Is your Zendesk Web Widget chatbot EU AI Act ready?

Zendesk Web Widget and Article 50, briefly

Zendesk runs two generations of widget side by side: the classic Web Widget and the newer Messaging widget. From the outside they look nearly identical, but where you set text differs completely, and only Messaging ships with a bot behind it. Follow the wrong guide and the notice lands somewhere visitors never look.

What our scans found on Zendesk Web Widget sites

We have not yet scanned enough sites where Zendesk Web Widget was the first widget we detected to say anything meaningful here. As soon as the sample is large enough it will appear, counts included. We would rather publish nothing than a percentage based on two sites.

How we detect Zendesk Web Widget

Our scanner looks for these signals on your public page. Two independent signals are required for a match, so a blog post that merely names the vendor does not count.

Script hosts

static.zdassets.comekr.zdassets.comwidget-mediator.zopim.com

JS globals

window.zEwindow.zEmbedwindow.$zopim

DOM selectors

#ze-snippetiframe#webWidgetiframe#launcher

Where the AI notice goes in Zendesk Web Widget

Admin Center, Channels, Messaging, your Web Widget, under responses or greeting. If you run a bot, the first step in Flow Builder is where the sentence belongs.

1. 1

   Open Admin Center and go to Channels, Messaging.

2. 2

   Pick the Web Widget that runs on your site.

3. 3

   Open Flow Builder and select the default answer flow.

4. 4

   Edit the first message so it opens with the AI notice.

5. 5

   Publish the flow; changes only go live once published.

Zendesk Web Widget documentation: support.zendesk.com

What goes wrong most often with Zendesk Web Widget

Three mistakes we run into on sites that did set the notice. Each one costs points in the scan, and each one takes minutes to fix.

• Flow edited but never published

  Flow Builder keeps a draft. Visitors keep seeing the previous version until you hit publish. This is the single most common reason a Zendesk rescan shows nothing new while the customer is certain they changed it.

• The notice lives in the Help Center, not the widget

  A paragraph about AI in a Help Center article is fine background, but visitors who click the launcher never get there. Our scanner reports that as a notice on a linked page, which is a weaker signal than a notice inside the widget.

• Two widgets on one site

  During a Classic to Messaging migration both scripts sometimes stay in place. Visitors see the old widget while you edit the new one. Check the page source to see which of the two actually loads before changing anything.

Checking that it works in Zendesk Web Widget

First check which widget your site actually loads: search the page source for the static.zdassets.com script and see whether the path points at messaging or at the classic widget. Then open your site in an incognito window, click the launcher and read the first message. Still seeing the old text? Your flow is edited but not published, which on Zendesk is the most common cause. Test your Help Center separately as well, because it runs on its own theme with its own copy of your scripts.

After that you can scan again. Our scan looks at the same public page a visitor does, so what you see in an incognito window is roughly what we see.

Frequently asked questions

Running another widget as well?

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• Chatwoot and Article 50
• Freshchat and Article 50