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What do you think about the new and improved Admin Center?
Pinned
Zendesk Product Manager
Posted Sep 20, 2021
Zendesk admins, we heard you loud and clear! You wanted one place to update settings, a more structured, organized layout, and a quick way to access configuration pages. So we moved all Support settings to Admin Center.
We’re curious about your experience with Support settings in Admin Center:
- What was your first impression?
- What did you try to find using Search?
- What did you think of the Recents feature?
- How well did the settings work?
- Where did you need help?
Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. Your feedback will help us continue to improve the admin experience.
Respectfully,
Parag
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182
182 comments
Parag Pradhan
Hi Chris Bulin,
Thank you for your feedback. We have fixed this issue; Admin Center now opens in a new tab when you click on a link from ticket events. Please confirm if it works for you. Thanks.
1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Todd Meyer
I appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback. We consolidated settings in Admin Center to centralize configuration and administration tasks. We are actively working on addressing workflow issues such as the one you have described. Thank you.
-1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Tobias Hoenig,
Thank you for your feedback. We are working on providing a direct method to access Admin Center from Support.
We have implemented a fix for clicking ticket events such that they open Admin Center in a new tab. This way, the location in Support will remain intact for you to return to. Thanks.
-1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Tobias Hoenig,
Thank you for your feedback. We are working on providing a direct method to access Admin Center from Support.
We have implemented a fix for clicking ticket events such that they open Admin Center in a new tab. This way, the location in Support will remain intact for you to return to. Thanks.
-1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Becky,
Thank you for submitting your feedback. I regret that the change is not to your liking. Can you please share some specifics? What features do you use regularly? What about their relocation in Admin Center makes them difficult to access or use? Have you tried using the Search functionality or the Recently viewed feature in Admin Center? Thanks.
-1
Becky
The new change is awful! It's clearly been debuted without a quality check because it's made things miserable for me.
There's the fact that you can't just go to the macro homepage from the start - which is one of the main things I utilize on a daily basis. It's now like a multi-step process instead of just 1 step in clicking on 'Macros'! The fact that you have to go to the admin center, then choose a recently updated macro and then have to choose to go back to the macros homepage to get to the macro you're looking for to edit or to create a new one all together is beyond annoying!
Additionally, sometimes it takes you completely OUT of my ticket system and then I cannot find your way back!
The search function doesn't take you to the macros homepage so clearly that's not an option to fix that horrendous change and recently viewed doesn't help either as it's typically not the most recently viewed I need to see.
According to other complaints, you should not have forced this change on us before having some people try it out and voice our suggestions to make it better or what not to change.
Fix it!
3
Karl Löfdahl
I hate it. Why force me out of the system I'm working in to change settings? Why leave some settings in one place but force me out to make other changes? Why make changes gradually? I suppose you're catering to Suite clients or something, but for me (I use Support, Guide and Explore) it sucks
4
Parag Pradhan
Hello Trina
I appreciate you taking the time and effort to provide your feedback. We have fixed the issue related to opening Admin Center in a new tab; when you click on a trigger while reviewing ticket events, you should be able to see Admin Center in its own tab.
We’re actively working on improving the team management experience. Thank you.
-1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Dani,
Thank you for sharing your feedback. When you click on a trigger, a macro, or an automation while reviewing ticket events, you will launch the associated item in Admin Center (in its own tab).
Please clarify what features should live in a new tab and don’t and identify things that should have stayed put but open new tabs. Thanks in advance.
-2
Parag Pradhan
Hello Sydney Neubauer,
Thank you for enumerating your feedback. We have addressed points #1 through #3, i.e. you can open another Admin Center tab using right-click within Admin Center. When selecting a trigger under ticket events, it will open Admin Center in a new tab.
Regarding #4, we are working on providing a single-click access to Admin Center.
With respect to #5, we are investigating multiple options in differentiating Admin Center instances.
-1
Parag Pradhan
Hello Billy,
Thank you for sharing your feedback. We have resolved the issue related to Admin Center opening in the current tab. Now, Admin Center will open in a new tab when you click on an admin setting in Support. Please confirm.
-1
Dani
Hello @...
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My comments were around all the extra clicks now required to get to specific settings. Opening in a new tab is great, but when I click the Admin icon, I should be brought to the Admin center - not a landing page for system updates and feature usage - where I then need to click yet again to get to the Admin center, where I have to keep clicking to get to the item I want to work on.
Another example of unnecessary clicks is in managing people. From Admin Center, I click on People, then Team Members, search for my person, click on edit, to be taken to their profile, where I have to click on manage in admin center to edit them???
The overall UI for ZD administration quite frankly feels clumsy. I appreciate wanting to update but it feels like every new "feature" is a step backward and adds a new layer of effort and frustration. It doesn't seem like actual users are involved in prioritizing/designing/implementing changes - they may very well be, but based on feedback here and other forums, if they are, they do not represent you primary user base.
7
Peter Hochstrasser
Seconded, in every aspect.
1
Kate
I have to re-echo what Dani is saying here. I have no idea who this change was implemented for, except for large-scale organizations, and, perhaps cynically, feels as though Zendesk is trying to prep us for a new role (which will cost $$$) with only access to Admin Center, which of course would only be beneficial to the whales. Zendesk really has stopped caring at all about anyone that's not padding their pockets.
Besides the absolutely clunky interface, where the flows themselves make no sense (genuinely, editing/managing users feels often like a wild goose chase, flipping back and forth between their profile and Admin Center, and still with zero means of actually viewing who has what licenses....it's an exercise in masochism, to be quite frank), we're still dealing with significant delay between changes implemented in Admin Center vs. when they become available in Support.
For instance, I recently edited a macro to change the title. The macro changes were saved, however, in the macro list in Admin Center and in Product, the old title of the macro was still visible for about 3-5 minutes after, despite many hard refreshes. If you reopened the macro to edit from Admin Center, the changes were visible from the edit page, but as soon as you went back to the list of macros, or searched for it out of Support, the changes were not reflected.
I suspect a cleared cache would resolve it, but I shouldn't be expected to have to advise my team to clear their cache immediately after every minor change, especially when those changes are needed in order to effectively and efficiently respond to customers, e.g. in times of outages.
The longer I spend with Admin Center, the more I hate it, which is the opposite of what should happen with any new feature.
8
Scott Allison
@kate I'm one of the Product team here at Zendesk and I wanted to respond specifically to the issue you mention about delays creating/updating macros.
I've also taken the opportunity to test it myself, both in the original admin settings within Support and in the new Admin Center, as well as clarify how things should work vs. how they work in practice.
Updating Macros as an Admin:
Both updating and creating new macros in the old Support settings and in the Admin Center, the updates should appear immediately or within a few second in the macros admin page. I couldn't replicate a delay, and I didn't need to refresh my browser window to see the results. If you are seeing a problem here please do open a ticket with us, ideally with a video so we can understand what you're seeing. You can ask the advocate to loop me in so we can investigate further.
Viewing a ticket:
After an admin updates a macro in admin settings with a new name, or adds a new macro, the dropdown list of macros presented to users in the ticket view does *not* get updated with those changes. However, if the agent selects an existing macro that was recently edited, while the name of the macro won't have changed for the agent, whatever that macro does (actions, comments, etc) *will* be up to date and current. For an agent to see a newly created macro in the drop down list they do have to reload Zendesk in their browser. A hard refresh or clearing cache should not be necessary. While we would like to improve this experience so macro additions or macro names update in real time there are some scale and performance issues for us to consider. We don't have immediate plans for this behaviour to change but are thinking about how we could achieve that in the future.
-1
CJ Johnson
I've had the exact same experience Kate has, here's a gif of it live:
https://imgur.com/a/Z3fYTN4
I can confirm I've experienced this same issue on 2 separate Zendesk instances, as well.
1
Dan Ross
I've run into it as well, but it self resolves after 30-60s on my end, I assuming it's just an indexing delay for search, kind like we have for brand new tickets being searchable in the system.
1
Chris Bulin
Same as Dan, we had this before Admin Center as well. What I am finding is that some pages (most noticeable with triggers) it takes significantly longer to load.
0
Scott Allison
Thank you Dan Ross and CJ Johnson for clarifying! Yes, you are right, there is up to a two minute delay in the search index being refreshed. However, in the list view itself (cut off in your gif CJ) it should show up immediately. If you sort the column by "last updated" the newly updated macro should appear at the top immediately.
0
Sudeshna Basu
Chris Bulin Thanks for chiming in.
I wanted to specifically address this comment -
What I am finding is that some pages (most noticeable with triggers) it takes significantly longer to load.
This issue is due to a technical limitation - the team is aware of this & the fix is currently being worked on.
1
Chris Bulin
Glad to hear it Sudeshna Basu
Thank you!
0
Kate
Scott Allison What CJ displayed is what we typically experience. It's good to know I can flip the sort, but that is an unintuitive process.
I will try to capture the delay we see between creation in Admin Center vs. appearance in Support when I am back in the office tomorrow.
However, I am incredibly dissatisfied with the lack of acknowledgement that for many of us, we simply do not want our settings to be segmented out of the Support tool we spend the majority of our time operating in. It is incredibly frustrating to attempt to manage and reference the often-relevant necessary details within the Support instance.
Similarly, what is the plan for handling user management? It's an abysmal experience.
4
Trina
It would be super helpful that once the Admin Center was opened, it stayed open vs navigating back to Support. For example, if I click to open a view in Support that the support view not open in the tab that the Admin Center was opened in. Now instead of having a tab open to the Admin Center, I have two (or more depending on how many times I've had to open the view) Support tabs open. If I have to make an additional change to the view, I have to open the Admin Center again vs. being able to just click on the open Admin Center tab to make the changes. As you've already heard from several users, it's a pain on how many clicks it takes to open the Admin Center and if you keep navigating away from the Admin Center it makes it all so much worse!
At this point, I avoid doing anything in the Admin Center when I can. For example, if I need to add a new agent or edit an agent, I do it from Support by clicking on the "+ User" or searching for an existing agent, bypassing the need to ever go into the Admin Center for simple things.
It seems like you had in mind a grand redesign, but are piecemealing the full solution out which is causing a lot of frustration for your Admin community.
4
Lou
That is annoying. Very similar behavior with macros. If I'm looking at events in a ticket and click on the macro, it opens Admin Center in the support instance. NOW, if I want to get to a support instance, I have to open another tab.
1
Grant Schuemann
In this new era of having many Zendesk tabs open, I've started to run into an issue where I'm losing work due to the current workflow. Example:
- I have an active Admin Center tab open where I'm crafting a new automation. I also have an active Support tab open.
- I navigate to the Support tab to review a ticket. I then click the '4 squares' Zendesk Products icon in the top right corner and then 'Admin Center'
- Instead of opening a new tab w/ a fresh instance of Admin Center, it will instead take my active Admin Center tab and re-direct it to the Home page in Admin Center, losing all work I had in progress on that automation.
Add this to the many other examples in this thread of the troubles this new release is causing all of us. #BringSettingsBackToSupport
5
Mike Bombich
Reiterating what Dani and Kelsa commented on – the "gear" icon in the sidebar currently presents "System Updates" and "Feature Usages". I suppose that's helpful information for somebody, but it's not what I expect to see when I click on a "gear" icon – gear icons are typically used to present interface where you can change settings. I understand the impetus to aggregate a bunch of stuff in the Admin Center, but getting there is really awkward right now. Please have the gear icon load the admin center directly, or perhaps more simply, just add a new icon to the sidebar that will load the admin center. Thanks!
3
Parag Pradhan
Hello Kate,
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. I regret the change has impacted the workflow for you and your team. The vision for Admin Center is to provide centralized administration for all Zendesk products.
Can you please elaborate on managing settings and investigating issues on tickets? Which settings do you spend most of your time administering? What workflows are affected? Thank you.
0
Parag Pradhan
Hello Peter Hochstrasser,
I appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback. We are looking at ways to reduce the jumping back and forth between Support and Admin Center. Can you cite some examples of the back and forth? Also, changes to what page(s) cause the 10 to 20 wait times? Thank you.
0
Parag Pradhan
Hello Kelsa Henry,
Thank you for your feedback; we are working on improving the team member (agent) administration and providing direct access to Admin Center.
Can you please elaborate on the triggers workflow where you are unable to edit a trigger from ticket events. Clicking on a trigger associated with a ticket should open the trigger edit form in Admin Center. Are you referring to Admin Center when you say “dashboard”? What happens when you try to edit the trigger?
0
Rusty Gregory
Jaïs Pingouroux
Thank you for your feedback about your challenging experience. We have connected with another PM who should be reaching out to you about the permission challenge.
I would like to clarify a few things you mentioned about Views to better understand where you are when you are having challenges.
When you are editing a view, are you in the Admin Center or Support? After editing a view and saving it, you said you want to check it and click on open, can you confirm where you are when doing this? Can you walk me through that? There have been some changes made so that some links will open in new browser tabs that may or may not have solved your issues with editing a view. If you can elaborate a little more it will help me to identify where the pain points are.
0