Configuring Zendesk skills for your agent

When Zendesk skills appear

The Zendesk Skills section is visible only when a Zendesk integration is active. It contains both built-in skills and configurable skills you manage directly from the Skills page. All skills below work for both email tickets and Zendesk Messaging chat-widget conversations.

Built-in skills

Assign to Available Agent

Always present when Zendesk is connected. The agent calls this to route the ticket to the next available human via Zendesk's automatic routing — no configuration needed.

Update Ticket

Always present when Zendesk is connected. The agent uses this to make direct changes without escalating:

• Status — pending, solved, or hold
• Priority — low, normal, high, or urgent
• Type — question, incident, problem, or task
• Internal note — a private comment not visible to the customer

Any combination can be applied in a single tool call.

Configurable skills

Assign to Specific Agent

Route a ticket directly to a specific Zendesk agent by their numeric Agent ID. Each skill has a name (e.g. Assign to Compliance), a description the AI uses to decide when to call it, and the agent ID. Find the ID in Zendesk: Admin › People › select the agent — the numeric ID is in the URL.

Assign to Group

Route a ticket to a specific Zendesk group, identified by its numeric Group ID. Find it in Admin › People › Groups › select the group — the ID is in the URL.

Add Tags

Apply a predefined set of tags to the ticket. Enter tags as a comma-separated list (e.g. vip, priority_customer). Tags are merged with existing tags — they are never removed. Use Zendesk tag format: lowercase with underscores.

Apply Macro

Trigger a Zendesk macro on the ticket. Find the macro ID in Admin › Workspaces › Macros › select the macro — the ID is in the URL.

Set Status

Change the ticket status as a single, intent-driven action. Each skill has a name (e.g. Mark as Solved), a description, and a target status (open, pending, hold, solved, or closed). Useful when you want the AI to confidently resolve simple tickets on its own.

Editing skills

Click the pencil icon on any row to edit it inline. Use Disable / Enable to temporarily suppress a skill without deleting it.

Chat-widget caveats

All Zendesk skills work for both email tickets and Zendesk Messaging chat, with two channel-specific behaviours:

• Assignment skills (Assign to Available Agent, Specific Agent, Group) for chat hand control to Zendesk Agent Workspace via Sunshine Conversations' passControl action. Zendesk's own routing then applies your preference. The actual queue placement happens inside Zendesk.
• Ticket-scoped skills (Add Tags, Set Status, Apply Macro, Update Ticket) operate on the underlying Zendesk ticket that Agent Workspace creates for the chat. If the AI calls one on a chat that hasn't been routed to a human yet (so no backing ticket exists), the tool returns a clear error and the AI typically falls back to assigning the chat first, then re-tries.