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Announcing custom ticket field settings for the Messaging Web Widget and Zendesk SDKs

Will Poon
  • Edited
Zendesk Product Manager
Announced on Rollout starts
August 14, 2023 August 14, 2023

We're excited to announce the introduction of custom ticket field settings for Messaging. This allows you to collect information in custom fields before passing on the conversation to an agent via the Zendesk Web Widget, Zendesk SDKs for Android or iOS, or our new Zendesk SDK for Unity. The information collected will be visible to the agent responding to the conversation in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

We're releasing the ability to configure the Zendesk Web Widget and Zendesk SDKs for Android, iOS and Unity inside Admin Center to collect custom fields from an end user before passing the conversation to an agent. Previously, an admin had to connect a bot and use bot builder to capture information in custom fields.

Text and drop-down custom field types are supported in this first release. We are considering expanding support for other types such as numeric and date in the future. 

Who can use this?

This feature is available to all Messaging customers. You're not required to be on a specific plan. Some set up is required in Admin Center by an admin, but there is no additional work required by your web or mobile developers (assuming you have already implemented our web widget and/or SDKs).

What do I need to do?

You can go to the Messaging section of Admin center and create or open an existing web widget, Android, iOS or Unity channel. 

Open the configuration of the channel and navigate to Responses. In the Customer details section, tap the drop down to select an existing custom field or create a new one. 

 

Note that the custom field must be editable for customers. See Adding custom fields to learn more. 

When your configuration is saved, your end users will be prompted to enter information for these fields before they are passed on to an agent for that channel. 

The values entered by the end user are visible in the Agent Workspace as long as the custom field has been added to the view that your agents see.

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9 Comments

  • Anton

    It's a nice update! 
    Though any plans for:

    1) Multilanguage support for greeting and follow-up messages. Please note a dynamic content in the greeting will silently break the configuration form in the admin center. 
    2) Multilevel dropdowns in fields.  

    1
  • Jen C

    Hi! Am I understanding this correctly, that we can use the web widget for the messaging channel - without a bot attached? So, the customer would open the web widget, fill out the information and then a ticket would be created and the customer would be in the messaging queue? Would this still count as MAUs (monthly active users) for the messaging channel/bot? or not because there is no bot attached to this web widget and so they did not engage with a bot? 

    I just want to understand how this would be different and the benefits to a web widget without the attached bot. Thanks!

    1
  • Tim G

    Hi Team! I know this isn't directly related to this, but has anything changed around limitations to the number of options shown in a drop-down custom field, with the changes above? 

    Reason I'm asking is that I raised an issue here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/5740535696026-Drop-down-limitations-options-truncated-in-flow-builder-messaging because when we use a custom field ("Country") in messaging, it truncates the number of drop-down options to 20 options. 

    However... having just seen the above, I thought I'd test this again in our Sandbox environment - and found that it now displays at least 50 options in the drop down. BUT... I then tried the same change in our production environment, and it still limits the drop down to 20. 

    So is there a change that has been applied to our Sandbox but not to our Production, or is there something else going on to create the difference in behavior between prod/sandbox... or none of the above? 😀

    Thanks!

    0
  • Will Poon
    • Edited
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Anton, 

    Thank you for your feedback. 

    Automatic translations are available in Answer Bot today, for more information, please see this article. If this doesn't answer your question, please let me know and I'll follow up. 

    I've also recorded your feedback regarding multi level dropdown support in the fields and added this to our backlog for future consideration. 

    Hi Jen C, 

    This is correct, basic messaging conversations do not count towards MAUs for Bot usage. 

    Hi Tim G, 

    I'll create a ticket so that we can look into your query a bit further.

    Thank you all for the feedback.

    Will

     

    0
  • Damien Messé

    Hello, does this update concern as well the possibility to capture info by plugging Zendesk Bot on Messenger or Insta for example ?

    0
  • Will Poon
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Damien, this feature is only available for our web widget, Android, iOS and Unity SDKs. 

    It is not available on social messaging channels. 

    Thanks,

    Will

    0
  • Mike Haslinsky

    Pretty cool, however I would love, if like the old bot, the web form was able to be baked into the bot directly. So a person could submit a ticket via the bot. Very useful for those of us who do not want to support direct messaging. 

    2
  • Will Poon
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Thanks for your feedback Mike, I've added this to our insights tracker for future consideration. 

    2
  • Amie SuccessCX

    hey Will Poon,

    I will second Mike's request about being able to link web forms to the messaging bot. I'm a Zendesk Implementation partner and here are the reasons why it would be good to have this ability. 

    1. It will bring 1:1 parity between the classic web widget and the new messaging widget. 
    2. The basis of Zendesk is ticket forms, data needs to live on a ticket form inside a ticket field and not being able to surface a ticket form to customers inside the widget can be challenging, especially for customers who currently utilise this feature inside the classic web widget for certain purposes. 
    3. Right now, if you use custom fields inside the messaging widget, if those custom fields are spread across different forms, then we have to create some triggers that set the right form on the ticket when created - Very tedious, time-consuming and hard to manage in the long run, especially for those with a large account. 
    4. Presently the messaging widget is really only useful if you use 1 ticket form in the account which contains all the fields you're using the capture data inside. Which then doesn't require the extra work noted in #3. 
    5. Many accounts use multiple ticket forms i.e warranty forms, customer or employee onboarding forms etc, inside the classic web widget and as a result, they are hesitant to migrate to the new messaging widget because they can't offer the same type of request submission experience. 
    6. It would be great if you could get to a point in flowbuilder where you can select - surface this ticket form X from this point to capture the data required.... then the agent will be in touch with you from there and normal messaging workflows kick in. 

    Side note: If you do allow ticket forms, please also allow any form conditionality to work inside the messaging widget, as well as all types of fields. It's important customers can use regex and multi-select fields inside the messaging widget as well unlike the classic version which prevents them from being used inside the widget. 

     

    3

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