The Zendesk Agent Workspace enables agents to manage Support, Chat, Talk, and messaging conversations within the same interface. Administrators can activate or deactivate this workspace for their Zendesk account.
This article contains the following sections:
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Preparing to activate or deactivate
Before you can activate the Agent Workspace for the first time on an existing account, you'll need to migrate your Chat departments into groups. For details, see Migrating to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Here are some rules for who can activate and deactivate the Agent Workspace:
- New accounts created after July 28, 2020 have the workspace activated by default and you don't need to migrate.
- Accounts created after July 12, 2023 have the Agent Workspace automatically activated and you cannot deactivate it.
- Some accounts were automatically upgraded to the Agent Workspace and you cannot deactivate it.
- For some larger, high-volume accounts, you may need to work with someone from Zendesk to activate the workspace and migrate your account. We provide a checklist to help you determine if your account is a good fit for migration.
The Agent Workspace is an account-wide setting that impacts all the agents on your account. You cannot selectively activate or deactivate it for certain agents. When you activate or deactivate the Agent Workspace, agents must refresh their browsers to see the change. Make sure your agents wrap up any chats, calls, or unsaved tickets when you activate or deactivate the workspace. Otherwise, unsaved ticket replies, ongoing chats, and call recordings may be lost. When the workspace is activated, Chat tickets cannot be updated using the Support mobile app.
If you prefer, you can test out the migration on a Sandbox account first. This gives you time to try out the Agent Workspace and train your agents before using the workspace in a production environment.
Activating the Agent Workspace
To turn on the Agent Workspace
-
In Admin Center, click
Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Agent Workspace.
You’ll see a description of some of the main Agent Workspace features with links to more information.
- Select Turn on the Agent Workspace.
-
Save your changes.
When the workspace is successfully activated, a warning message appears for agents currently working in the account.
- Make sure your agents wrap up any messages, calls, or unsaved tickets, then click Switch workspace.
To prevent application conflicts and potential tracking issues, Zendesk does not recommend using the Support Chat app with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When the Agent Workspace is activated, the Support Chat app is automatically deactivated on your account. If you subsequently deactivate the Agent Workspace and you want to use the Chat app, you have to manually re-activate it.
To get the full agent experience, after you activate the workspace, you can set up social messaging channels and web messaging channels for the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Deactivating the Agent Workspace
For some accounts, you can deactivate the Agent Workspace if desired and revert to a standard agent interface without unified conversations. If your account has messaging channels, you'll need to delete the social messaging channels and deactivate the web messaging channels. Also, make sure your agents close out all existing messaging tickets when you deactivate the workspace.
To turn off the Agent Workspace
- In Admin Center, click Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Agent Workspace.
- Deselect Turn on the Agent Workspace.
- When a confirmation message appears, select Turn off Agent Workspace.
-
Save your changes.
After the workspace is successfully deactivated, a warning message appears for agents currently working in the account.
- Make sure your agents wrap up any messages, calls, or unsaved tickets, then click Switch workspace.
Deactivating the Agent Workspace automatically deactivates features that depend on the Agent Workspace, including focus mode, omnichannel routing, and unified agent statuses.
20 Comments
Thanks Lisa.
Is there any way at least to automatically have the reply box minimized or moved to the top of the screen where it previously was?
It takes up a significant amount of screen real estate.
I really wish I could turn that Agent Workspace off. There are just so many elements that take away useful space on my small screen, it makes it uncomfortable to work with Zendesk.
I too would like to turn off Agent Workspace, as it simply doesn't work for the way in which we deal with items. The previous display worked well for us, and allowed us to see and respond to the latest comment, which is our process.
I appreciate it works for some channels, but not for ours, and so please restore the ability to turn it off.
The hard loss of real estate on screen is one thing, but I just realized you can no longer swap public/private replies without the text going away. Also, the tab now shows the requester instead of the subject so it is harder to track open tickets. This could all be addressed by simply allowing the option to be specified instead of forcing the rather radical UI changes upon us. I'm otherwise just fine with Zendesk (except for the awful mobile experience which has always been the case and simply learned to accept) but the experience is eroding instead of becoming more pleasant.
Why are you forcing this on people? You do not seem to understand production for you to have changed the UI so much. Has your UI people actually ever done any ticket work? Why shift the standard appearance in such a way and not have an option to make a Classic appearance at the very least. You need to hire real UI programmers who have experience and not spewing out trash you'd see in a college project.
Our organization would like to turn off Agent Workspace as well. The previous interface worked well for us and prefer it over Agent Workspace. Any way to revert back?
We have been migrated to the Agent Workspace automatically without our consent, we want to disable this but there is no option in the Admin Settings area to disable it.
How can we disable this?
Our website chat functions completely stopped working after we were automatically moved to agent workspace. It is difficult to navigate and the revert back option does not appear as discussed on the article.
We're flagged to be migrated later this month and have a lot of activities going on that make this poor timing. Can it be delayed upon request? I emailed support that they have just told it is happening.
Hi Matt,
Ive tried Agent workspace and have to agree it makes the work flow very diffacult and have reverted back to the old cleaner interface.
Also the respose section being at the bottom is not helpful, thanks for the link above ill be adding my comments there as well.
I wont be recomending this update to my team.
Illas
I activated Agent Workspace to look at it, and then tried to deactivate it -- it tells me it did.... but the interface is still the new interface and the check box is still checked. How do I disable it?
We also got upgraded to this automatically and were not given any way to "opt out" of it or any kind of way to test it out and then roll back if it did not meet our needs. It appears the upgrade was automated, but rollback is a chore. The new agent workspace is not helpful. We didn't want it. Didn't ask for it. Given no way to say "no thanks". The only option given was to "migrate now" or be automatically migrated later.
Now, in order to restore the functionality we previously had we have to go through the hoops of deleting all the social media integrations, clear every single support ticket (which is difficult since they arrive on a continuous basis), then make the switch, then turn on and reconfigure all the social media integrations.
Extremely dissatisfied with this. I receive multiple emails per week from Zendesk competitors offering assistance in switching us over to their platforms. Since it appears I need to spend significant time trying sort out this mess I may take them up on it unless someone from Zendesk reaches out and reverts all these setting changes for us. I don't have time to figure out how to roll back the mess you created.
There's a thread going on this in our product feedback forums – can you go upvote and add your use case information as a comment here? Zendesk's New Interface (Agent Workspace): Internal Note vs Public Reply
I'm going to bring this conversation into a so we can take a look at your account and see what's possible here.
You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Cheers!
John,
For better visibility with the product team, Zendesk recommends that you post your comments on our Community site. See Feedback - Ticketing System (Support)
Could you please try it again and confirm if you're doing the same steps as below?
Hi Ranjani,
Was your account part of the automatic upgrade program for Zendesk Agent Workspace? If so, you need to contact Zendesk Customer Support to request a rollback.
Hi Sam,
Moving the reply box to the top of the ticket interface is a common request from Agent Workspace customers. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well for messaging-based conversations like chats and social messages. You can vote for your favorite product features on our Community site and add to the discussion.
Hello WECO Sales Team,
From the article: "Some accounts were automatically upgraded to the Agent Workspace and you cannot deactivate it."
It looks like that might be be the case for your account.
You can contact Zendesk Customer Support to help you with your issues, including getting chat to work or deactivating the Agent Workspace.
Hi Sam, Accounts that have been automatically upgraded to the Zendesk Agent Workspace cannot be deactivated from the user interface. If you have concerns about this, Contact Zendesk Customer Support. For more information about the upgrade program, see About automatically upgrading.
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