How do I enable or disable live chat or messaging?

Question

How do I turn live chat or messaging on or off? How do I go back to the previous version of live chat and turn off messaging? Can I disable messaging? Can I create multiple Web Widget?

Answer

Understand the experience

Are you using live chat or messaging?

Live chat (Web Widget (Classic)) and messaging (Web Widget) are different widgets and their settings exist in different locations.

Live chat is a legacy feature for chat and help center integration

However, messaging includes more features, for example social messaging, help center suggestions, bots and AI

Understand which product you use.

With multiple widgets

Create multiple widgets at once

To use more than one type of widget at the same time, for example a widget on a website and a different widget on another, follow these steps:

Use the multibrand feature to create multiple brands

If you do not see the option to create a brand, verify that your plan allows multiple brands

If you created multiple brands, you can create multiple widgets from Admin Center, click Channels > Classic > Web Widget

From that page, verify that you do not already have a widget for each brand before you attempt to create a new widget

If you do not have a Web Widget for your brand, click Add channel and follow the instruction on the page

With live chat

Turn off live chat completely (with older accounts)

To remove live chat from Zendesk, follow these steps:

Remove the widget script from the source code of your website

If you have a help center, turn off the Help Center setting that adds the Web Widget (Classic) to your help center

Live chat cannot be turned off from a setting.

Turn off live chat and move to messaging

To use messaging instead of live chat, follow these steps:

Verify that your account meets the requirements to use messaging

Create at least one agent to use Chat under their role permissions

Verify that Agent Workspace is turned on

If you do not use Agent Workspace, migrate first

In Admin Center, go to Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging

If your plan does not meet the plan requirements to use messaging, the option for Messaging will not appear

In the widget list, click the name of your existing Web Widget (Classic)

If you see Web Widget instead of Web Widget (Classic) in the list, you already use messaging

At the top, select Turn on messaging

A new page loads, configure your Web Widget appearance

Customize your default messaging behavior

If you used Chat triggers in the the Chat dashboard, you can now create messaging triggers in Admin center instead

If you want to add an AI agent to your messaging channel, in the Responses tab, click Add an AI agent

You will use AI agent to build your conversation flow

The messaging response will be deactivated and replaced by the AI agent's standard responses

Install the Web Widget on your website or help center

New conversations will create Support tickets, which appear in your ticket views and can be searched in Support

Route your tickets to different teams and agents of your choice

Note: Messaging provides a unique experience compared to live chat, with certain limitations.

With messaging

Turn on messaging for the first time

If you never used live chat, messaging exists by default in your account. Configure it with these steps:

In Admin Center, go to Workspaces > Agent Workspace > Ensure that Turn on agent workspace is ticked, this is a new user experience

If you do not use Agent Workspace, migrate first

In the side panel, click Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging

Click Manage settings > If the option isn't on, tick Turn on messaging for your account > Save settings

Go back to Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging > Add channel > Web Widget

If you don't see the option, verify that a widget isn't on the list below. You may already use a Web Widget

Add a Channel name

Add a privacy notice > Next

Email the Web Widget code to your developer team, so they can add it to the source code of your website when you are ready > Next

Choose a color, title and logo > Next

A new page loads, configure your Web Widget appearance

Customize your default messaging behavior

If you used Chat triggers in the the Chat dashboard, you can now create messaging triggers in Admin center instead

If you want to add an AI agent to your messaging channel, in the Responses tab, click Add an AI agent

You will use AI agent to build your conversation flow

The messaging response will be deactivated and replaced by the AI agent's standard responses

Install the Web Widget on your website or help center

New conversations will create Support tickets, which appear in your ticket views and can be searched in Support

Route your tickets to different teams and agents of your choice

When you are ready to offer messaging, add the Web Widget to your help center, or add the Web Widget to the source code of your website

Watch the video below to learn how to enable messaging in your account.

Turn off messaging completely

To remove messaging from Zendesk, follow these steps:

Remove the widget script from the source code of your website

If you have a help center, turn off the setting that adds the Web Widget to your help center

Conversations on your website cannot be turned off from a setting.

Turn off messaging and move back to live chat (with older accounts)

Note: If you are not able to follow the steps below, you have a newer account with messaging by default and are not able to revert to live chat.

To remove messaging and return to live chat, follow these steps:

In Admin Center, go to Channels > Messaging and social > Messaging

In the widget list, click the name of your existing Web Widget

In the list, if you see Web Widget (Classic) instead of Web Widget, you are already using live chat

Scroll down > click Installation and open that tab

Click the Switch to Web Widget (Classic) red button

A pop up will appear, click the Switch to Web Widget (Classic) red button

If you created messaging triggers, configure Chat triggers instead

You use the Agent Workspace experience, which means that new conversations will create Support tickets, which appear in your ticket views and can be searched in Support

Route your tickets to different teams and agents of your choice