Note: The Agent Availability API EAP has ended. It is now fully supported and available for use by all accounts. See Announcing general availability of the Agent Availability APIs.
We are thrilled to announce that our Agent Availability APIs Early Access Program is now open to all our customers!
Our goal is to expose real time agent status and activity information across Zendesk channels that will allow our customers and partners;
- Access real-time agent statuses across Zendesk channels - including unified & custom statuses.
- Build custom real-time monitoring to show and manage agent statuses across Zendesk channels.
- Enhance existing agent activity and performance tracking mechanisms with real-time agent status and workload.
- Build private apps to centrally manage agent statuses, routing flows based on the agent status and activity in Zendesk. (i.e changing agent status in other products if the agent is actively working in Zendesk or vice versa)
What are Zendesk Agent Availability APIs?
The new Zendesk Agent Availability APIs will allow you to view real-time agent availability information across Zendesk channels and also update their unified and custom agent statuses.
Before:
- There is no easy way to access real-time agent status information from Zendesk channels (except through the Talk APIs). As a result, it's not easy to build integrated experiences with Zendesk based on real-time agent statuses.
After:
- Agent Availability APIs will enable better integration with Zendesk channels as well as opening up a variety of new use-cases, such as the development of custom monitoring, reporting, and routing flows based on real-time agent availability across channels.
An agent’s availability includes their unified and custom statuses (e.g. online, in a meeting, at lunch etc..) across channels (e.g. messaging, talk etc.), status per channel that defines the routing behavior, the work items assigned to agents and the agent max capacity for each channel.
About the Early Access Program
The Agent Availability APIs consist of multiple phases, as listed below.
Phase 1: Agent Availability APIs
These are initially launched Read-only API endpoints that allows;
- Query the availability of a particular agent.
- Query the availability of multiple agents that meet the certain criteria.
The information returned via these endpoints will vary based on whether omnichannel routing is enabled or not.
- If omni-channel routing is not enabled, APIs will return real-time information that includes per-channel agent statuses and assigned work-items per channel.
- If omni-channel routing is enabled, APIs will return real-time information that includes; unified and custom agent statuses, per-channel agent statuses, assigned work-items per channel and agent max-capacity per channel.
Phase 2: Unified Agent Status APIs
The existing endpoints have been enhanced with an additional API set, called the Unified Agent Status APIs, that allows;
- Update an agent's unified or custom status across channels - that requires omnichannel routing.
- Query all the unified and custom statuses created across the account and their mappings to per channel statuses.
API Limits:
Zendesk Agent Availability API is rate limited. The number of requests allowed is 200 requests per minute. Zendesk reserves the right to adjust the rate limit for given endpoints to provide a high quality of service for all clients.
EAP Eligibility:
This early access program is available to customers on any plan. Nevertheless, please note that omnichannel routing must be enabled in order to be able to update the unified agent status.
EAP Limitations:
- Omnichannel Enablement: When omni-channel routing is enabled and later disabled, omni-channel specific information (agent max capacity per channel, agent custom statuses) will remain unchanged and returned via APIs. As part of GA, enablement for Omnichannel routing will be implemented for APIs, so only relevant information will be returned.
Documentation :
The EAP draft API documentation can be found - here.
In order to participate in the EAP, please fill out the sign-up form listed on this post.
Note: The Agent Availability APIs are subject to change during the EAP. Thus, It is recommended that you test and experience the new APIs in the EAP and utilize them in production only after they are GA'd - as per the current plan ~ Q2 2023.
