Announcing the Custom Agent EAP

Announced on | Rollout on
May 18, 2026 | May 19, 2026

Zendesk is excited to announce that custom agents and the agent builder are available through an early access program.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

Zendesk is introducing the agent builder, which is a tool that puts the power to create agents directly in your hands. With the agent builder, admins can create custom agents that handle deep, multi-system reasoning on behalf of AI and human agents.

The agent builder enables you to build, test, deploy, and optimize your own specialized agents. These custom agents integrate with our conversational AI agents and Copilot, doing the middle and back office work needed to reach a resolution.

During the EAP, admins can create and manage these agents directly in the Admin interface. The initial functionality includes core agent creation and integration with the prebuilt connectors for the action builder, including Salesforce, Slack, Jira, and Google Sheets.

For more information, see Understanding custom agents and turning on the agent builder and Creating custom AI agents in Zendesk.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Zendesk understands that prebuilt agents are a powerful starting point, but every business has unique complexity that off-the-shelf solutions can't fully capture. Custom agents and the agent builder are a response to customer feedback that you need AI that understands your business.

Custom agents solve for the current struggle admins face when scaling AI agents. Customers have been missing a low-friction way to create, test, and deploy bespoke AI agents for different brands, departments, and processes. Without this capability, complex, multi-system business logic can't be shared easily, which puts teams at risk of duplicating effort and manual errors.

Agent builder is designed to fill these gaps in your service operations. From automatic ticket merging and image analysis to proactive notifications and decision analysis, there is a custom agent for every specialized business process. Custom agents operate on a governed and trusted AI infrastructure with a single control pane, allowing you to oversee them to ensure they perform safely, reliably, and completely within your control.

What do I need to do?

To participate in the EAP, you must turn on the Custom Agent EAP in Admin Center and accept the terms and conditions. Then, start creating custom AI agents in Zendesk.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.