Announcing improved messaging backend for messaging customers (updated)

Project Phases	Customer Segment	Rollout Start	Rollout End
Phase 1	New messaging customers	Aug 23 2023	Sept 30, 2023
Phase 2	Existing messaging customers using only messaging	Dec 4, 2023	May 31, 2024
Phase 3	Messaging customers that migrated from Zendesk Chat	May 08, 2024	Oct 02, 2024
Phase 4	Messaging customers with higher ticket volume	Oct 01, 2024	Oct 31, 2024

This announcement includes the following sections:

• What is changing and why?
• Key customer capabilities
• List of Features that may not work post upgrade
• Overview of key changes
• Questions and feedback

What is changing and why?

Zendesk is focused on improving the agent workspace and enhancing the experience for both customers and agents. We're introducing messaging backend changes to strengthen the messaging product's core elements and enable a seamless omnichannel environment.

Customer Segments

Changes were made available to new messaging customers in 2023. In 2024, we will extend them to existing messaging customers, with plans to move all messaging customers to the new messaging backend by Q4 2024.

This effort has three main goals:

1. Scalability: Unlocking higher magnitudes of system scale over Zendesk’s current system limits.
2. Performance: Achieving dramatic improvements in system performance.
3. Modern standards: Implementing best-in-class software practices to simplify development and deliver the best quality products to our customers.

Key customer capabilities

• Scaling: Supporting more agents and conversations.
  • Concurrent agents: We now support up to 10,000 concurrent agents serving messaging conversations, a 5x increase over current limits.
  • Concurrent conversations: We now support up to 12,000 concurrent messaging conversations, an almost 3x increase over current limits.
• Performance: With backend improvements, we're making our foundational components faster.
  • Time spent in ticket creation and making tickets available to routing systems: We expect a 60% reduction in the time between creating a ticket and making it available to the routing system.
  • Message brokering: We expect to see a reduction of up to 40% in the time taken by the system to deliver messages between agents and end users.
• Unified admin experience: Along with the backend changes, we're also moving some of the key messaging settings to the Zendesk Admin Center.
  • Messaging triggers: Messaging triggers are now configured in Admin Center under Objects and rules > Business Rules > Messaging triggers. For more information, see About messaging triggers in Admin center.

  

• Ticket transcript visibility settings: Transcript visibility settings are now configured in Admin Center under Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings. For more information, see Managing messaging transcript visibility.

  

Overview of key changes

• Opting out of messaging: With the messaging backend changes, the opt-out flow will vary based on customer criteria:
  • Zendesk Chat users who later moved to messaging will be able to opt-out.
  • Customers for whom messaging was enabled by default will no longer be able to opt out of the messaging product on a self-serve basis. If you would like to opt out of messaging, fill out this form.

  

• Agent Alias changes:  for customers once the new messaging backend is enabled, agent alias will be referred from the support profile and chat display name will no longer be used. This is done to streamline the Agent profile details, earlier we were referencing information from chat product and support profiles. Agents can overcome this by updating the support profile and also updating the shortcuts and creating macros to use the profile name. 
• Agent Alias character limit: currently we support 256 characters as the limit for agent alias, but with new messaging backend we can only support 128 characters on Agent Alias and long agent alias will be truncated. 
• CCAPIs: messaging conversation is not supported for the CCAPIs in the new messaging backend and all the customers using CCAPIs for messaging conversation should consider using sunshine conversation APIs to recreate the experience.
  Note: We have currently excluded this base from the rollout, and will work directly with the customers on the transition plans.   
• Messaging conversations continuity: For customers who decide to opt out of the messaging product and are interested in using Zendesk Chat:
  • All messaging tickets (including social messaging) created when a customer was on messaging will lose ticket continuity. 
  • Any further engagement on the same conversation will lead to a new ticket powered by the Chat backend.

  Customers are advised to close all messaging tickets before opting out of messaging.

List of features that may not work post upgrade

Important Note : Limitation below are only applicable if the customer is using capabilities listed below for the messaging conversation. If customer is not using messaging or using both Live chat  and messaging product limitation listed below will not have any impact on live chat conversations. 

We have identified APIs integration used to serve messaging conversation as an area that may not work properly once new backend is rolled out on your account. List of specific APIs that will not work for messaging conversations are as follows.

• Zendesk Live Chat Rest APIs - while APIs will be accessible some of response data will change. 
• Ticket Audits - if you are fetching chat information like Chat_id , visitor_id or the history included in the ChatStartedEvent . Format and content of this information will differ after messaging backend upgrade.
• Any other usage of data pulled through APIs in your integration may also be affected

 If you find that you are using APIs mentioned above, please notify us and make sure that you test you support instance on sandbox account first. 

Customer exclusion from the rollout

With Messaging backend we are moving a large set of our customers, and we continue to prioritise the segments of customers that will not have any disruptions to their support operations. From currently migration plans we have already excluded customers that are using 

• CC APIs for serving messaging conversations.

• Using custom implementation of the multi conversation.

Questions and feedback

If you have questions or need assistance, contact Zendesk Customer Support. If you have product feedback or feature requests related to this announcement, visit our community forum, where we collect and manage customer product feedback.