Before you add the Web Widget (Classic) to your website or help center, you need to decide which components you want to include in Web Widget (Classic) and then turn them on. For some components, you might need to go a step further and configure additional settings. You must be an administrator to configure components in Web Widget (Classic).
- Help center search and suggested articles
- Zendesk Chat for live chat with an agent
- Zendesk Talk for requesting a callback from an agent or viewing a phone number to call
- Contact forms for filing a ticket
For information about how components are presented to end users, see the section about Understanding the end user experience. For a complete list of Web Widget (Classic) documentation, see Web Widget (Classic) resources.
This article includes these sections:
Configuring the Web Widget (Classic)
The Web Widget (Classic) includes multiple components that you can turn on or off, or customize. For example, you can add help, talk, and chat features, and contact forms. You can configure security settings, change the color of buttons and text, edit user interface text, and reposition Web Widget (Classic).
For detailed information about the components you can configure, see Configurable Web Widget (Classic) components (below).
To configure the Web Widget (Classic)
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Classic > Web Widget.
If you are setting up the Web Widget (Classic) for the first time, a wizard guides you through the process. Follow the on-screen prompts. After you complete the wizard, you can view and change your options, if you want, by proceeding to the next step.
If this isn't your first time setting up the Web Widget, (Classic) skip this step. The wizard doesn't appear for you.
- From the Customization tab, configure your Web Widget (Classic) components (see Configurable Web Widget (Classic) components).
- When you're done configuring components, click Save.Note: Allow 10 minutes for changes to the Web Widget (Classic) to propagate and appear in the Web Widget (Classic).
Once you're done with this procedure, you're ready to complete the steps described in Adding Web Widget (Classic) to your website or help center, if you haven't already.
Configurable Web Widget (Classic) components
This table lists the Web Widget (Classic) components that you can configure from Support.
If you want to customize the Web Widget (Classic) further, it's possible to do that using the Web Widget (Classic) API, but you might need the help of a website developer. For more information, see Advanced customization of Web Widget (Classic).
Setting | Description |
---|---|
Contact form |
To allow customers to submit tickets from the Web Widget (Classic) leave the toggle on. This option is on by default. If you don't want customers to be able to submit tickets from the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle off. Tickets submitted through the Web Widget (Classic) contain the tag “web_widget.” You can use these options to control the name field in the default contact form and ticket forms that appear in the Web Widget (Classic).
Keep in mind that if the Ticket forms toggle is on, ticket forms replace the default contact form in the Web Widget (Classic). Also note that the Contact form component isn't available when authentication is required for the Requests and Uploads API endpoints. |
Ticket forms |
Note: Multiple ticket forms are not available on all Support plans.
To include multiple ticket forms in the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle on. This option only appears if the Contact form toggle is turned on. This option enables the end user to select any of your active ticket forms, instead of seeing only the default Web Widget Contact form, and allows you to customize which ticket forms are available based on the page the user is on. If you need to set up ticket forms, click the Settings link. For more information, see Using custom ticket fields and ticket forms with the Web Widget (Classic). |
Custom ticket fields |
Note: Regular expression, Date, and Multi-select custom fields cannot be used in
the Web Widget (Classic).
To select custom ticket fields that you want to
include in the Web Widget (Classic) contact form, use the drop-down list.This option only appears when you have enabled the contact form, and have at least one custom ticket field that is editable by end users. See Adding a custom ticket field. If you need to set up custom ticket fields, click the Settings link. For more information, see Using custom ticket fields and ticket forms with the Web Widget. |
Chat |
Note: You must have a Chat account to add Chat functions to the Web Widget
(Classic). If you don't have a Chat account, turning this toggle on has no
effect.
To include Chat features in the Web Widget (Classic), turn the Chat toggle on. You can click the Settings link to open the Chat dashboard (the Zendesk Chat product interface), or open Chat from a browser. From there, you will configure specific Chat features for use with the Web Widget (Classic) (see Setting up Zendesk Chat in the Web Widget (Classic)). If you have multiple brands, it doesn’t matter which Chat > Settings link you use. They all open Chat in exactly the same manner. If you have multiple brands, the brand name is added as a chat tag. For more information, see Step 2, add the Web Widget (Classic) to your brands in Zendesk in the Multibrand setup article. You cannot add third-party chat applications to the Web Widget (Classic). |
Help Center |
Note: You must have a Guide account to add help center search to the Web Widget
(Classic). If you don't have a Guide account, turning on this toggle has no
affect.
To add help center search to the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle on. To configure help center search settings, click the Settings link. Guide will open and you'll configure settings from there. If help center search is enabled in the Web Widget (Classic), you can filter metrics for article views and searches that originate from the Web Widget (Classic). For more information, see Analyzing help center search results with Explore and Analyzing knowledge base activity with Explore. Including restricted articles in help center search results If you want to include restricted help center content in your Web Widget (Classic) results, you need to configure some other settings as well. For more information about using help center search with the Web Widget (Classic), see Using restricted help center content with the Web Widget (Classic). |
Contextual Help |
To include Contextual Help in the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle on. This option only appears when the Help Center toggle is turned on. Contextual Help suggests articles to the end-user that may be relevant to them, based on the page from which they accessed the Web Widget (Classic). For more information, see About contextual help for the Web Widget (Classic). |
Security settings |
To restrict help center search results in the Web Widget (Classic) to authenticated users on your website, click the Configure button and then follow the on-screen instructions. |
Talk |
To include Talk in the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle on. To configure Talk settings, click the Settings link. For more information, see Configuring Zendesk Talk settings for the Web Widget (Classic). |
Zendesk logo |
To remove the Zendesk logo in the Web Widget (Classic), turn the toggle off. |
Theme color |
To specify a custom color for the Web Widget (Classic), use the color picker. After you choose the color, you can close the color picker by clicking away, on any other part of the interface. |
Theme text color |
To specify a custom color for the text in the launcher, contact button, and header, use the color picker. After you choose the color, you can close the color picker by clicking away, on any other part of the interface. If you select the Use default color based on theme check box, the Web Widget (Classic) automatically chooses the text color for you based on the theme color and using an algorithm to guarantee a minimum contrast ratio as specified by the WCAG guidelines. |
Position |
To choose a position for the Web Widget (Classic), select a position from the drop-down list. If you want the Web Widget (Classic) to appear in the bottom-right corner of the page, choose Right. If you want it to appear in the lower-left corner, choose Left instead. |
Web Widget button text |
To specify the text on the Web Widget (Classic) launcher, choose one of the options from the drop-down list. |
Contact form button text |
To specify the text on the button that launches the contact form, choose one of the options from the drop-down list. ![]() |
Article Recommendations | Note: Article
Recommendations is available on
Zendesk
Suite
plans.
To
add
Article Recommendations to your Web Widget (Classic), turn the
toggle on.This option only appears when the Help Center toggle is turned on. For more information, see Enabling Article Recommendations in the Web Widget (Classic). |
52 Comments
Hi WILLIAM ONSARE,
Thanks for your question! If you are using Classic APIs, then unfortunately, they are not supported within the new messaging experience. We have a set of messaging specific APIs which can be found here. We plan to incrementally add to this list over time.
- Miranda.
How does that work? I tried it too but it looks like this for me:
Is there another dynamic content I need to use? I used the dynamic content in the admin center under the tab agent workspace.
Right now I am confused and the widget is not really usable for us. Even the forcing of the widget to be in English with:
<script type="text/javascript">
zE('webWidget', 'setLocale', ‘en’);
</script>
does not work. Therefore you will have the widget in English when the browser is in English but the personalized entries in German for example.
Hi Eyal Fein
The logo must be square!!!
:)
Maria
Thanks Maky!
Lets say we'll have the square logo.
Where do I upload it on Zendesk so that it will override the current widget's logo?
Hi Sloan Sloan
For obtain this:
I use this option. In the dynamic content I created all the needed texts:
And on the contact form insert the placeholder:
This works for me.
Regards.
Maria
Hi Eyal Fein
On the Brand Logo! Here!
:)
Maria
Hi again Eyal Fein:
But if you want to get it on the chat widget you have to use concierge on the chat script configuration:
Will check it out Maky
Thank you so much :)
Hi WILLIAM,
The docs/APIs that you are linking to are for Web Widget (Classic), not messaging. Unfortunately, Classic APIs are not compatible with messaging.
You can find the messaging APIs available here, https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/zendesk-web-widget-sdks/sdks/web/sdk_api_reference/. We plan to incrementally add more over time based on customer feedback.
- Miranda.
Hello! We are using the classic web widget for our multi-brand workspace and I'm curious if there's a way to remove the "Choose a platform” option? When we test it out it has an option to choose a department but this isn't something I'm seeing in the ZD chat options.
Thanks
How to set multi-language in chat window?
Hi Pepper,
You can check this for more information on how you can set up multi-language in Chat: How do I set up chat to support multiple countries and languages? This article includes the workflows you need to set up in routing chats based on language/location and how to provide multi-language support in live chats.
When someone leaves a message via the classic widget, is it possible to have it include a link or some reference to which page of our shopify store it was sent from? I regularly get tickets from the widget that say something generic like "does this come in green?" with no reference to what they're asking about.
Hi Cody
The URL or Visitor Web path should be available in the chat's history in the 'user info' tab. More information can be found here: Reviewing and exporting past chats in History
Hi, we use your widget and we followed this documentation to open it.
https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/zendesk-web-widget-sdks/sdks/web/sdk_api_reference/
We use your widget on multiple website, using the same identifier and we want color the header of the widget when it's opened with different colors. How can we do it?
The classic > web widget option is NOT available
If you've set-up your account under Messaging, then kindly follow the steps noted below.
Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging > go to Installation tab and you should see the snippet code there and as noted, make sure to copy and paste that to every HTML page you want it on.
I hope this helps!
Thanks!
No, this is using a form widget for customer submission of information. Not the chat bot.
I added custom fields for the form for our agents to capture additional information from a customer via a static landing page on our website, but cannot find a way to embed the form.
I've opened a separate ticket for you in regards to your query as this may require some back and forth information to assist you properly.
Thanks!
I'm adding forms to the classic web widget. In Help Center, there is an optional CC field available but it's not in the web widget.
How can we add the optional CC (carbon copy) field into the web widget?
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