Migrating to the new AI agents experience

Aspreviously announced, Zendesk is simplifying the packaging of our AI agent functionality and expanding access to our most advanced, agentic capabilities across all Zendesk Suite and Support plans.


What's my plan?







All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus










Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise









As previously announced, Zendesk is simplifying
the packaging of our AI agent functionality and expanding access to our most advanced,
agentic capabilities across all Zendesk Suite and Support plans.
This article provides migration guidance for customers who are currently using the
following AI agent functionality and need to transition to the new AI agents experience:

AI agents - Essential
Legacy AI agent functionality (Bot builder, answers, and intents in AI agents)
Default messaging responses

This article contains the following topics:

Overview of the change and migration
Migrating an essential AI agent
Migrating legacy AI agent functionality
Migrating a default messaging response



Overview of the change and migration

Between May 11, and June 12, 2026, Zendesk is rolling out our new AI agent packaging
model. As part of this change, the distinction between the Essential and Advanced
levels of our AI agent functionality is being removed. Going forward, all customers
have access to the agentic AI–powered functionality that was previously offered only
on AI agents - Advanced.
On August 31, 2026, Zendesk will stop technical development, except for critical bug
fixes and supporting breaking changes, for the following features. These features
will then be removed from the product in December 2026.

AI agents - Essential
Legacy AI agent functionality (Bot builder, answers, and intents in AI agents)
Default messaging responses

This article includes guidance to help you transition to the upgraded AI agent
experience before August 31, so you can avoid any potential disruptions to your
customer support.


Note: AI Expert is available for customers who would like
additional assistance in migrating and optimizing their AI agent setup. This
offering is an AI recurring service subscription which includes ongoing access
to expertise designed to scale automation, drive continuous improvement
throughout your AI journey, and provide ongoing expert support for operational
excellence. For more information, see the Zendesk AI Expert Packages and contact Zendesk Sales.




Migrating an essential AI agent

AI agents - Essential was a previous level of AI agent functionality designed for
quick, self-service adoption, allowing you to create generative AI agents that
answered customer questions based on content from your knowledge sources.
If you previously created an essential AI agent, you can replicate the
same functionality by creating a new AI agent in the new AI agents experience. To
get started, see Creating an AI agent to automatically resolve
customer issues.


Tip: In the future, an automated, in-product
migration tool will be offered that will help you recreate an essential AI agent
without manual rebuild. You can either follow the steps in this guide to unlock
the potential of the new platform earlier, or wait for the tool to be available.
More details on this process will become available later in 2026.

Performing the creation flow described in the linked article results in an AI agent
that’s capable of responding to your customers with AI-generated responses based on
the knowledge sources you connect to it. This mimics the functionality of AI agents
- Essential without requiring you to perform any of the additional configuration
required to power more complex workflows.


Note: In the new AI agents experience, each AI agent can
interact on only one type of channel. For example, a single AI agent can’t
interact with customers on messaging and email channels. If you had created an
essential AI agent and deployed it on messaging and email channels, note that
you’ll have to create two AI agents to cover the same functionality, one for
messaging and one for email.




Migrating legacy AI agent functionality

Bot builder, answers, and intents in AI agents were pieces of legacy AI agent
functionality that allowed you to create custom answer flows to address customer
questions.
If you previously created an AI agent that made use of any of these pieces of
functionality, you can replicate the same functionality in the new AI agents
experience.


Tip: While you can replicate your previous
functionality, this migration is also a good opportunity to take advantage of
the more advanced functionality offered as part of the new AI agents experience,
such as generative procedures. For more
information, see Getting started with AI agents.




Note: If your legacy AI agent includes many answer flows, or
answer flows with a high degree of complexity (such as many branching steps or
integrations), Zendesk strongly recommends engaging with our AI Expert offering
for hands-on assistance.

The table below describes how the legacy functionality maps to the new AI agents
experience.










Concept
Legacy AI agent functionality
Equivalent functionality in the new AI agents
experience


The interface where you create scripted
conversation flows that determine how your AI agent responds to
customers
Bot builder
Dialogue
builder


What the scripted conversation flows are
called
Answers
Dialogues


The mechanism by which an AI agent understands what
a customer is asking about and connects them with the right
conversation flow
Intents
Use cases





To recreate a legacy AI agent in the new AI agents experience, follow the
instructions in Getting started with AI agents. As you do, pay
particular attention to the following steps:


Step 4.1: Create use cases to identify
customer requests


Step 4.2: Create generative procedures or
dialogues to control responses


As you work through these steps, it may be helpful to first generate a list of your
current answers and intents. That way, you can create corresponding dialogues and
use cases that cover the same information.
Additionally, to help you as you create your dialogues, the following table shows you
which step types in the bot builder map to which
block types in the dialogue builder.









Step type in bot builder
Corresponding block type in dialogue
builder


Send message
AI agent
message


Present
options
Customer
message


Show help center
articles
Generative
replies


Add carousel
Carousel


Ask for
details

AI agent message that
presents a form
template



Ask if question
resolved

Customer message that
asks if the question was resolved


Make API call
API integration


Transfer to
agent
Escalation


Branch by
condition
Conditional


Add business hours
condition
Availability


Link to another
answer
Link to


Set variable
Any block type with an added action that sets
a conversation
parameter









Migrating a default messaging response

The default messaging response was the
previous way to configure the first message sent to a customer when they launch the
Web Widget. This response:

Includes a basic greeting, a request for more information, and a message letting
the customer know they’re being connected to a human agent.
Can also be customized based on your business hours and the customer’s
authentication status.

If you previously configured a default messaging response on any messaging channel,
you can replicate the same functionality using an AI agent instead. See Workflow recipe: Using an AI agent to collect
customer info and immediately escalate to a human agent.


Tip: In the future, an automated migration path
will be offered that will help you recreate your default messaging response as
an AI agent without manual rebuild. More details on this process will become
available later in 2026.



{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10543162665242",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10543162665242",
"headline": "Migrating to the new AI agents experience",
"description": "You can follow this article to migrate from legacy AI agent functionalities and default messaging responses to the new AI agents experience before the August 31, 2026 deadline to avoid disruptions in customer support.",
"articleSection": "Getting started with AI agents",
"datePublished": "2026-04-13T16:32:51+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-05-13T16:22:57.264136+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10543162665242"