Understanding Talk Partner Edition

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">For businesses with an existing phone support solution or sophisticated telephony needs,Talk Partner Editionallows you to choose your own call center software and integrate it with Zendesk’s omnichannel solution.</p>
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<p class="p">For businesses with an existing phone support solution or sophisticated telephony needs, <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/service/voice/talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition</a> allows you to choose your own call
center software and integrate it with Zendesk’s omnichannel solution. </p>
<div class="p">To get started right away, we have over 200 pre-built telephony integrations that plug
right into Zendesk. Otherwise, you can use our CTI toolkit to build your own integration
with your preferred call center solution.<div class="note note">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> If you have a legacy plan and are using
the Support Productivity Pack, the Talk Partner edition is included by default for
the number of agents you have. Otherwise, legacy plans require Talk Partner Licenses
for all agents using the third-party Voice app inside Zendesk. </div>
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<p class="p">This article contains the following sections:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="id_4408819751194__ul_d1t_hhb_nlb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_hwl_ghb_nlb">Why use Talk Partner Edition?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_jl3_khb_nlb">How to use Talk Partner Edition?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_zgp_lhb_nlb">What telephony integrations are available?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_m3f_4y1_yyb">What are the features of Talk Partner Edition?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_ep3_mhb_nlb">Further reading</a></li>
</ul>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_hwl_ghb_nlb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Why use Talk Partner Edition?</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Although you use Zendesk Support, we realize that you might use a call center
solution other than Zendesk Talk that you want to connect to Zendesk’s omnichannel
experience. With Talk Partner Edition, you can use <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/?categories.name=Contact+Center" target="_blank">200+ pre-built telephony integrations</a> that
plug directly into Support, or use the <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/talk-partner-edition-api/introduction" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition API</a> to write your own
integrations.</p>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested1" id="topic_jl3_khb_nlb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title3">How to use Talk Partner Edition?</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">If you don’t want to use the pre-built integrations, the <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/voice/talk-partner-edition/integrating-telephony-systems-with-talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition developer guide</a> contains a wealth
of information to help you integrate your existing call center solution with Zendesk
products.</p>
<p class="p">With the <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/voice/talk-partner-edition-api/introduction/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition API</a> you can configure
telephony requests to trigger actions in Zendesk Support, for example:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_jl3_khb_nlb__ul_xj5_vrn_plb">
<li class="li">Identifying an agent based on the phone device</li>
<li class="li">Creating a ticket and displaying it to an agent</li>
<li class="li">Opening an existing ticket for an agent</li>
<li class="li">Displaying a user’s profile to an agent</li>
<li class="li">Adding a recording or transcription to a ticket</li>
<li class="li">Creating a voicemail ticket</li>
</ul>
<p class="p">You can try out Talk Partner Edition when you are on a trial or paid subscription of
Zendesk Suite. For more details and examples, see the <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/voice/talk-partner-edition/integrating-telephony-systems-with-talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition developer guide</a>.</p>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested1" id="topic_zgp_lhb_nlb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title4">What telephony integrations are available?</h2>
<div class="body">
<div class="p">Currently, there are over 200 apps designed to help you integrate your call center
software with Support. Examples include:<ul class="ul" id="topic_zgp_lhb_nlb__ul_ntw_trn_plb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/65522/aircall-for-support/" target="_blank">Aircall</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/914359/babelconnect/" target="_blank">Babelforce</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/91303/five9-plus-adapter-for-zendesk/" target="_blank">Five9</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/93858/55pbx-softphone-pabx-virtual/" target="_blank">55PBX</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/213407/8x8/" target="_blank">8x8</a></li>
</ul>
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<p class="p">For a full list, see the <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/apps/directory/#CTI_Providers" target="_blank">Zendesk Apps Marketplace</a>.</p>
<div class="p">
<div class="note note">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> When you create reports with Explore, only information associated with Zendesk
tickets is available. If you want to report on information from a third-party
app, use the reporting solution associated with that app.</div>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title5" class="topic nested1" id="topic_m3f_4y1_yyb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title5">What are the features of Talk Partner Edition?</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/service/voice/talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition (TPE) APIs</a> has two
features to help with Computer Telephony Integrations (CTI): Standard Call
Object and Voice Comment. You can use Standard Call Object to store
third-party, industry-standard call data in Zendesk. Voice comment is for Talk
Partner Edition-based apps and is ideal for voicemails. For example, to display
information such as the end-user number, the name of the agent that took the call,
or the call duration. </p>
<div class="section" id="topic_m3f_4y1_yyb__section_dt1_yy1_yyb">
<h3 class="title sectiontitle">Standard Call Object</h3>
<p class="p">The <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/voice/talk-partner-edition/creating-a-call-record-in-zendesk/" target="_blank">Standard Call Object</a> is a foundational feature that works well with
<strong class="ph b">third-party call integration with Explore</strong>, and can store
third-party, industry-standard call data in Zendesk. CTI integrations must
save only their call data in the standard call object. Zendesk manages the object's storage and
visualization. </p>
<p class="p">Previously, CTI integrations could either store their call data in custom ticket fields or tags, which made the data visible in Explore, or use ticket comments to display the call data within the ticket.
However, each of these options had downsides.</p>
<p class="p">Storing call data in custom ticket fields meant that if a ticket involved
multiple calls, and the CTI integration updated the ticket with data from the
latest call, the information from the previous call would be lost. Similarly, tags aren't
intended for structured data and ticket comments aren't suited to
presenting long lists of tabular data. Additionally, all of these options add clutter to tickets.</p>
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<div class="section" id="topic_m3f_4y1_yyb__section_ozd_xy1_yyb">
<h3 class="title sectiontitle">Voice Comment</h3>
<p class="p">A Voice Comment is a special type of comment currently used by both Talk Partner
Edition-based apps and Zendesk Talk to display information from calls. This
includes:</p>
<div class="p">
<ul class="ul" id="topic_m3f_4y1_yyb__ul_pcg_j3b_yyb">
<li class="li">End-user number</li>
<li class="li">Name of the agent that answered the call,</li>
<li class="li">The duration of the call</li>
<li class="li">Display of the controls to play call recordings directly in the
ticket</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="p">Voice comments are perfect for voicemails as they are short and always come with
an audio recording. However, sometimes they are too limited to meet all the needs of CTI integrations. </p>
<p class="p">The enhanced <a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/voice/talk-partner-edition/creating-a-voice-comment-in-ticket/" target="_blank">TPE Voice Comment</a> architecture,
developed exclusively for TPE, works in conjunction with the standard call
object. After the data is stored in the call object, partners tell Zendesk which
call record they want to pull data from, and which fields they want to display
in the comment. Zendesk Talk then presents the data in the ticket. </p>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title6" class="topic nested1" id="topic_ep3_mhb_nlb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title6">Further reading</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">See the following resources for more help with Talk Partner Edition:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_ep3_mhb_nlb__ul_jdt_ljb_nlb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/talk/talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition website</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/voice/talk-partner-edition/integrating-telephony-systems-with-talk-partner-edition/" target="_blank">Talk Partner Edition developer
guide</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
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