Update: Version 12 is now available. Learn more and install it from here.
If you’re a Zendesk user in a Contact Center environment, you’ll want to be using our Zendesk Agent Scripting app. This makes it easy to guide, train and onboard agents and is a huge productivity booster for everyone. The Agent Scripting app appears as a button in the right-hand panel:
Click Open Script, and you’ll see your decision tree in a pop-over like this:
If another agent picks up the ticket, they return to the last viewed node, and can see each step taken previously by opening the History:
Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App
- Standardization: Show a guided path for each ticket, so that Agents follow the proper operating policies or troubleshooting procedures.
- Pause and Resume: If a ticket is transferred, the supervisor or new agent is taken to the last place in the script, and can see the history of the previous steps taken.
- Automatic Script Selection: The Agent Scripting App can choose a script based on the Zendesk brand, Zendesk ticket tags, or the value of a custom field.
- Agent Feedback: Agents can send feedback directly to the authors of the decision trees with a single button click. Feedback is delivered to each author’s email, and includes the tree ID and node number where the feedback was sent from.
- Zendesk Ticket Data in your Scripts: Values in any custom field, as well as Zendesk ticket tags and user tags, are transferred into your script so you can echo them, or use these variables to branch via Logic Nodes.
- Automatic Ticket Updating: Tags and custom fields in the ticket can be updated from actions in the script – either via buttons clicked in the script, or from data entry collected.
New Features in Version 11
If you’re using a version 10 of the Zendesk Agent Scripting app, you may want to upgrade to take advantages of these new benefits:
- Toggle to share Zendesk data with Zingtree: Some customers don’t want ticket data shared with Zingtree. There’s now an option to disable data sharing.
- Removed “Flash”: Some customers experienced a “flash” when moving from ticket to ticket. This is now fixed with this update.
Demo Video
This two-minute video shows you how Agents interact with the Agent Scripting App:
Getting Started
Here are the basic steps to get up and running:
- Build an interactive decision tree script with Zingtree (or use one of our demos to start).
- Install the Agent Scripting App (version 10) into Zendesk.
- Configure the Agent Scripting app within Zendesk.
- If you want to have your decision tree scripts update your Zendesk tickets, you’ll need to add variables and/or tags to your Zingtree tree to match your Zendesk setup.
- If you want to enable automatic script selection, you’ll need to add tags to your trees in Zingtree and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting app properly.
Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk
Download and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting App version 10 like so:
- Download the Agent Scripting app here.
- In Zendesk, click the Admin icon and go to Apps > Manage.
- Click Upload Private App.
- The Upload App page appears.
- Enter “Zingtree Agent Scripting” for the App Name.
- For App File, locate the file zingtree-agent-scripting-v10.zip you downloaded in step 1.
- Click Upload, then confirm if necessary.
Configuring the App
Once you’ve uploaded the app, click App Configuration to see the configuration screen:
Here’s what each item does:
Tree ID: This is the default tree that appears when agents click “Open Script”. (You should always have a default tree.)
Hide Integration Setup Info: When you are setting up Agent Scripting for the first time, you may need some information about your Zendesk setup to take advantage of automatically updating ticket fields. An “Integration Setup Info” link appears by default when you first install the app, and ticking this option hides it.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand: If this option is checked, the subdomain of the selected brand will be matched to a Zingtree tree tag. Any matching tree or trees will appear. For example, if the brand subdomain is xyz.zendesk.com, any trees tagged as xyz (using the Zingtree Settings tool) will appear.
Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags: If checked, the values in the Zendesk ticket tags will be matched with your Zingtree tree tags (set via the Zingtree Settings tool) to show one or more matching scripts.
Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom field: If you want to use a custom field value to show matching scripts, enter the Zendesk custom field identifier here. The field name can be found using the Integration Setup Info link that first appears in the sidebar when you install the app.
Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree: By default, the app sends custom field data from each Zendesk ticket to Zingtree so you can do more powerful automatic branching via logic nodes, as well as echoing customer information (like their name, for example). If your organization has data privacy concerns, you can check this option to disable data sharing.
Zingtree API key: Each organization in Zingtree has an API key, which is used to match scripts. If you’re using one of the tag matching options, this is required. Your API key can be found at zingtree.com under Help, API.
Enabling Automatic Script Selection
Automatic Script Selection works by matching tree tags you set in Zingtree to values in the Brand, Tags, or a custom field in a Zendesk ticket. For example, if a tree is tagged with “astrology”, and the ticket tags include “astrology”, then that tree appears. If several trees match, then they will all appear, and the agent can choose one.
To open a script based on Brand:
- Add tags to your trees for each brand you want to match. So if one of your brands is xyz.zendesk.com, use xyz as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
- Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon Zendesk ticket tags:
- Add tags to your trees for each tag you want to match. So if one of your ticket tag possibilities is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
- Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked in the App Configuration.
To open a script based upon a custom field:
- Add tags to your trees for each possible custom field value you want to match. So if one of your custom field values is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
- Make sure the proper Zendesk field variable name is entered for Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom Field is checked in the App Configuration.
Adding tags to a tree in Zingtree is done like this:
- Select a tree from My Trees.
- Go to the Settings tool.
- Click the Organize tab.
- Enter or select a tag from the Tree Tags field.
- Click Update Settings.
How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields
As agents navigate through your trees, their use of the decision tree scripts you create can automatically update any custom fields in that ticket. This can be done in two ways:
- By clicking a button in a script
- By entering data into Zingtree data entry fields.
The key is to use variable names in your Zingtree that match the ones used in Zendesk.
First of all, determine the names of the variables in Zendesk by clicking the Integration Setup Info link in the Agent Scripting app. You’ll see something like this:
You’ll see the label for the field as it appears in Zendesk’s ticket form and the Zendesk variable next to it. In the above example, the Product custom field variable is custom_field_22899289. This is a drop-down selector, and the Zendesk values for the field options are astrology and insurance.
For the rest of this example, we’ll use custom_field_22899289 as the custom field variable.
To make a button selection update a custom field, you’ll set it up in your Zingtree as follows:
- Go to the Overview tool, and edit the node whose button selections will update the ticket.
- Click Edit Buttons (or Add Buttons if you don’t have any buttons defined). The button editor appears:
- Make sure Assign Button Click Variable is checked. This makes the other options appear.
- For the Button Click Variable, enter your custom field variable from Zendesk (custom_field_22899289 in the example).
- For each button option, enter the value of the variable under Score/Value. If this is a drop-down list in your Zendesk ticket, you’ll need to make sure the Score/Value entered matches one of the drop-down option values as shown in the Integration Setup Info.
- Click Save Changes when you’re done configuring buttons.
Bonus: Adding Tags via button clicks:
Button clicks can also add tags to a ticket. In the above example, clicking Something Else adds the tag other_tag to the ticket. Just include the tag name with two colons after the button text. So entering a button like Something Else::other_tag will add the tag other_tag to the ticket if this is clicked, but agents will only see Something Else as an option.
Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets
Just like the above example, you can also use Zingtree for data entry and have that data automatically transferred to your ticket. The key is to use the same variable name in Zingtree as you used in Zendesk. The Integration Setup Info link in the sidebar will give you those Zendesk variable names.
Example: If you have a text entry field in Zingtree you want to update into the Zendesk field custom_field_1234, you would set up the variable name as follows:
Try It with Example Data
You can use trees from the Zingtree Gallery to see how the Agent Scripting app works.
For a single tree, enter ’14’ as the Tree ID. This will show an Astrology website troubleshooter example.
For multiple trees, see how a tree can be selected by tag by doing the following:
- Enter 6a103737e44e4aa6e1e4b6b0bcb46f83 as the API key.
- Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked.
- Try entering one or more of these tags into a ticket: “zingtree”, “astrology”, “pet_rock”.
Any questions? We’re always here to help.