This article describes how you can add Facebook Messenger channels to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Because Facebook Messenger is used for private messaging with your customers, its implementation is a separate, different process than that used to add Facebook, which can be used for public messaging with your customers. To set up Facebook, see Setting up your public Facebook channel.
This article includes these sections:
- Overview of steps to add Facebook Messenger to the Agent Workspace
- Adding a Facebook Messenger channel to the agent workspace
- Next steps
- Limitations
- No other data shared with Meta/Facebook
Related articles:
Overview of steps to add Facebook Messenger to the Agent Workspace
If you have the Zendesk Agent Workspace enabled, you can add Facebook Messenger channels. You must be an administrator to add Facebook Messenger channels.
You need to do the following, in this order:
- Add your Facebook Messenger channels to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- Set up auto-responders for your Facebook channels.
- Set up triggers, automations, and views for your Facebook Messenger channels.
- Make sure that your agents are set up to use the channels (Getting started for administrators in the Zendesk Agent Workspace).
After you complete these steps, you can then configure public messaging with Facebook, if needed. This is a separate, additional task (see Setting up your Facebook channel).
For information about the number of Facebook Messenger channels you are allowed to add, see Facebook limits with Support. For information about using Facebook Messenger channels, see Receiving and sending messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Adding a Facebook Messenger channel
You must have the Zendesk Agent Workspace enabled to add Facebook Messenger channels. You must be an admin to add Facebook Messenger.
The following video gives you an overview of how to add a Facebook Messenger channel:
Automating a Facebook Messenger channel [1:40]
To add a Facebook Messenger channel to the Zendesk Agent Workspace
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > Messaging.
- Click Add channel and select Facebook Messenger.
- From the Add Facebook Messenger screen, click Continue with Facebook.
- When prompted, log in to your Facebook account as a user with Admin permissions for all accounts being added, then follow the on-screen instructions to authorize Zendesk to use your Facebook account.
- Select all the Facebook pages you want to manage in Zendesk, and ensure page permissions are toggled to Yes.
- On the Add Facebook Messenger screen, choose a Facebook page from the list and then click Next.
- Click Add channel.
When the channel connects successfully, a Channel added message appears.
- Enter a Channel name.
- If your account has multiple brands, select a Brand to associate with the channel.
- Click Save settings.
Next steps
After you add Facebook Messenger channels to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, you may need to complete these additional tasks:
-
Adjust your Facebook Messenger business rules and views (see Setting triggers, automations, and views for social messaging).
When using Facebook Messenger with the Zendesk Agent Workspace, you need condition statements that read Channel + Is + Facebook Messenger and Brand + is + [selected brand].
Do not use Facebook Private Message in your condition statements. Only customers that are using Facebook Messenger with Support and that haven’t enabled the Zendesk Agent Workspace need to use this condition.
-
Make sure your agents are set up to use the channel (see Getting started for administrators in the Zendesk Agent Workspace).
-
Add your Facebook accounts to your Admin settings in Support, if you want to send and receive public messages from Facebook pages. Follow the steps in Setting up your Facebook channel.
-
Make sure you understand what happens if you decide to disable the Zendesk Agent Workspace later on (see Disabling the agent workspace).
Limitations
This section describes some important limitations about using Facebook Messenger in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
-
Facebook Messenger channels that are added to the Zendesk Agent Workspace from Admin Center do not support public messaging. If you want to perform public messaging with a Facebook account, you must also add the account to Support from your Support admin settings. When you do, make sure that the Include private messages setting remains disabled.
- There's a 2000 character limit for messages sent through Facebook Messenger. Messages longer than that will not be delivered.
-
Facebook Messenger allows a business only seven days to respond to the end user before the messaging window closes. To prevent messages from being sent but not delivered, the composer will be blocked once the messaging window is closed. The only way to re-open is if the end user sends a new message.
-
If an end user sends you both public and private Facebook messages, duplicate user profiles are created for the same user. For example, there will be profiles from public messages to channels that were configured in your Support admin settings, and others from private messages channels that were configured in Admin Center. You will need to merge these profiles manually (see Merging a user’s duplicate account).
Profiles associated with private messages do not include the user’s Facebook ID.
-
For Facebook Messenger channels in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, do not use the Facebook Private Message condition in your business rules and views. Use the Facebook Messenger condition for these channels instead. For more information, see What's next?.
For additional limitations, see Messaging limitations and Chat limitations.
No other data shared with Meta/Facebook
For clarity, aside from the conversations occurring directly through your Facebook Messenger account within Zendesk, no other data from your Zendesk account, such as ticket data, is shared with Meta in connection with use of the Facebook Messenger integration. Only conversations occurring directly through your Facebook Messenger account will be accessible by Meta.
16 Comments
Wanted to drop an update about being able to distinguish between social messaging channels.
We have rolled out support to associate brand with a social messaging integration. For instance, we can assign brand A to FB page X. In order to route all messaging tickets from FB page X to certain group of agents, we can setup Support Triggers with -
- Prakruti
Hi,
What if a Brand has several FB pages (one in country A and one in county B)
All the messages coming from Page A need to go to group 1 and all the messages coming from Page B need to go to group 2.
As we cannot select the Integration account, I don't know if this set up is doable now.
Do you have any tips for that ?
Thanks !
Hi Benoit,
Being able to distinguish between multiple integrations of the same channel within the same brand is not possible at the moment. Addressing it is on this year's roadmap.
- Prakruti
Please have a look at the article below and vote if you also have a demand to expand Facebook Pages integration.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1260804078669-Expand-the-limit-of-Facebook-Pages-integration
Just wanted to add that my organization is also waiting for Zendesk to improve the handling of multiple Facebook pages.
It is vital for us to be able to route messages to different pages to the correct groups.
This appears to be possible with the old way to integrate Facebook private messages to Zendesk Support, very strange that this isn't supported from the get go with this new improved method of integrating Facebook messages into Zendesk.
@..., you can route messages from multiple Facebook pages to differents groups by chosing a different brand for each facebook page. I don't know if this could help you, but it did help here.
Thanks @... this helps.
@Zendesk this sounds like this feature is a bit "undercooked" as using "Branding" feels very much like a workaround.
The assumption that brands and Facebook business pages have a one-to-one relationship is quite naive.
@... how is the timeline for this?
Best regards
Oskar
Hi guys,
I have some concerns about Zendesk "solved" and Facebook "done" statuses.
I would like that both act the same: a Zensek ticket marked as "solved" would change the Facebook status to "done" and a FB ticket moved to "done" would change the ZD ticket status to "solved".
How can it be done?
Thanks!
Vincent
Prakruti Hindia
Do we have an update on this one? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408835753370/comments/4408849125786
We have a lot of customers where this is a problem because we can't route tickets based on the integration account level. Thanks
Hi everyone,
We see that accounts setup a different social messaging profile for each of their brands. To address that, the capability to associate a social messaging integration to their brand was introduced.
We have noted the feedback shared on this thread. Surfacing integration/business profile information for agent context and routing is on the roadmap.
-Prakruti
Prakruti Hindia in your last reply, 8 months ago you stated that this was on the one year roadmap, now 8 months later you say that this feedback has been noted and this is on the roadmap. What does that mean? Are we talking about another 8 months? 24 months? Or is this yet another shortcoming of Zendesk that you are just not going to address at all?
Hello everyone,
Do you know if this feature also support live chat with Facebook chat plugin (in my website) ?
Thank you
You can use the widget but it will come in like all other Facebook plugins (probably). Though they do not tell the difference between the Messenger web/app or this widget and apparently we do not support this.
Hi all!
Any update on this one? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408835753370/comments/4408849125786
We notice that this is becoming more and more important and that some customers are even starting to drop out because of the lack of this functionality.
Thanks!
P+
Hi there,

I've been trying to follow the steps illustrated in the video tutorial to add a Facebook Messenger channel. However, when clicking on Channel, under "Messaging and Social" I find no "Messaging" option.
What could be the problem here? Our plan for Guide is "Legacy".
Thanks in advance for any response!
Hi Giuditta -
Can you confirm that you have Agent Workspace turned on?
Please sign in to leave a comment.