The default configuration of Zendesk Support is in the English language. However, the agent and administrator user interface can be viewed in a number of supported languages. For example, you can change the language of the system messages that appear in email notifications to your end-users.
You can switch Zendesk Support to a different default language by modifying your account settings and updating the default business rules that contain text in English.
If you want to support more than one language, see Adding multiple languages to Zendesk Support. Zendesk fully supports UTF-8 (Unicode). All languages supported by Zendesk can be added to forms, comments, tags, and so on.
This article covers the following tasks:
Setting the default language for your account
The default language is the language that agents see in the agent interface by default and that end-users see in the Help Center by default.
To set the default language for your account
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Appearance > Localization.
- Beside Languages, select a default language from the drop-down.
- Click Save tab.
Setting time zone and format for Zendesk Support
You can change your account's time zone and format so that timestamps, such as those on tickets and articles, correspond to your locale.
To set your account's time and format
- In Admin Center, click
the Account icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Appearance > Localization.
- Select the appropriate GMT time zone.
- Select wether time appears in the 12-hour or 24-hour format.Note: There is currently no support for locale specific date and number formats.
On Support Professional and Enterprise your staff and end users to set their own time zone in the user profile.
Translating system-generated new user email notifications
When end-users sign up, they receive a number of email notifications. By default, these are in English but you can easily translate them into another language.
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Configuration > End users.
Please follow the link below to choose a password, and we will log you in right away.
We need to verify that you are the owner of this email address. Please follow the link below to verify.
If you don't require your end users to register and log in, they will not receive any of these messages. See Setting up to provide email-only support.
If you're using dynamic content (see Providing multiple language support with dynamic content, you'd replace this text with placeholders that automatically insert the appropriate language when the email notifications are sent.
Adding translated text to the agent signature
You can configure a team member signatures that appears in outgoing email notifications. You can use placeholders to dynamically insert the signature and phone number that agents add to their own user profiles, like in the example below:
You can also add additional text in the appropriate language to the account signature. For example:
{{agent.signature}} - {{agent.phone}}
Toute l'équipe du Support MondoCam
If you use dynamic content, you'd add a dynamic content placeholder here instead. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.
Translating the text in default automations, macros, and triggers
When you create a Zendesk account, a number of automations, macros, and triggers are included to help you get started managing your support workflow. Each of these contains text in English that is sent to end-users in email notifications. For more information, see the following topics:
- About the standard Support triggers
- About the standard Support automations
- Macros to get you started
If you support more than one language, you can also use Liquid markup to generate messages in more than one language from a single business rule. For example, you can edit the Notify requester and CCs of received request trigger to generate messages based on the user's language setting. For more information, see Using Liquid markup to support multiple languages in automations, macros, and triggers.
On Support Professional and Enterprise, you can use dynamic content to manage content for multiple languages. Using dynamic content, you replace the text with a dynamic content placeholders that automatically insert the appropriate language version of the text based on the user's language. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.
19 comments
Julien SERVILLAT
H there,
can a end-user change his prefered language (in the en-user portal Guide) ?
This article only shows ho agents can setup their default language.
THanks
0
Remi
Hi Julien SERVILLAT,
Thank you for your post here, hope you are doing well today!
I encourage you to have a look at this documentation that should answer your question : Setting and detecting a user's language.
About Guide and the Help Center, when an unregistered end user selects a language in the Help Center menu bar and submits a request from that language, their user is created and their language is identified with the language of the Help Center they were viewing upon ticket submission. However, you can manually set their language if this is their preferred language.
You may also find some additional information here : Configuring your help center to support multiple languages.
Also, bear in mind that registered users will follow the same path as Agents and can change their language from their profile settings as per the article above.
Hope this helps!
Have a great rest of your day.
Best regards,
0
Juraj Jarmek
Hello @...,
Unfortunately not be possible.
Side conversations cannot be automatically translated into other languages.
0
Jack Yumulu
Hello,
Regarding the below time zone setting.. so our account is set to US. We have agents in Australia and UK. The first 2 points below state that the timestamps are relative per agent's time zone. Where do I configure agent time zone? OR don't I get that option since we are on Team Subscription? (per the 3rd point below; which is a little confusing whether that means users can set own time zones under those subscriptions or if it also means that regardless of the subscription we'll all be able to see timestamps relative to our own time zone?)
0
Beau P.
Hello Jack,
You are correct, the ability to set timezones by individual agent would require a Professional of Enterprise Support plan to obtain. When configured at the agent level, each agent will see timestamps aligning with their defined timezone. Additional details on this feature can be found here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000353048-Which-time-zone-does-Zendesk-use-
Beau | Customer Advocate
Ask our Zendesk Community
0
Jerry Chow
Hello,
I wanted to see if there was any traction to allow end-users to set their own date/time in their profile, or if it is still linked to the Support Tenant's time zone.
Thanks,
Jerry
0
Matt
Hi Jchow!
At this point, the only control an end-user has over their timezone is in the end-user portal when viewing their tickets. It will use the time zone from their computer/system.
Thank you.
0
Bruno
Hello,
it's not possible for me to change language. I don't have the logo and option written in this article.
Plus, something weird. Sometime I open my Zendesk, it's in english, then in spanish, then i french. I don't understand.
Kind regards.
Bruno
0
Cheeny Aban
Are you receiving an error when changing the language or are you not seeing the option at all? If you are having difficulty, you may reach out to our Customer Support so we can guide you.
0
Emma Andersson
Hello,
My company is using one account for all our international teams. The timezone is set to EDT which works fine for our American colleagues but it's not ideal for our team in the UK. I have set the timezone on our agents profiles to GMT+1, however all the email correspondence with customers is still in EDT.
Is there a way I can update the customer facing time zone without updating it on the account level? Based on the agents time zone / set it on a brand level / modify it in liquid / etc?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks,
Emma
0
Kerstin Graf
Hello,
is it possible to display the date of articles in Guide/Gather in the UK format DD-MM-YYYY, although the localization is set with English (United States), resulting in the display in the format MM-DD-YYYY?
Thank you for your help!
Kerstin
0
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi Emma Andersson,
You do have the right idea that your agents should have their own timezone depending on their location, however that won't be able to impact the end-user's timezone when they contact your team. You can create schedules instead since that would allow you to have different timezones.
This would also allow your end-users to have an idea on when the appropriate team would be available. With operating hours, you can also set up business rules based on your team's schedule. More information can be found here: Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.
0
Markus Meichenitsch
Hello,
which Zendesk Suite plan do I need to be able to set the time zone for each agent individually?
Thank You
0
Noly Maron Unson
Hi Markus,
This option is available for Suite Growth and above and Support Professional and above accounts only.
See Viewing and editing your user profile in Zendesk Support for more details.
Hope this helps.
0
Søren Reinewald
If I change the default language today, will that impact any existing users (they all have a language setting today), or only future users ?
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Søren Anker I have tested this one and can confirm that it will also impact the existing end users, the language in their profile will be updated as well when you change the default language. Hope this helps!
0
Nate Hales
I have my Localization set to (GMT-06:00) Mountain Time (US & Canada) in my Zendesk account. However, in my agent portal and on tickets, it is showing Local Time GMT-12. So all time is showing 6 hours behind my current time.
How do I resolve this so it shows correctly?
0
Christine Diego
The ticket timestamps are displayed in the time zone set on your user profile. You can find more information about this in this article. Would you mind trying to update the timezone on your user profile once more and then refreshing your browser.
0
Andrew Webster
Is there a way to automatically adjust for daylight savings time / British Summer Time without having to change the default time zone twice a year?
0