Raw Markdown support in Agent workspace
CompletedAfter switching from Standard Agent Interface to Agent Workspace the full support of raw Markdown disappeared together with the Preview button :(
Markdown is a 'must have' feature in 2022, replacing it with some Markdown-alike 'shortcuts' in the WYSIWYG editor is not an improvement for sure.
We do support when we need to share/reuse code fragments often. The WYSIWYG editor is super unhandy for that.
Yes, when I type the answer inside the Zendesk editor I can use usual Markdown shortcuts, but I can't copy & paste fragments of Markdown anymore, I need to recover the formatting every time manually when I put copy text from/to zendesk editor - it doesn't preserve the important things like code blocks, but it preserves silly things, like the font color/background color.
Related:
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Official comment
Hey folks!
We appreciate your feedback on this topic and would love to hear more directly from you live. Please join us on Thursday, April 25th at 9 AM PDT for our PM Roundtable. It’ll be an open discussion on what is and isn’t working with the recent UI changes regarding Agent Workspace. So please bring those questions, concerns, or feedback!
The product team would also like feedback on enhancements they plan on making in Agent Workspace, so we can design the experience tailored to your CX needs.
The link to register can be found here, we’d love to see you all there.
Cheers,
Amisha Sharma
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It is frustrating that this has gone unanswered for over a month.
This new editor is also breaking integrations with things like Text Expander which is used extensively by support agents. It is also affecting Grammarly corrections as well.
This needs to be addressed ASAP.
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This issue has prevented us from switching to Agent Workspace, as it has made Text Expander, Alfred, and other snippet programs unusable. The lack of Preview also made it unclear that the markdown was not working as expected. Image markdown also seemed to be completely broken in the Rich content editor, whether pasted or typed manually.
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Our support team are also blocked from moving to Agent Workspace as they rely on pasting markdown via snippets or when pairing with others on a response.
They also need the ability embed images using the following format which is no longer supported:
Our customers appreciate such in-line images when we respond, it's an important aid in helping resolve their support tickets.
Please bring back the ability to:
- Paste markdown
- Preview markdown
- Embed images in-line using markdown
As an aside, we've noted it's possible to render markdown in macros which were created before the switch to Agent Workspace:
Please see https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/232642/168255249-2473ccbe-e3b4-4e49-8958-9c73658a4347.png as Zendesk Image upload isn't working.
However, when Agent Workspace is enabled, the 'Comment/description' macro field changes to
- Rich content (HTML BASED)
- Include plain text fallback (RAW - Not used in the agent support interface)
Macros created with markdown within 'Rich content' do not render markdown:
Please see https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/232642/168255256-9a7093bf-f275-4710-a703-539ab752186c.png as Zendesk Image upload isn't working.
We need 'live' markdown support, please bring this to Agent Workspace so we can transition.
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Hello everyone!
Thank you for providing feedback on markdown support in Agent Workspace and apologies that this post did not get a response until now.
The inability to render markdown properly when pasted into the Zendesk editor has been reported as a bug with the third-party technology we use to power our editor. We are in constant touch with the team and they are currently working on fixing this. We will update here as soon as we have an update from them.
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I was directed here by Support after opening a ticket regarding lack of full markdown support in Workspace. We've been selected for automatic migration in August and being forced into losing markdown support (which we do use) in exchange for integrated chat support (which we do not use) is disappointing to say the least.
We'd appreciate a delay in any forced migration until markdown support is fully functional.
Ironically I see the Master Subscription Agreement has been updated to state:
- We have added an explicit commitment that we will not materially decrease the overall functionality of the Services during a subscription term;
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We'll also be moving to Agent Workspace in August. I can't even activate it for our agents to try because markdown is a "must have" for us. Please please pleeaaaassssse get this fixed before August.
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Hello Paul Tingle and Jenn
Thank you for reaching out. We have taken this into account, and have excluded both accounts from the current phase of automatic migration.
If either of you happen to run into issues with this in August, please reach out! -
Thank you, Kolten Kittleson -- that's fantastic!
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Hey Kolten Kittleson, that's great news, much appreciated!
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Hello! Thanks for engaging in this post.
We are trying to understand the requests here further. In order to fulfill all uses cases, below are the requests we have gathered so far:
1. Composer should render the pasted markdown syntax properly.
2. Allow embedding images using markdown.
3. Provide a way to preview how the markdown syntax will look once submitted.
Is there anything you would like to be included in this list to make sure live markdown support is provided in Agent Workspace?
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Hi Amisha Sharma.
Yes overall we would like markdown composing and functionality to operate in the same way as currently. In my own brief testing I found that basic markdown was converted live in the composer and worked correctly, but features such as markdown hyperlinks were non-functional (they were not converted from the markdown syntax when published). So we either need a composer that live converts and works for all markdown, or one that does not convert live, but has a preview button (and again works for all markdown). I think the latter is preferable.
Thanks!
Paul. -
Hello All!
We are currently working on allowing markdown syntax to convert to HTML when pasted into the composer. Can you share which external sources you use to copy/paste markdown syntax?
Would you prefer to convert markdown to HTML when copied from a plain-text source, rich-text source or both? Thanks for engaging.
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IMHO ideal markdown editor is the one in github issues.
I think that the best option is to store markdown as entered, rendering to html happens only when comment is viewed. It can also be acceptable to make conversion at the moment of posting comment (but it is worse, because once you do a conversion you can't get markdown from that back). If raw markdown is stored it is possible to render it differently for different goals / themes / target, and reuse it in many different ways.
So i can see following requirement here:
* Provide source code alike editor, without live preview, but with preview on demand.
* three tildes code blocks with support of all popular programming language syntax
* ability to extract the posted earlier comments in markdown (needed for example to copy the answer between tickets, and to fill external knowledge base with markdown backend)
* ability to attach files and images by drag and drop or copy and paste (check markdown editor in github)
* support the same markdown editor possibilities in the support portal (our customers often ask about that)
* ability to get the 'raw' message in the markdown format via Zendesk API call -
So IMHO ideal solution is to store extra field 'message_format' with html by default, and markdown on demand. Give users a choice what to use. If format is markdown - render it when is viewed / send to emails etc.
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BTW please exclude our account from the migration to new Agent Workspace (i was not able to do that via your support channels)
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Can you share which external sources you use to copy/paste markdown syntax?
GitHub / Local Snippets / Text Expanders / Slack / Historic tickets (We have chat-ops that parse markdown from a ticket # and displays it in Slack for pasting into a new ticket) / VSCode (Any local text tool)
Would you prefer to convert markdown to HTML when copied from a plain-text source, rich-text source or both?
If possible, rendering pasted markdown in either format would be preferred.
Additionally, being able to paste markdown, preview it and update the markdown text (repeated until sent) is the optimal path. The conversion to HTML shouldn't be a one time deal as that would add more work for the agent.
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Hello Everyone,
We worked on an enhancement for markdown support, we would love to hear your feedback here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4799753297818-Need-feedback-on-the-release-of-a-Markdown-enhancement-in-Agent-Workspace
Thanks!
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I haven't read through the full thread yet, but we enabled Agent workspace today, only to disable it within 15 minutes as a result of the changes to markdown support.
The rich text editor seemed to be forced on, could find no way re-enable markdown and preview capabilities. No time to submit a support ticket for it today.
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One more incompatibility with the current Agent Workspace Markdown functionality is that when using a code block, it will not ignore curly bar formatting when it matches native Zendesk functions. eg.
This will try to get translated to whatever Zendesk thinks should be the value of the data inside the curly bars rather than direct unchanged uninterpreted replicated text inside a code block.
We have a workaround via an HTML formatting macro, but always remembering to leverage a macro'd workaround when you are deep in the flow of providing a modified configuration file to the customer that gets broken in translation in Zendesk is not a recipe for success. -
markdown link syntax
[text](url)no longer works which interrupts our workflow.
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