Announcing general availability of the Agent Availability APIs

Announced on	Rollout on
April 25, 2023	April 25, 2023

Zendesk is excited to announce general availability of the Agent Availability API.

What is changing?

Previously, agent statuses could only be managed via the UI and limited reporting was available. Talk APIs provided some of this functionality for calls, but didn't work with omnichannel routing or unified agent statuses. Now, the Agent Availability API enables Zendesk customers to view real-time agent availability information across Zendesk channels and update agents' unified agent statuses. When using the APIs, it's important to understand that an agent's availability is comprised of four parts:

• Agent's status per channel (online, away, transfer only, offline)
• Work items assigned to the agent
• (Omnichannel routing only) Standard and custom unified agent statuses. This is the name of the unified agent status that the agents set
• (Omnichannel routing only) Agent's maximum capacity for each channel

Why is Zendesk making this change?

We've heard from many customers that they need more visibility into real-time agent status and activity as well as the ability to adjust an agent's status when necessary. Until now, there wasn't an easy way to access this information across channels. The Agent Availability API enable better integrations and open up a variety of new use cases, such as the development of custom monitoring, reporting, and routing flows based on real-time agent availability.

What do I need to do?

You don't need to do anything. The Agent Availability APIs can be used by Support admins on any plan. To update unified agent statuses, make sure you turn on omnichannel routing.

For more information, see the Agent Availability API documentation.