| Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
| September 21, 2023 | October 21, 2023 | June 30, 2024 |
For accounts created prior to October 2021, service data for live chat functionality has been hosted exclusively in the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be changing through this rollout, where all live chat service data will be co-located with your ticket data in Support. Accounts will be moved using a phased approach that is expected to continue through the end of Q2 2024.
This announcement includes the following topics:
What is changing?
As part of an ongoing initiative to improve the reliability of live chat and messaging channels for customers, all of your live chat service data is being moved to reside in the same Amazon Web Services (AWS) region as your Support ticketing data (Pod). See What is a Pod? to learn what Pod you are on.
When this move occurs for your account, live chat and messaging channels will be unavailable for 30 minutes or less. It’s important to know that this move will only happen during the lowest traffic period for your account to minimize interruption to your operations.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Service data for Chat has historically been hosted primarily in the EEA region. See Location of Service Data in Zendesk Chat for details. With this change, all service data for Chat will be located in the same AWS region as your ticketing data, except for the following exclusions, which will continue to be hosted solely in the EEA region:
- Chat avatars, attachments in non-Agent Workspace accounts
- Authenticated visitors data
This will provide greater reliability through improved isolation during service incidents as well as unlock new data compliance possibilities for your account. For more information about Zendesk’s data hosting locations and a better understanding of where your service data is currently located, see Data Hosting Locations for Your Zendesk Service Data.
Frequently asked questions
How will I know when this move will happen to my account?
Customers with significant Chat or messaging conversations in the last 30 days will be notified through a banner (served to the Owner and Admins) in the Support Agent Workspace or Chat/messaging-only agent dashboard interface at least one month before the data move activity is performed.
The data move will only be scheduled for when your account experiences its regular lowest traffic period and will last for 30 minutes or less. As such, you should experience minimal interruption to your business operations.
What should I expect during the data move?
To minimize business impact, care is being taken to only perform this activity during periods when your account experiences the lowest Chat and messaging traffic volume.
During this data move, all messaging channels and the live chat channel will be unavailable for your account. Any ongoing chats will be disconnected at the start of this period, and all agents will be required to refresh their browsers at the end of the activity to get prompted to sign in and reconnect.
Where will my data be moved to?
Your live chat service data will be moved to the same Zendesk Pod as your Support ticket data. More details about Zendesk’s data hosting locations as well as where your service data is currently located can be found in Data Hosting Locations for Your Zendesk Service Data.
Will this change any of my account’s features?
No product experience changes are expected as a result of this activity.
What do I need to do before the data move?
No action is required in preparation, but we encourage you to inform your agents of the activity.
What do I need to do during the data move?
No action is required from you.
What do I need to do after the data move?
After the data move is completed, your agents will need to sign in to their Chat account again.
How will I know this data move happened?
After a successful move, you will no longer see the advisory banner and your agents will need to sign in to their Chat account again in order to resume their work.
If something doesn't go as expected or the data move is not successful, your banner will be updated with a new date.