Announcing business unit, voicemail, and direct agent routing settings in Contact Center

Announced on

Rollout on

February 12, 2026 | February 12, 2026

We’re rolling out Contact Center extensions to ease administration of voicemail handling and business unit controls for holidays and emergency closures, and simpler direct routing to back office agents.

This announcement answers the following questions:

What's new?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What's new?

The added settings allow Contact Center admins to have:

Business unit controls: Configure public holidays per business unit and enact emergency closures at either the department or specific queue level, including a customizable closed message and contact flow attributes for logic.

Voicemail captured as tickets in Zendesk: Create queue-specific voicemails that arrive as tickets with call details, an attached audio file you can play in-ticket, and optional transcription. Also supports personal/agent queues for DID scenarios.

Back office direct routing: Easily map DID numbers to route directly to agents, with sample flows available (including an option with voicemail).

The new settings are designed to run in your AWS environment, with configuration stored in your account and deployment supported via CloudFormation.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

We’re giving admins centralized, point and click control over voice operations by capturing voicemail as actionable tickets, letting you set holidays and trigger emergency closures at the department or queue level, and enabling direct to agent routing, so you can adapt in minutes without rebuilding flows, reduce manual work, standardize processes across teams, and maintain clear, auditable configuration that drives faster, more reliable customer responses.

What do I need to do?

First, Zendesk or a partner will help you update your stack to include the required components and configure your Contact flows. To arrange this work, contact your account representative.

Note: Your stack must be deployed from CloudFormation template 1.1.5 or higher.

Afterwards, refer to the following topics to use the new features:

Creating and configuring contact center business units

Configuring voicemail in Contact Center

Configuring number assignments and voicemail for direct agent routing

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, contact your Zendesk account representative. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.