Enabling Side Conversations (Slack / Email) in Zendesk

Introduction / Problem statement
Sometimes agents need to loop in external stakeholders (e.g. product team, third-party vendor) via Slack or email without exposing internal threads to customer. Side Conversations feature lets you do this neatly. This article shows how to set it up and best use it.

Steps / Setup

1. Enable Side Conversations feature

   • Go to Admin → Settings → Side Conversations

   • Turn on Slack / Email side conversations as needed

2. Configure Slack / email integrations

   • For Slack: authorize your workspace, pick allowed channels

   • For email: define allowed domains or addresses

3. Use side conversations in tickets

   • In a ticket, click “Start side conversation” → choose Slack or email

   • Write internal message (not seen by requester)

   • Anyone added can reply within the thread; it remains linked to the ticket

4. Manage visibility and archiving

   • Side conversation comments are internal by default

   • Use tags or statuses if you want to later surface certain threads

Best practices / reminders

• Warn agents: side conversation messages are internal — don’t include customer-facing content.

• Limit Slack domains or channels to prevent noise.

• Archive or close side conversations once the issue is resolved to maintain clean ticket threads.