About automatically upgrading

The automatic upgrade program for the Zendesk Agent workspace applies only to selected Zendesk accounts. Zendesk will notify your account admin by email if your account qualifies. 

Zendesk has introduced a new program to help customers upgrade to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

The Zendesk Agent Workspace maximizes productivity for your teams by bringing you all the tools, context, and capabilities they need to deliver exceptional customer experiences, all from a single, unified interface. This includes:

• Delivering the conversational service your customers want
• Working smarter with powerful tools and built-in intelligence
• Boosting agent well-being for a better customer experience

This article includes the following topics:

• What's happening? 
• Why is Zendesk making this change? 
• What do I need to do? 
• What new features are available after upgrading?

What's happening? 

If your account admin received the email, your Zendesk account has been selected to be automatically upgraded to the Agent Workspace. We are helping customers automatically upgrade because Agent Workspace is the interface of choice for Zendesk going forward. It includes all the latest features and enhancements Zendesk has made to support agent productivity across channels. 

Why is Zendesk making this change? 

Zendesk built this new interface to help your agents provide fast and personalized support for customers and ensure they have all the tools and context they need to manage customer requests efficiently. 

We want you to take advantage of our latest innovations and join our customers who have already made the switch. On average, accounts on Agent Workspace experience significantly faster replies to customers and significantly faster resolutions to customer requests by moving to our unified Agent Workspace.

What do I need to do? 

Zendesk will automatically activate the Agent Workspace on your account during the timeframe Zendesk provided in the email we sent you. 

However, instead of waiting for an automatic upgrade, we strongly encourage you to start the upgrade now. This gives you and your agents time to prepare for the change.

Zendesk recommends that you:

• Upgrade now on your own terms. It's best to upgrade at the time of day when your account activity is the lowest.
• From now until the automatic upgrade date, you will be able to temporarily deactivate the Agent Workspace.
  We recommend turning it on and off to get yourself and your agents acquainted with the key differences in the interface. This gives you time to generate any necessary training materials for your team.
• If you are wary of upgrading your production account, you can always create a free Zendesk trial account to try out the workspace. All trials have the Agent Workspace activated.

To help you in the transition, we have created a resources page with more information. See Resources for upgrading to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Also, for a brief summary of the main interface changes, see our Quick Reference. 

What new features are available after upgrading?

In addition to a unified conversation interface based on the latest technology, the following is a list of new features Zendesk introduced that are available only in the Agent Workspace. Going forward, as you enhance and modernize your customer support offerings, these are valuable tools.

• Native ticket redaction
  You can natively redact, or remove, sensitive information found in ticket comments and attachments so that your account stays secure and compliant. You don’t need to install a separate app. See Redacting ticket content.
• Ticket translation
  Agents can communicate with end users and other agents, even if they are using different languages, using the native translation feature in the Agent Workspace. See Translating conversations. 
• Context panel
  When you’re working on a ticket, it’s often useful to have contextual information that falls outside the basic ticket content. For example, you might want to know more about the customer who requested the ticket. In addition, you may need to open Zendesk apps that can help you solve the ticket or search for articles in your help center that are relevant to the ticket. See Using the context panel. 
• Knowledge in the context panel
  Directly from the ticket interface, you can quickly search for content in your help center that might help your customers solve issues, view suggestions for content based on ticket content, or add feedback to flag existing articles. See Searching, linking, and quoting content in tickets and Flagging articles in Knowledge.
• Context panel resizing
  You can change the width of the context panel to give you a better view of customer context, sidebar apps, or Knowledge articles. See Resizing the context panel.
• Ticket properties panel resizing
  You can change the width of the ticket properties panel to give you a better view of ticket fields. This feature is particularly useful if you’re working on tickets with a lot of fields. See Resizing the ticket properties panel.
• Channel switching in the composer
  You can easily switch between communications channels, all within the same ticket interface. You don’t have to maintain separate tickets or use separate dashboards for each ticket type. See Switching channels in the composer.
• Composer resizing
  You can resize the ticket composer window as needed to meet your requirements. For example, you can use a smaller window for chats and messages, but you might want to use a larger window for long email messages. See Resizing the composer window. 
• Color text in the composer
  You can use formatting options to change the text color and the text background color in ticket comments. This feature is useful for drawing attention to important items in your comments. See Changing text color.
  
• Fixed composer (doesn’t disappear when scrolling)
  You can also use the scroll bar on the right side of the ticket to scroll up or down through previous responses without losing sight of the reply you're composing. Separated scrolling is useful if you're working on a long ticket with a lot of details. See Scrolling through a conversation.
• Contextual tabs
  Agents may have to manage multiple tickets at the same time. You can use tabs at the top of the interface to help you move easily between many types of conversations (email. chats, phone, and messages). Tabs provide important information and help you see which tickets are the most critical to address. See Using ticket tabs to manage conversations.
• Zendesk messaging
  Messaging lets you have rich conversations with your customers that are persistent, with full context and history. When you enable messaging, you can connect it to your website or help center, mobile apps, and social channels, making it easy for your customers to self- serve or connect with your agents. See About messaging.
• Flow builder
  You can use Flow Builder to create answers for your conversation bots, giving your customers the opportunity to self-serve their support issues before connecting with agents. See About flow builder.
• Easier process to add social messaging channels
  You can send and receive social messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace as part of the main conversation flow. Messages sent from these channels become tickets in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. See About messaging channels.
• Omnichannel routing and unified agent statuses
  The omnichannel routing enables you to direct tickets from email, messaging, web form, and API to team members based on their availability, capacity, and the ticket priority. Using omnichannel routing means that the highest priority tickets are assigned to the agents who are most available to work on them. See About omnichannel routing and Configuring agent statuses
• Custom ticket statuses
  Zendesk supports a set of system ticket statuses which are used to help you manage your ticket workflows. Custom ticket statuses enable you to create additional, more-specific ticket statuses. Custom ticket statuses can help manage your ticket workflows, as well as indicate a more meaningful ticket status to your business and end users. See Activating custom ticket statuses. 
  
• Draft mode
  Agents can compose public replies as drafts first, before updating a ticket. This enables agents to make sure everything is correct before replying to a customer. See Writing drafts of public replies in tickets.
  
• Custom ticket layouts
  Admins can create custom ticket layouts to support different ticket workflows for agents. Custom layouts allow you to specify which components are included in a ticket and control the location of where the components appear. Components include ticket conversations, ticket properties (fields), customer context, third party apps, and more. See About custom layouts. 
  
• Agent copilot (Advanced AI only)
  Agent copilot is a set of AI-powered features focused on making your agents more productive while still allowing them to provide a high level of customer service. These features surface helpful insights, proactively suggest next steps, and can even execute agent-approved actions, increasing agent efficiency as well as customer satisfaction. See About agent copilot.
• Essentials card configuration
  The essentials card appears in the context panel in the Agent Workspace and displays information about the ticket requester. You can configure the card by adding, removing, and reordering standard and custom user fields so that agents can access the most relevant information. See Configuring the essentials card.
• Custom objects
  Admins can define custom objects, build out their schema with custom fields, specify object-level permissions for agents, and add lookup relationship fields to tickets to surface your custom data in tickets. Agents can add and manage custom object records and preview related records within tickets. Then, you can use your custom objects and records in triggers and analytics. See Understanding custom objects.
• App shortcuts
  Agents can create shortcuts for their favorite apps and pin them to the context panel sidebar. App shortcuts enable agents to quickly open apps without searching through the full list of apps in the Apps panel. Each agent can add their own personal set of shortcuts. Admins can create shared app shortcuts for their agents. See Managing app shortcuts and Managing shared app shortcuts. 
  
• Conversation flow configuration   
  To create the optimal conversation flow for your agents, customers on Enterprise plans can use layout builder to configure how conversations and the composer appear in a custom ticket layout See Configuring the conversation flow.
• Auto-accept for messaging and live chats
  When admins turn on auto-accept the Conversations and Accept buttons no longer appear in the Agent Workspace. Incoming conversations are automatically routed to available agents. See Automatically accepting messaging and live chat conversations.
• Agent invitations
  During messaging conversations, agents can collaborate with colleagues to solve a customer’s support request without reassigning the ticket to another agent or admin. Using @mentions to include other agents in a conversation makes the conversation more collaborative and provides a streamlined agent experience. See Collaborating on messaging conversations.
• Agent Home
  Agent Home works in real time, showing agents their assigned tickets and their latest updates. The page includes read and unread indicators to help keep agents on top of the conversation and productivity tools to help them keep their workspaces well-organized and tidy. See Using Agent Home.