Service Incident - July 11, 2024 - Chat & Messaging in Agent Workspace | All Pods - Chat shortcut placeholder issue for agent Alias

SUMMARY

Following migration to the Messaging Omnichannel Backend (OCB), a small subset of customers reported a change in the behavior of the Chat shortcut placeholders. Specifically, the {{agent_name}} placeholder was pulling the full agent's name instead of the Chat Display name that had been set.

 

Timeline

July 11, 2024 06:18 PM UTC | July 11, 2024 11:18 AM PT
We are aware of a Chat and Messaging issue for some customers wherein an agent's full name will be displayed in the Web Widget and conversations instead of their Chat display name. This impacts customers who have migrated to the Omnichannel Backend Routing. In order to ensure your agent's names are sent in chat and messaging with only their intended alias you will need to perform the following actions: 1. Set a Support alias in addition to your Chat display name 2. Update Chat shortcuts to not use {{agent_name}} Our teams are reviewing this behavior and we will provide further updates as they become available. Please reach out to our Customer Advocacy team if you have any questions.

July 12, 2024 12:00 PM UTC | July 12, 2024 05:00 AM PT
A fix has been implemented for the issue where an agent’s full name was displayed in the Web Widget and conversations instead of their Chat display name. You should now see that placeholders in shortcuts reference the agent’s alias. Please refresh your browser to see the most updated version of the system. Thank you for your patience while we resolved this.

July 16, 2024 09:00 AM UTC | July 12, 2024 01:00 AM PT

Thank you again for your patience while we checked and solved this. As a reminder, the fix was made exclusively for the affected the Chat placeholder {{agent_name}}. All other behavior remains as it was - ie. We still expect Support Aliases to display instead of Chat Display Name for Messaging Omnichannel Backend (OCB) accounts.For OCB accounts, the behavior is the Chat Display Name will be the one shown for chat widgets, and the Support alias for messaging web widgets.

POST-MORTEM

Root Cause Analysis

This incident was caused by the process breakdown during initial planning of the Messaging Omnichannel Backend (OCB) and not picked up during testing. The feature's performance in relation to the {{agent_name}} in the new OCB environment was not clearly defined, causing the problem [1]. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, a fix was implemented in collaboration with the product team. Consequently, while using OCB, which is already available to multiple users, the messaging name will represent their Support Alias. An agent cannot have different aliases for email and messaging. However, Chat widgets will continue using the Chat Display name [1].

Remediation Items

Immediate steps to prevent such issues in the future include an update to the product documentation. It should clearly define how features operate in different environments (OCB and non-OCB) [2]. Additionally, improvements to processes are necessary during the planning and testing stages to ensure all features are thoroughly defined and confirmed to function as expected. The absence of alerts suggests that monitoring and alerting parameters should be reviewed, thereby forging a path towards more effective issue detection.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For current system status information about your Zendesk, check out our system status page. The summary of our post-mortem investigation is usually posted here a few days after the incident has ended. If you have additional questions about this incident, contact Zendesk customer support.