How migrating to messaging impacts Chat settings and capabilities

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To use messaging, Zendesk Chat accounts must also have Zendesk Support with the Agent Workspace enabled.

When you migrate from Zendesk Chat to messaging, a number of changes are made to your Zendesk Chat functionality.

Administrators must make sure they perform the tasks described in Setting up Web Widget for messaging when using live chat and Web Widget (Classic), in addition to any tasks described in this article.

This article discusses the following topics and areas impacted when messaging is enabled:

• Agent Workspace
• Chat dashboard
• Chat triggers
• Chat routing
• Chat reporting
• Chat Conversation APIs

Agent Workspace

In the Agent Workspace, messaging creates a well-integrated UI for your agents, with fewer limitations than Zendesk Chat.

If your account supports a high volume of chats or has a large number of chat-only agents, check with your Zendesk account representative before migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. For best performance, follow these guidelines:

• Do not exceed 1,300 online Chat agents actively serving chats. If necessary, you can have up to 2,000 Chat agents actively serving chats, but you will need to reduce the number of concurrent chats served on your account to prevent potential performance degradation.
• No more than 8,000 concurrent conversations/with 200,000 total conversations per day.
• No more than 6,000 concurrent visitors with 300,000 total visitors per day

Chat dashboard

Most of the features managed in the Chat dashboard have equivalent management pages in Admin Center, or elsewhere in the Zendesk UI.

The following table lists the functionality areas in the Chat dashboard, and where management of comparable messaging functionality is located.

Table 1.

Menu group in Chat dashboard	Messaging functionality or feature and location
Visitors > Simulate chat	Testing the end user's messaging experience Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging > Test it now button in channel preview.
Visitors > Ban visitor	Suspending users Admin Center > Channels > People > Team > Roles (managing roles to allow user suspension) Ticket UI or User profile (suspending a messaging user)
History	Viewing user history Agent Workspace: Agent dashboard, custom views, or customer context
Analytics	Monitoring AI agent activity and suggesting improvements Admin Center > Channels > AI agents and automation > AI agents > Manage AI agents for messaging > Insights dashboard in AI agent's page. Monitoring live agent activity Explore dashboard
Monitor	Monitoring live agent activity Explore dashboard
Settings > Agents	Viewing and managing agents Admin Center > People > Team > Team members
Settings > Departments	Viewing and managing groups Admin Center > People > Team > Groups
Settings > Roles	Viewing and managing roles Admin Center > People > Team > Roles
Settings > Routing > Settings tab	Omnichannel routing Admin Center > Objects and rules > Omnichannel routing > Routing configuration
Settings > Routing > Skills tab	Routing tickets based on agent skills Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Skills
Settings > Shortcuts	Macros Admin Center > Workspaces > Agent tools > Macros
Settings > Banned	Viewing and managing banned users Agent Workspace: Customers > Suspended users
Settings > Triggers	Messaging triggers Admin Center > Objects and rules > Messaging triggers
Settings > Goals	N/A
Settings > Widget	Creating a messaging Web Widget Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging
Settings > Personal	Viewing and editing your user profile Zendesk Support: Click profile icon
Settings > Account > Subscription	Viewing and managing plan subscriptions Admin Center > Account > Billing > Subscription
Settings > Account > Zendesk Support	Managing messaging transcript visibility Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings
Settings > Account > SLAs	SLA policies Admin Center > Objects and Rules > Business rules > Service level agreements
Settings > Account > APIs and SDKs	Messaging in your mobile channel Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging
Settings > Account > Email piping	Messaging transcripts Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings
Settings > Account > Chat tags	Automatic ticket tagging Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings
Settings > Account > File sending	Allowing attachments and configuring permissions Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings
Settings > Account > Operating hours	Business hours Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging > Responses section in channel configuration
Settings > Account > Timezone	Setting a time zone Admin Center > Account > Appearance > Localization
Settings > Account > Security	User authentication in messaging Admin Center > Account > Security > End user authentication Redacting credit card numbers from tickets Admin Center > Account > Security > More settings > Zendesk Support tab

Chat triggers

If you want to apply automatic responses set up via Chat triggers to messaging conversations, you will need to create new messaging triggers.

The process for setting up messaging triggers is identical as it is for Chat triggers with the following exceptions:

• Triggers are created and managed in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Messaging triggers, not on the Chat dashboard.
• Messaging run trigger options are: When a customer requests a conversation, When a message is sent, When a conversation is added to the queue, When a conversation is assigned from a queue.
• Some routing-related actions are managed with ticket triggers.

Chat routing

In messaging for Web Widget or mobile SDKs, when a customer requests assistance from a live agent during a conversation, a ticket is created, and agents are notified in the Agent Workspace that a request has been received.

We recommend using omnichannel routing to direct messaging tickets to your agents.

If you choose to use simple routing for messaging tickets, it is based on the Chat routing rules defined for your agents.

Chat reporting

Messaging reports are available on the Support dashboard in Zendesk Explore. For more information, see Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard.

Your account can leverage metrics associated with Tickets in the Support dashboard and filter by messaging channels.

Key metrics include:

• Estimate staffing - Volume of tickets created per channel, per group, per time period
• Monitor team’s performance - Number of tickets solved, Time to resolution

To view messaging reports on the Support dashboard in Explore

1. In any product, click the Zendesk Products icon () in the top bar, then select Explore.
2. In the Dashboards list, select Zendesk Support.

   

Note: Metrics such as First reply time, Unreplied tickets, % One-touch, Two-touch solves, Comments (all user types), and Agent updates consider only email replies on the ticket.

Chat Conversation APIs

Migration to messaging does not apply any code changes to the Chat Conversations API. When you enable messaging, most CCAPIs will continue to work as expected. CCAPI-based chatbots, however, may be impacted, depending on your messaging configuration.

Understanding the impact on CCAPI-based bots

Because the conversation bot and autoreplies are a central part of messaging functionality, CCAPI-based chatbots are impacted when messaging is enabled and they are prevented from being invoked.

Using chatbots with messaging

If you want to continue using a chatbot on a brand with messaging enabled, you have a number of options:

Option 1 (recommended): Moving to Sunshine Conversation APIs

You can move your existing CCAPI integrations, including CCAPI-based chat bots, to Sunshine Conversation APIs. If you choose this option, we recommend you do so before migrating your account to messaging.

Option 2: Creating a Support trigger workaround

If you do not choose to move your CCAPI integrations to Sunshine Conversations, you can work around the messaging limitation by creating a Support trigger to assign a chat bot to any ticket created via messaging: