Connecting Zendesk Messaging

With Zendesk Messaging connected, Flexivity AI answers customers in your messaging channels, such as the Web Widget, from the same knowledge, rules and settings it uses on tickets. When it cannot help, or the customer asks for a person, it hands the conversation to your agents in Zendesk with the whole chat on the ticket.

Messaging is an addition to the Flexivity AI app for Zendesk Support, not a replacement for it. Connect Zendesk first (Connecting Zendesk), then connect messaging.

Before you begin

There is nothing to copy or paste: Flexivity sets up the connection with Zendesk itself.

1. Connect messaging

You can start from Flexivity or from Zendesk. Either way ends in the same place.

From the Flexivity console

1. In the admin console at app.flexivity.ai , open Help Desk and choose your Zendesk instance.
2. On the Zendesk Messaging card, click Connect Zendesk Messaging.
3. Zendesk asks you to choose your Zendesk account and to allow Flexivity AI access to messaging. Use the same Zendesk account the instance is connected to: in a browser signed in to several, a private window avoids choosing the wrong one.
4. Click Allow. You are returned to the instance page, which shows Messaging is connected.

From the Zendesk Marketplace

1. In Zendesk, open the Marketplace and find Flexivity AI among the bots.
2. Click Install, choose your Zendesk account and click Allow.
3. You are taken to the Flexivity admin console. Sign in if asked; the instance page shows Messaging is connected.

If Flexivity is not yet connected to that Zendesk account, the install stops with a page saying Install Flexivity for Zendesk first. Nothing is saved. Connect Zendesk, then connect messaging again from the instance page.

What connecting does

1. Stores Zendesk’s access to your messaging, encrypted.
2. Creates a webhook in your messaging account, with a key unique to your install, so Flexivity hears each new message.
3. Adds Flexivity AI to your Marketplace bots in Zendesk, ready for you to assign.

Flexivity does not answer anyone yet. That waits for the next step.

2. Assign Flexivity AI to your channels

Until it is assigned, the Zendesk Messaging card shows Connected and lists the steps left.

1. In Zendesk, open Admin Center → AI → AI agents → AI agents, and click Marketplace bots.
2. Make Flexivity AI the responder, either:
   • for every channel: open the options menu on Flexivity AI, choose Assign default, and click Save; or
   • for some channels: click Flexivity AI, expand Basics, tick the channels under Channels, and click Save.
3. Turn on continuous conversations for the channel, so a customer who comes back later reaches the same conversation.

Assigning Flexivity AI replaces the bot or automatic response that held the channel before.

3. Check it

1. Open your Web Widget (or another assigned channel) as a customer and ask a question your help center answers.
2. Flexivity replies in the chat, marked by Zendesk as generated by AI. No ticket is created for a conversation the AI answers.
3. In the admin console, the Zendesk Messaging card now shows Answering. It changes after the first conversation reaches Flexivity.

To see a hand-over, ask for a person. The customer is told an agent will take over, and a ticket appears in your agents’ views with the whole conversation on it. An agent replying there replies in the chat.

How conversations end

• Resolved: the customer’s question is answered; Flexivity releases the conversation.
• Handed over: the customer asks for a person, the AI cannot help, or the conversation runs past the limits you set. Flexivity passes the conversation to your agents, and the ticket carries the chat.
• Silence: the customer stops replying. After a while, Flexivity closes its part of the conversation.

How long the AI waits for a reply, what happens when a customer goes quiet, and the other chat limits are set on AI Configuration, per brand, separately from tickets.

Disconnecting and removing messaging

To stop Flexivity answering in messaging while keeping it on tickets:

1. In Zendesk, open Admin Center → AI → AI agents → AI agents → Marketplace bots.
2. If Flexivity AI is the default responder, give the role to another responder first: on Flexivity AI’s options menu, choose Assign default to Zendesk AI agents. Zendesk will not remove a bot that holds the default role. If it is assigned to particular channels instead, click it, untick them under Channels, and click Save.
3. Remove Flexivity AI: on its options menu, choose to uninstall it, and confirm.

Zendesk tells Flexivity the bot was removed. Flexivity checks with Zendesk that its access really has ended, then stops answering in messaging. The Zendesk Messaging card returns to Not connected. Past conversations are kept under your plan’s data-retention settings.

To reconnect later, start again from step 1.

Disconnect Zendesk on the Help Desk page, which disconnects the whole instance, also deletes the messaging credentials Flexivity stored. Remove the bot in Zendesk as well, so it no longer appears under Marketplace bots.

If something is not working

• The card says Connected but never Answering: Flexivity AI is not yet the responder on the channel you used. Check step 2, and that no other bot holds that channel.
• “This Zendesk messaging account is already connected to another Flexivity instance”: messaging can be connected to one instance at a time. Disconnect it from the other instance first.
• “You granted access to … but this Flexivity instance is connected to …”: you chose a different Zendesk account at the consent screen. Try again in a private window, signed in only to the right account.
• “We found more than one Flexivity instance for this Zendesk account”: start the connection from the instance’s page in the Flexivity console instead of the Marketplace.

What Flexivity reads and stores from messaging is listed in Data disclosures: Zendesk.