Using carousels in conversation flows for AI agents

A carousel is a rich messaging block type within a dialogue for an AI agent. It displays up to 10 options, each with a visual element called a card. Carousels provide a visually pleasing way for customers to make a selection from options presented to them by the AI agent.


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The functionality described in this article is being rolled
out to all Suite and Support plans from May 11 through June 12, 2026. You may not
see this functionality in your account yet. See this announcement for details.

A carousel is a rich messaging block type within a dialogue for an AI agent. It displays up
to 10 options, each with a visual element called a card. Carousels provide a visually pleasing
way for customers to make a selection from options presented to them by the AI agent.
This article contains the following topics:

About the carousel block


CRM-specific requirements and
limitations

Populating carousel cards via an API
integration




About the carousel block

When you add a carousel block in a dialogue, two child blocks appear for configuration:

Card block: Represents the first card in the carousel. It includes fields for
image URL, card title, and description.


Card button block: Represents a button element on the associated card. Each
button can be one of two types: a standard button, or a button with an external link.



You can add more buttons to each card (though some CRMs have limits on the number of
buttons), and up to 10 cards total within a carousel.
You can add a fallback for users who don't interact with the carousel using the Fallback
toggle in the Details pane. A fallback block appears in the dialogue and can be configured
as an alternate branch.

Carousel blocks are available only for messaging AI agents, and only with certain CRMs.
CRMs may have specific requirements and limitations for carousels.



CRM-specific requirements and limitations

If you’re adding carousels to a CRM integration, special requirements and limitations apply
in the following instances:

Using carousels with Sunshine
Conversations


Using carousels with Zendesk Chat





Using carousels with Sunshine Conversations

Sunshine Conversations has the following requirements and limitations in its support of
rich format messaging.









Block type
Component
Sunshine Conversations limitations




Card
All fields


All fields mandatory unless otherwise specified





Card count


Maximum 10 cards per carousel





Images


URL maximum 2048 characters
URL must be valid http/https





Card title


Maximum 128 characters





Description


Maximum 128 characters
No line breaks allowed




Card button
Button count


Maximum three buttons per card





Button text


Mandatory
Maximum 35 characters





Button with external link


URL maximum 2048 characters
URL must be valid http/https
Dialogue must end here









Using carousels with Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat has the following requirements and limitations in its support of rich format
messaging.









Block type
Component
Zendesk Chat limitations




Card
All fields


All fields mandatory
Must contain at least one character (spaces don’t count)





Card count


Maximum 10 cards per carousel





Images


PNG, JPEG or GIF
Maximum 20MB
Render rectangularly (horizontal side being longest)
Automatically cropped from center to 2:1 ratio (width:height)
URL maximum 2000 characters
URL must be valid http/https





Card title


Maximum 150 characters
Quotation marks (") not allowed





Description


Maximum 150 characters
No line breaks
Quotation marks (") not allowed




Card button
Button count


Maximum three buttons per card





Button text


Mandatory
Maximum 20 characters





Button with external link


Dialogue must end here
URL maximum 2000 characters
URL must be valid http/https










Populating carousel cards via an API integration

A carousel is static by default, but can be converted to a dynamic carousel in order to use
content fetched from an existing custom API integration. In a dynamic carousel, the card and card
button blocks are templates that contain the dynamic content.

To add a carousel with dynamic content to a dialogue


In the dialogue builder, click the plus (+) icon to add a
carousel block. The dynamic carousel block appears along with the first template card
block, a fallback block, and a Details pane.

To remove the fallback (optional), deselect Fallback on the Details pane.
Otherwise, it can be configured as an alternate branch.

In the Details pane, click Convert to dynamic carousel and enter
dataSources as the array type parameter.
In the template card block, enter text or parameters such as
%imageurl, %title, and %description
in the respective fields.
In the template card button block, enter text or a parameter such as
%buttontext.





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