Questio about Web Widget (Classic) contact forms | Community
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Questio about Web Widget (Classic) contact forms

  • September 1, 2022
  • 10 replies
  • 0 views
S

Hi

 

I am a developer new to Zendesk and trying to get to grips with our companies Zendesk web widget. I'm just trying to understand how it works and where the actual functionality is implemented. I can see on our pages Help Centre the code to initiate the web widget. What I want to do is understand how to change the functionality. For example we have a 'Contact us' button and one of the options is 'What is your question about?' This is a drop down with a number of fields, one of which is 'Where's My Order?' When these fields are selected where is the functionality behind them? How do I modify what happens when these options are selected for example? Is this part of the Zendesk API? Any help is very much appreciated.

 

Steve

    10 replies

    S
    • Steven21
    • Author
    • September 1, 2022

    Ok after a little bit of investigating it looks like what I want is webhooks to request data from a URL and a trigger to fire the webhook when a ticket is created asking 'Where's My Order?'.

    Am I on the right tracks here?

    Tipene
    • Tipene
    • September 2, 2022

    Hey @steven21,

    Welcome to Zendesk!

    So I can understand what you're hoping to do, would you mind going in to a bit more detail about the workflow you're looking to implement?

    Thanks!

    Tipene

    S
    • Steven21
    • Author
    • September 5, 2022

    Hi Tipene

    Thanks for your comment. It looks like we have a basic webhook set up for automatically making a ticket when a customer asks a question. What I want to do is send information to the web widget with regards to a customers tracking information so they know where there order is automatically without a ticket being created. This will be when a customer uses 'Contact us' button in the web widget with the 'Ask us a question' drop down selected as 'Where's my order?'. It looks like the form automatically creates a ticket when sent. I want my webhook to fire at this point to retrieve their order information from our web server. Any advice on this please? The problem so far is test area URL is only accessible through a VPN so I'll have to find somewhere to put it while I'm testing the webhook.

    Cheers,

    Steve

    Tipene
    • Tipene
    • September 6, 2022
    Thanks for the clarification, Steven!
     
    Based off your original post, it sounds like the web widget is making use of the Contact Form API to present users a list of forms when submitting a request. These forms are pulled directly from the Zendesk instance that the web widget is associated using the contactForm object and a ticketForms array. Once the form has been submitted, this automatically creates a ticket in the Zendesk instance.
     
    Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to present a response to the user directly in the classic web widget once they’ve created a ticket form. For this type of functionality, you might want to take a look at messaging, along with Make an API call step in Flow Builder.
     
    An alternative within the scope of the classic web widget could be to have the user submit the form which creates a ticket, which’ll then execute a trigger that notifies a webhook to make a call to a piece of middleware that’ll return the data and update the ticket with the required information, and notify the user via email.
     
    I hope this helps! Feel free to reach out with any questions.
     
    Tipene
    S
    • Steven21
    • Author
    • September 6, 2022

    Hi Tipene

    Many thanks for your response, it has been very helpful. I think I will try your alternative method and see if it work out. Would the notification by email be possible through Zendesk or would this be the job of the middleware? Thanks again.

    Steve

    Tipene
    • Tipene
    • September 6, 2022
    You can definitely have the notification sent out via Zendesk! One approach could be having the middleware save the returned data to a ticket field via the tickets API, and then having a trigger listen for that change and send a notification via the trigger action. 
     
    For example, if you had a tracking number returned from the external URL, you could have the middleware save the tracking number as a custom field on the ticket then inject the custom field value in to an email template using placeholders, and send the email as the trigger action. 
    S
    • Steven21
    • Author
    • September 7, 2022

    Hi Tipene

    Thanks again for the assistance, much appreciated. Quick question with regard to the web-hook. I am unable to link to the one I'm testing through Zendesk as it is behind a firewall and there is no access to it. Is there a testing area on Zendesk where I can store it or will I need to find somewhere on our server which is outside the firewall so I can test it. Thanks.

    Steve

    Tipene
    • Tipene
    • September 8, 2022
    Hi Steven,
     
    Happy to help! If you're looking for a testing sandbox, maybe https://webhook.site/ might be useful?
    S
    • Steven21
    • Author
    • August 22, 2023

    Hi

    I'm just following this up 1 year later. I'm wondering has the new web widget moved along to a point where it is inline with the classic web widgets features? I'm looking to upgrade our web widget but would like to know what we'd lose in terms of features if we did. What is the cost of upgrading to the new web widget?

     

    Thanks,

    Steve

    Tipene
    • Tipene
    • August 22, 2023

    Hey @steven21!

    Here's a link to an article which goes through the differences between each web widget:

    https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4429429087002-Comparing-the-Zendesk-Web-Widgets

    You'll find that in some areas we are still working towards feature parity, and in other areas we are providing functionality that wasn't previously available on the classic web widget. And to answer your last question, there is no costs associated with upgrading to the new web widget! If you're interested in trying it out, here's a link that'll get you started:

    https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409103246874

    I hope this helps. Feel free to reach out with any questions.

    Tipene

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