practice you can point me to?
0
Blanca
Hi there Jeremy,
Thank you for reaching out. May I ask what channel the initial contact from the customer was? When you mentioned "they sent you a message", was it thru WhatsApp, SMS or was it social media or website's contact form? As it depends on how was the initial contact?
Nevertheless, any initial inquiry should create a Zendesk ticket as long as a trigger is set up based on the channel and default trigger of notifying requester of new request or inquiry is enabled. Please see The Support default triggers for further reading.
Cheers,
Blanca | Customer Advocate
Chat with our live support!
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
0
Grace Stratton
Is this outdated? I can't see a 'Messaging' section under 'Messaging and Social' in Admin Centre
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Yes, this article is updated. But, to enable messaging, you must have an account with:
0
Chen Ming
Hi,
Is "Enable Messaging" reversible? Meaning can I turn it on to test it, and turn it off again if I don't want it?
Thanks
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Chen Ming welcome to our Community! :)
You can definitely enable and disable Messaging depending on your needs, just please note the changes described above that will be happening on your account when you enable or disable it.
Or if you have a Sandbox available, you can also test Messaging functionality there. You may check it out here: Using Messaging in your sandbox
Hope this helps!
1
Chen Ming
Thanks Audrey!
0
Lucy Husband
Hey I am really confused. We use Live Chat embedded on our website, we began with Flow builder but chose to only use Live Chat - does this switch impact this in any way?
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Switching/turning on Messaging with Flow Bot would have an impact much more related to the different functionalities that would be offered compared to the Classic Web Widget (with Live Chat).
We would suggest reading this article: Messaging vs. live chat: Which is right for you?
I hope that helps. Thank you!
0
James Skene
Hi
In Web Widget (Classic) I have the ability to add a ticket form within the chat which when used on an external site such as our software platform, includes the url from where the form was submitted from. Is this available in the updated Web Widget (Messaging)?
We don't always get url's from customers so having the ability to capture that url at the point they raise an issue is very useful.
Thanks
0
Gab
You can use the bot builder to create answers for your conversation bots, giving your customers the opportunity to self-serve their support issues before connecting with agents. If you want to include ticket forms/fields where you ask more details from end users, with the use of the bot builder, the Ask for details step can be added anywhere in your flow, which will allow you to choose a custom field you've created in your Zendesk instance.
Here are some articles that might help:
0
James Skene
Thanks @...
I did explore that but from a user perspective, I preferred having the form available in the Web Widget (Classic) and also for my support team, capturing the url automatically is such a good feature that I will stick to the Web Widget (Classic) for now.
0
Ryan Nally
I'm running into a caching issue when enabling Messenger. Here is the flow: Classic web widget is being used. the zendesk snippet is cached. I enable Messenger and merge code to use the Messenger API. A user goes on to my app but the snippet is pulled from the cache and this cached version used the classic web widget not the messenger. My console complains about trying to use functions that don't exist (ie. Messenger functions against the classic web widget). This causes issues around authenticating end users, etc.
I've tried busting the cache by appending a timestamp as a query param to the Zendesk snippet but this doesn't work.
For those who have made the switch from classic web-widget to Messenger how have you handled this issue?
0
Ronja Sindek
Hi, I have the same question as James Skene and wonder if there is any news on this in the meantime. Can urls be passed automatically in the new web widget?
0
Kevin Silva
Is it possible to send a automatic message from the client side using Zendesk messenger?
0
GoGet Support
Hi, I am trying to do this:
1. Introduce conversational bots to the current mobile SDK classic we are using
Referencing: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6774958972442-Zendesk-SDK-for-Unity-with-messaging-is-now-available
From the different articles that I read including this one, can you help me confirm if the below understanding is correct:
a. To enable conversational bots in mobile SDK to be set up, we need to convert to SDK unity.
b. And also enable messaging.
c. If we are on the Professional plan, there should not be additional costs for this conversion?
If we are not able to address it here, can you kindly initiate a ticket and channel it to the right department to assist me as I have a bunch of follow up questions too.
Thank you.
0
GoGet Support
Hi,
Any feedback please?
0