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 might not work after the 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 are extending 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 greater scalability 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: We're making our foundational components faster with backend improvements.
    • 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: In addition to the backend changes, we're moving some 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.

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  • 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.

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List of features that are only supported on the new messaging backend 

In addition to strengthening reliability and enhancing performance, the new messaging backend gives you exclusive access to several features to enhance your experience now and in the future, including:

  • End session: A convenient option for agents to easily conclude messaging conversations.
  • Inactivity timer: A way to boost agent productivity by automatically freeing up capacity when conversations become inactive.
  • Enhanced CSAT (EAP): A customizable CSAT experience that gives you greater control over your end users’ experience.
  • Rich message support: Allows agents to view carousel and quick reply options in tickets, enhancing visibility into customer interactions.
  • User suspension: A feature that allows agents to suspend disruptive end users in the messaging channel, preventing them from engaging in conversations. This improves agent well-being and productivity by managing abusive behavior. Agents can view and manage suspended users in the Agent Workspace.
  • Estimated wait time: A feature that allows businesses to inform customers of expected wait times in messaging, improving the experience by managing expectations.
  • Agent copilot: An AI-powered tool that enhances agent productivity and customer service. Key features include auto assist for ticket suggestions, suggested first replies, ticket summaries for quick context, and intelligent triage predictions, all designed to streamline workflows and improve response times.

Key product experience changes after messaging backend upgrade

  • 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 can 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 want to opt out of messaging, fill out this form.

  • Agent alias changes:  Once the new messaging backend is enabled, the agent alias will be referred from the support profile, and the chat display name will no longer be used. This will streamline the agent profile details, which previously referenced information from Chat and Support profiles. Agents can overcome this by updating the support profile and shortcuts, and creating macros to use the profile name. 
  • Agent alias character limit: Currently, we support 256 characters as the limit for the agent alias. However, with the new messaging backend, we can only support 128 characters on Agent Alias, and long agent alias will be truncated. 
  • CCAPIs: Messaging conversations are not supported for the CCAPIs in the new messaging backend. All customers using CCAPIs for messaging conversations should consider using the  Sunshine conversation APIs to recreate the experience. We've currently excluded these customers from the rollout and will work directly with them on the transition plan.   
  • Messaging conversation continuity: For customers who decide to opt out of messaging 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 might not work after the upgrade

Note: The limitations below only apply if the customer uses the capabilities listed below for the messaging conversation. If the customer is not using messaging or both live chat and messaging, the product limitations listed below will not impact live chat conversations. 

We have identified the API integration used to serve messaging conversations as an area that might not work correctly once the new backend is rolled out on your account. These are the specific APIs that will not work for messaging conversations:

  • Zendesk Live Chat Rest APIs - while APIs will be accessible, some response data will change. 
  • Ticket Audits - if you are fetching chat information like Chat_id, visitor_id, or the history included in the ChatStartedEvent. The format and content of this information will differ after the 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 the APIs mentioned above, please notify us and ensure you test your support instance on the sandbox account first. 

Customer exclusion from the rollout

With the messaging backend, we are moving a large set of our customers, and we continue to prioritize customers so as not to disrupt their support operations. From current migration plans, we have excluded customers who 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.

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