Add-on | Workforce Management (WFM) or Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) |
Zendesk WFM admins can track how agents spend time outside of Zendesk by using the Zendesk time tracker Google Chrome extension. Configure extension tracking by mapping general tasks to URLs that agents visit. By mapping general tasks to URLs, you can understand how agents are working and choose how activity is recorded when agents visit one of the mapped URLs.
Agents can install the Zendesk time tracker extension from the Google Chrome web store. After agents install the extension and you've set up extension tracking, agents can see which activity is being tracked on a URL they visit. This allows agents to have a better understanding of how their time is tracked.
Configuring extension tracking
To configure extension tracking, you must have first defined general tasks.
You must be a Zendesk WFM admin to configure extension tracking.
To configure extension tracking
- In the Zendesk WFM web app, press cmd+k and begin typing extension tracking.
- Click Extension Tracking.
- Choose how you want to track time for any URLs that aren't mapped to a general task.
- Click a general task and enter a URL. You can enter more than one URL per general task.
For example, you may want to add https://www.youtube.com/ to your break general task. Every time an agent visits youtube, their time will be tracked as a break. - Continue to map URLs to your other general tasks, then click Save.
34 comments
Stephen Whyte
I have this EAP installed and applied to myself (manager) and the T1 & T2 techs. The tracking is only working for me and no one else. All settings are the same with the exception that the techs DO NOT have Admin privileges.
Could there be a Chrome setting that is impacting the tracking extension?
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Tiago Magalhaes
Thanks for reaching out about the Chrome extension EAP. I do apologize for the delayed reply here.
The Chrome extension tracker does not have any additional setting that blocks or changes usage based on Role or other settings - the checks we run are:
Since tracking is working for you, and we don't validate around a user's Role, I second my colleague Joyce's suggestion (on ticket 12397333) to ask your agents to clear the cache and cookies from their browser. Typically only cookies related to Zendesk need to be cleared, but if that doesn't work I recommend clearing all cookies with the timeframe "All time".
Some context around this: we use the cookies for the user that is requesting the extension login to link them to their correct Zendesk instance. Our extension may not be able to complete this authorisation in cases where those cookies are either stale, somehow corrupted/invalid, or if there are multiple versions of the Zendesk session cookies on the browser. This in turn prevents us from closing the loop on the account -> user -> session -> account flow.
Let me know if there's any change after clearing the cookies for those users.
Apologies once more for the delay, and looking forward to hearing back from you.
Best regards,
Tiago
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Stephen Whyte
Tiago,
Unfortunately, clearing cache and cookies did not work. We are also experiencing an odd bug where the extension will disconnect and open a browser tab to log into Zendesk.
I update my ticket with Joyce as well.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Thanks for getting back to me. That redirect to the Zendesk login page is triggered when the extension tries to read the session cookies and finds more than one.
Clearing the cache is not so important, but clearing cookies is crucial to properly troubleshoot this. Are the affected agents making sure to have these two settings like this while deleting the cache?
Since this is not something that is happening to all users, I would like to dig a bit more under the assumption that this is related to local storage or session data.
Thanks again.
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Stephen Whyte
That makes sense...I updated my team to be more aware of opening Zendesk in multiple browser windows.
The extension looks to be working now...I'm checking with agents as the come in to verify that we're able to track their additional support activity accurately.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Thanks for confirming that for me - glad to hear we're making progress on that front.
Once the cookies are cleared (and the "bad" ones are removed) running the Zendesk instance in multiple browser windows shouldn't really affect it - having said that, multiple login sessions with different user credentials or even different Zendesk domains will, however, create the conditions for the authorisation to fail.
We have plans to improve that part of the experience as well so we can make it as seamless as possible, but we're not there just yet.
I'll keep your ticket open for the next few days and check back in just to see if I can help in any other way. Feel free to reply to me here if something else comes up.
Thanks again for your time!
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Zach Gilbert
Is there the ability to do a wild card URL? For example, I want to assign time to agents using our order-processing. If I use our order processor URL, any time they go into an order the URL no longer matches the address in the extension track and they get untracked.
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Tiago Magalhaes
We allow wildcarding between URL segments - so something like
https://www.order-processing.com/*/orders
is a valid wildcard statement. Same withhttps://www.order-*.com
.The way we implemented URL matching, however, also automatically wildcards the end of the URL. So if I set up
https://www.order-processing.com/
to be linked with the General task "Order processing", whenever I go to any URL that starts withhttps://www.order-processing.com/
I will be tracked on that General task - likehttps://www.order-processing.com/company/orders
.Does this help with your case? If it does not, perhaps you could provide some examples and we can see what we can figure out.
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Zach Gilbert
Tiago Magalhaes are you able to open a ticket? I just don't want to share sensitive info here. But this does not seem to be working for a specific URL and works for others.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Will do. Sent you an email just now. Let's dig in!
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Stephen Whyte
Where do I add comments regarding this EAP?
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Stephen Whyte
We are experiencing issues with the extension. Just recently, as of Friday 4/12, agents are either unable to login, th extension repeatedly ends their login session or in my case, I appear to be logged in but there is no tracking activity being captured. Please see screenshots. Has there been an update or settings change I'm not aware of? Please respond as soon as possible. Tracking agent time outside of Zendesk is key to the use of the Tymeshift application.
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Luis Arrieta
Tiago Magalhaes I see we can use wildcard in the URL tracking. We encounter an issue, our URLs format is https://subdomain.domain.com, we don't use the www and what varies is the subdomain. When we enter https://*.domain.com it gives us an error “Enter correct syntax and wildcard values”. What's the correct syntax in this case so we can use the wildcard?
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Tiago Magalhaes
hey Luis Arrieta ! Thanks for your question here.
Currently wildcarding is only supported in the URL segments that are not part of the domain/subdomain. A couple of examples:
- allowed: sub.domain.net/*/customer
- not allowed: *.domain.net/orders/customer
We are currently looking into expanding this wildcarding logic to also include domain spaces, but for now the logic for this process is the one I just described.
If you need any additional assistance here, or more specific details let me know - I'll open a ticket for us to chat.
Appreciate your time here.
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Jessica
Google Chrome’s "Zendesk Time Track" Extension stops working on a daily basis for multiple agents.
This extension simply stops working, everyday, for multiple agents, forcing us to re-install the extension every time it stops working, even requiring some agents to do it multiple times until it starts working again. This issue has caused a drastic impact in our metrics and divergent data from one agent to another.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Hey Jessica
Sorry to hear that - Allow me to open a ticket to follow up with you and see if we can figure out what's going on. Thank you for reporting this in!
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Zach Gilbert
Tiago Magalhaes Jessica we have seen this a few times. I've had the agent clear cache and it seems to work.
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Lauren Benkov
Hi there,
I just set this up and most tracking seems to be working fine but one issue I'm having is trying to log time spent in our agent knowledge base. We use a separate brand for this in zendesk so our url is wonderkb.zendesk.com. I mapped this but the extension is saying its not logged to any general task.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Hi Lauren
Currently the extension excludes tracking from all pages in a Zendesk domain, which is why you don't see any tracking activity coming from the KB pages.
We had to exclude Zendesk domains from this tracking logic in order to prevent issues with switching between activities coming from the extension and the ones coming from the Zendesk support tracker.
The message that the extension is showing in those cases does need to be improved, as it does not convey the correct information in this particular case.
Thanks for bringing this up!
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Lauren Benkov
Hi Tiago Magalhaes - thank you! That makes sense. Are there any good workarounds for this? We have the same issue with being in Zendesk WFM as well and these would be helpful for us to track especially for more senior agents or team leads helping with WFM or knowledge articles.
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Lauren Benkov
We have been testing this for about a week now and when it is on it works great, but it seems like almost every day you need to click “start tracking”. Is this expected? I'm wary to roll this out to agents and ask them to do one more task every day at the start of their shift. Wish this would just stay on without constantly needing to click start tracking otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose. There would be no way to really police if agents are turning this on every day.
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Morten Frisch
I second Lauren on this one. Albeit you can chose to be logged in after a browser/session restart, you still have to open the extension and click “start tracking” for it to work. Is it possible to get it to start automatically when you log in to one of the external URL`s or to Zendesk?
2
Miguel Contreras
I agree with the last 2 comments. Adding another task for an agent is not going to work in the long run. The tool should work automatically since agent will forget and we will not really get a exact insight into behavior/workload.
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Judith Ilagan
I agree with the last 3 comments. Asking the agents to do another step plus the fact that the button says “start tracking” it's not very appealing to the agents.
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Jennifer Bebb
I opened a ticket for this and was redirected here. We have the URL tracking set up, and it appears to be working well, which is great. However, my team raised concerns about security. We seek to understand better how the key-logging aspect of the extension works and ensure that it only tracks the URLs we assign.
We also need to understand if this captures exactly what the team does (types) or only tracks the time spent on that URL.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Hi Jennifer
Sounds like we have some stuff to unpack here, so I'll go ahead and create a ticket so we can get down to it.
Thanks for reaching out!
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Jennifer Bebb
I also agree with the last few comments. The “start tracking” message is not appealing and could be perceived in a negative light. Having our folks need to do this every day is not ideal. One of the reasons we chose WFM with Zendesk was that it requires minimal effort from our teams beyond the initial setup.
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John Solorzano
Adding to Jen's comment, we opened another ticket for an issue with the “general task” feature where it is not staying “locked in” and automatically resets itself to default, not allowing the user to be able to set a specific task for tracking. Was told to post the comment here due to the EAP. This along with issues between the ZD WFM calendar icon and the WFM browser extension inconsistencies with the whole start/end day and start/stop tracking.
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Tiago Magalhaes
Hi John Solorzano - that behavior you are describing seems to indicate something more than just the extension might be at play here. I'll be happy to troubleshoot this with you. I'll open a ticket so we can chase this down. Thanks!
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Zach Gilbert
To Everyone on this. I have found a connection between agents being kicked out of a task, like break, to them having their work email open in the same browser, even if it's on another screen. We had all agents move to use a desktop application for email and this fixed the randomness of being kicked out to untracked or another task.
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