| Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
| Jan 15, 2024 | Jan 15, 2024 | Jan 17, 2024 |
We are excited to announce the release of restricted help center content support for Zendesk bots article recommendations and generative replies features. We expect this enhancement to enable conversation bots to be able to resolve inquiries for more use-cases through self-service.
What's changing?
This change relates to two features available with Zendesk bots on messaging channels; recommend help center articles and generative replies (currently in EAP).
Previously, only publicly available articles could be used for these features with Zendesk conversation bots. Now, the bot can recommend help center articles or reply using generative AI using content from articles that require authentication, according to the permissions you’ve set up in Guide admin for the corresponding brand help center. This includes when the global require sign-in setting is enabled in Guide settings, or when view permissions are set at an article level, based on Guide user segments.
There are no changes to the bots admin user interface or end-user experience as part of this release. However, when a user sends a message to the bot, and the user is authenticated and identified via appropriate user id mapping, behind the scenes, Zendesk bots will now respect the article access permissions set in Guide and can include restricted articles when searching for relevant articles.
Restricted content support will only apply to messaging channels that support Zendesk authentication (messaging web widget and mobile SDKs). Therefore, restricted articles can not be referenced on social messaging channels.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Zendesk is committed to expanding the breadth of use-cases that can be automatically resolved by Zendesk bots. We’ve received a lot of customer feedback asking for bots to be able to derive article recommendations and generative replies from restricted help centers and articles, including for employee experience use-cases, and based on Guide user segments.
What do I need to do?
There are no specific actions that need to be taken as a result of this release. If you already have restricted articles, or a restricted help center, authentication implemented, and the appropriate user mapping in place, you should notice that restricted articles can now be returned with article recommendations or referenced for generative replies.