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Side Conversation Creation and Formatting Improvements
Posted Jun 01, 2021
Thank you ZenDesk team for creating Side Conversations as a work around for "forwarding" emails. It was a great start but does really need some enhancements.
The Issues:
Issue 1: I appreciate that we can create Side Conversation Child Tickets or Emails as part of a macro but right now, there is no way to format these message within these macros.
Issue 2: Nor do the Side Conversation emails inherit the HTML email template and company branding that one has designated.
Issue 3: Once the Side Conversations are sent and replied to, one is unable to apply any macros to the Side Conversation email response communication.
Who does this impact: (Issue 1) This causes delays in our Support Agent responding and adds room for manual error and confusion. Our Support Agents have to apply the macro for creation, manually enter data, manually add bolding and links, and then manually add attachments prior to sending out. This adds time to respond, opportunity for error, and unnecessary strain on our agents to handle manual repetitive formatting in a time sensitive environment. This will impact all of our support agents who use Side Conversations.
(Issue 2)This impacts our company as a whole as we are using this to communicate not just with internal teams, but external customers as well. There is inconsistency in our branding, our signatures (lack of logo), as well as potentially causing consumers confusion and distrust of our company/brand. (Imagine getting emails that have some branding sometimes and not other times...)
(Issue 3): Same impact as Issue 1.
Current Workaround: We will be trying to use the product as is but this may hinder our organization's adoption of the product.
How Would we Solve the Problem: We would enhance the Side Conversation email creator window to allow for formatting and attachments, similar to the macro creation process. We would have the Side Conversation emails inherit the HTML branding from the Email channel HTML editor. We would allow for macro responses to be applied on Side Conversation email responses.
Thank you for your consideration!
12
10 comments
Dave Dyson
Thanks for this detailed feedback, Krista!
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Ian Marston
Dave Dyson (gmail) It would be super useful if we could create macros for side conversation emails that inherit attachments from the parent ticket automatically
Could you confirm if that is on the roadmap and potential timescales please?
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Dave Dyson (gmail)
Hi Ian Marston -
I'm no longer at Zendesk (serving now as an external community moderator), so I no longer have insights to the product roadmap. However, there's an existing product feedback thread on the ability to include attachments when creating side conversations via macro, so I'd recommend you upvote and add any specifics of your use case to this thread: Macro: Add attachment for side conversation macro
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Eric
Dan R., in light of Dave's departure, do you have other insight that you could add regarding attaching templates to side conversation emails?
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Dan R.
Hey Eric,
Unfortunately, I don't work for Zendesk either, I'm a volunteer moderator like Dave and hold no insight or sway on Zendesk's roadmap.
I would suggest (if you haven't already) upvoting this thread so it's more visible to the product team when they are looking for new features to add. It also helps the PM team if you can describe the challenges not having this functionality creates for your team and the impact that creating it could have. There's a helpful template here.
There are some newer formatting options available for the Side Conversation editor however I don't think they're entirely addressing the items from Krista's post and the macro items are still outstanding concerns, from my experience using the feature.
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Toby Sterrett
The macro editor for side conversations should support rich text formatting.
True, though this is by design as side conversations were designed to be used for collaboration, not necessarily customer communication. That said, the signatures formatting should now be full supported, including rich text and images, and we are also workin on improving child tickets so that you can optionally set the requester to an end-user, which should support the regular template functionality in the email notifications.
This is a tricky issue since macros primarily edit the ticket values, including the creation of a new side conversation. We've thought about a way to detect that an existing side conversation was open and determining that a side conversation macro action could take action on it instead of creating a new one. Or, perhaps, new actions that are explicitly for editing a reply to the open side conversation. We need to figure out how that could all work, though.
1
Shona
We have a trigger that sends out a Side Conversation Email, notifying a third party that one of their customers has reached out to us. We do it here and not in a macro as we want it to go out straight away, we don't want to wait for an agent to open the ticket and send it manually.
When creating a Side Conversation Email from a trigger there is no HTML formatting options. It makes the email look terrible.
Is there a way around this? Or is this something Zendesk are looking to address?
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James Peterson - Eastern Logic
Shona - I just tested this out and was able to use HTML formatting. Did you see the `source` button in the action section?
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Shona
James Peterson - Eastern Logic . I think that ‘source’ button is new. I swear it was not there the other day when I looked but it is there now!! But you are correct this has answered my question, and I can do what I am needing to now.
Thanks
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Ryan Worthen
When I send side conversations to others internally, the customer email signature doesn't convey the HTML formatting. This is what it looks like on our end (yuck!). Why can't the HTML be included both on the agents' screen and in the emails going to others internally?
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