Customize Agent Workspace
As of now, forwarded replies into Zendesk show up as very long internal notes, with no organization or cleanliness. We would like the ability to customize Agent Workspace enough to be able to move the comment box to the top of the ticket (versus the bottom), and also have replies separated by a dividing line.
Both of these things were built in and by default on previous iterations of Zendesk, so not sure why a feature that was never broken to begin with was removed. This is key to how agents and internal staff read and respond to tickets, including being able to quickly find pertinent information.
On discussions with Zendesk Support, we were told this is not a native feature that can be changed, nor is it something that engineers can non-natively do. Big feature gap.
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+1 to this. This makes it harder for our agents to read and understand interactions.
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Hi Nik!
Thanks so much for providing this feedback. In your post, I'm seeing three separate needs, so I'll address each of them.
1. Forwarded replies show up as internal notes and they are lengthy and unformatted
In early 2022, we're going to be exploring improvements to our email formatting to improve readability. This includes removing extra spacing, paragraph breaks and other formatting improvements like expected visualization of bullets and numbering. It's our intention to make these improvements soon, but I can't yet commit to a timeline. I'll be back in touch on this one when I know more into when this will be built.
2. Comment box (composer) at top vs bottom
此举的意图was to ensure the comment box (composer) mirrored where it lives for other messaging channels, like FB Messenger, SMS and even, email threads. We want to provide an experience that is similar to what is used digitally, day-to-day outside of Zendesk, to ensure it's intuitive for new agents. Can you share more into why it being at the top of the message thread would be easier for you than at the bottom?
3. Comments / replies to be separated with dividing line
This one is on our radar. We're hoping to prioritize design exploration here to create a modern experience that will delineate between each message sent. I'll be sure to follow this thread and reach back out to you here when I have a better sense for when this will be built.
Thank you again for this useful feedback. Looking forward to hearing back from you re #2 here and any other thoughts/feedback you may have.
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+1 related to 2. Comment box at top vs bottom;
For channels like FB, SMS where usually quite short messages are sent the comment-box at the bottom is fine since the entire message will directly be visible on the page.
But when receiving long emails / mails with big signatures / mails where the formatting is incorrect (ie. when the entire emailchain is in there instead of just the last response) you have to keep on scrolling up to search what the last message was, where at first (without agent workspace) we would at first glance see the last response since it was always at the top and directly visible upon opening a ticket.
For now we have disabled the agent workspace again so that we can keep the comment box on top.
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3. Comments / replies to be separated with dividing line
Commenting to add support for this design returning. Looking forward that improvement.
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There are any news about a config to have the editor on top and the comments ordered the same way as in the default old UI? The new ordering and the moved editor to the bottom are currently the obstacle to switch to the new agent wokspace. The new agent workspace is simply not suitable for main B2B email communication. See also the comments from here:https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408821259930/comments/4545739119642
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Regarding new Agent Workspace issues there is another request I want to share here:
New agent workspace, Long emails / signatures
I have a question since I have read that some of you already switched back to the old workspace:这“老工作区”futu支持re?We only use Zendesk in B to B environment and communicate mainly via email. Therefore, the new agent workspace is uncomfortable.
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Just checking in on Lauren Slack-Chen's comment as it is now mid 2022.
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Hello All,
Thanks for providing feedback and engaging in this post. As we work on redesigning the reading and writing experience, your feedback is very valuable. I'm looking to meet with you 1:1 or in a group to get feedback on the new designs.
请不要把你的个人信息responding to this request, but please let us know if you're open to meeting 1:1 or in a group setting to provide feedback on a few new designs. Thanks! Once we hear back from you, we'll coordinate time with you and send a calendar invite for a 30-minute session.
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Hi,Amisha SharmaI'm very interested in a 1:1 - could you please send me an invite?
请不要把你的个人信息responding to this request, but please let us know if you're open to meeting 1:1 or in a group setting to provide feedback on a few new designs. Thanks! Once we hear back from you, we'll coordinate time with you and send a calendar invite for a 30-minute session.
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Maik Künnemann- Sending you an email :)
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Has Zendesk made any progress towards making the location of the composer (comment box) configurable? Similar to others, we are B2B, and have no need to connect to social media chat options. The new location makes Zendesk more difficult to use, and may be enough of an impediment that we'll have to start looking at other support tools.
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HelloAmisha Sharmawe talked about the topic from Gail. Do you have an update for this feature?
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Hello,
My organization also uses Zendesk for B2B support and the only channel we use is email. We would also appreciate to have the option for a more "email-like" flow of communication in a ticket, which is oldest messages on the bottom, newest at the top, with the composer at the top.
This is a very natural UI setup for anyone that primarily relies on emails, and the new agent workspace layout is not great for us, and might make us look for other ticketing system options.
Some of the other features of agent workspace are great, but this one really makes our jobs more difficult.
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The composer box being on the bottom for us is becoming a deal-breaker, as this way you lose focus on all the context that's on top (requester, organization, etc.). Having the compose box on top and the newest messages on top was one of the things the classic interface got really right and I'd love to have again.
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To add, following on a unanimous request from my whole team, we've reverted to the classic view, as people are finding the "agent workspaces" too cumbersome to use.
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Our organization primarily interacts with our customers and partners via email and I too would like to voice this change as an impediment and makes things cumbersome. In general it also appears there are now more clicks involved to reach certain functions, for example Internal/Public Reply is now a menu drop down rather that an instance selection. We've now gone from a single click to two! I would prefer an option to revert to the classic view.
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Another vote for putting this back. It really is a deal breaker of a change. We communicate with our customers by email. We're not concerned about SMS, chat, etc.
The composer box, combined with the new sorting of replies, is absolutely awful. When trying to compose replies, we can't see the customer's actual email. We can only see their signature, unless we go back and scroll. Previously, the customer's email was clearly visible below the composer box. If we do scroll to view the customer's reply (which we shouldn't have to do anyway), it disappears again while we type the response, as the composer box expands. So we're back to scrolling again. Constant interruption of the natural workflow.
Then there's the email address - it's gone from the top of the ticket view. We need this clearly visible - what was the point in removing this? Who does it help?
At the end of the day, would it be so difficult to give your customers the option to choose how replies are sorted, and to choose things like where the composer box appears and whether it's fixed/expandable? These are really basic things. Imposing these changes has negatively impacted us, and for no good reason. -
My organization has been unwilling to even try the Agent Workspace due to the horror stories brought up in this thread, and the features we read about. The composer box location and order of the communication thread are also very important to us. I'd prefer Zendesk not try to fix something that is not even broken, and clearly causing some pain to other customers. I'm willing to meet 1:1 as well if only just to discuss the importance of the classic features we use today.
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Hello All, thanks for all your feedback and apologies for not providing an update on this request until now.
We're currently exploring the best ways to solve this pain point. We're meeting with our internal teams and discussing the best path forward, which could take a couple of months to implement as we work on reliability and stability of our product in parallel. I understand it is frustrating to wait for an update for something which you consider a blocker for adopting Agent Workspace, but please know that we are absolutely tracking all these requests and discussions are definitely underway.
I'll be able to provide more useful updates when we take our solution to development. Thanks for your patience.
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Another request begging for the classic Agent Workspace to come back. We only use Support with the email channel and the comment box being on the bottom makes the ZenDesk web UI almost useless. We're relying on email chains in Outlook to track tickets which honestly takes away from the need for a help desk system.
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We also only use email channel and wouldn’t switch to the new UI as long as the reply box is at the bottom.
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As many have mentioned already, when dealing with longer emails in Zendesk Support, having the reply/comment field at the bottom is a major pain. Having it at the top like the older view, but separated from the previous ticket replies, so you can scroll the previous replies but still have the reply/comment field at the top visible would be so much more intuitive.
Understand you have tried to mimic what social media apps are currently doing, but for short messaging, this is fine, for support tickets with lots of information, it just feels wrong.
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Soon we are forced over to the Work Space (late September), and this pain point discussed here is what makes us hope it is fixed before the forced change is set in place.
Nice to see that Zendesk is looking at this though, and crossing the fingers for a good solution to come. We are not using chat and talks today and are afraid how this change with focus on chat and talks will inpact our workflow.
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+1
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This was the worst change ever
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Our customers use mainly email to correspond so we really need a layout that makes reading emails easy. This layout as if we are chatting on a mobile phone is frustrating and difficult and does not suit our business needs. I would of thought there would be an option to use the interface in a way that serves the business. The tiny chat box at the bottom of the screen is terrible for composing emails
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Using the new workspace is like writing emails through a letterbox. We've started to look for a new helpdesk provider.
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We are forced to postpone moving to an agent workspace because of this non-suitable UI. Looking forward to having an option to view ticket conversation as it is in the default old UI.
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For any of you that have been moved over to Zendesk Wordspace, have it been possible for you to go back to the old UI awaiting Zendesk to fix the current issues?
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There is currently no option in the settings to do so.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.
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