Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Professional or higher, Explore Professional or higher |
| Access | Agent |
The limits, stated plainly. Two of them are commonly reported wrongly: there is some history, and read-only is not a Professional restriction.
Read-only, on every plan
The real-time monitoring dashboards are read-only. You can apply filters and drill into data, and that is the whole of it. Customisation is on Zendesk's list for a future update, but today it is not there.
This is worth being clear about, because the plan split people describe belongs to something else: the older Explore live dashboard, where Professional was read-only and Enterprise could clone and schedule it. That is a different feature, and it is being removed on 25 January 2027. Real-time monitoring has no such split, so being on Enterprise will not unlock customisation here.
You also cannot change an agent's state from these dashboards. They report, and nothing on them is a control.
There is history, but it is bounded
Recent history is available on many reports, up to 30 days back, and how far depends on the dashboard.
| Ticket progress | Zendesk's own documentation states both seven days and 30 days for this one, so check it against your own account before you rely on the window |
| Agent efficiency | Tickets created in the past 30 days |
| Agent productivity | All used capacity, whenever it was assigned |
Enough for a trend over the last few weeks. Not enough for a period comparison, a quarter, or anything anybody wants in writing, which is still Explore's job.
A naming note while you are looking: the overview names three dashboards, Incoming tickets, Ticket progress and Agent productivity, while the limitations page also refers to an Agent efficiency dashboard. Go by what your own account shows.
Rows and refresh
Tables show 100 rows, and a drill-in shows 500. On a large team that is a partial list, and it is not labelled as one.
KPIs and tables refresh every 20 seconds; charts covering hours or days refresh every minute. And a refresh resets the table sorting, so a column somebody sorted goes back to its default while they are reading it.
Filtering is limited
Some filter options only accept particular agent attributes. One specific trap: where an agent's name contains a special character, capacity does not display while the agent name filter is applied.
The Incoming tickets dashboard needs omnichannel routing, so it stays empty until that is on.
They will not match Explore
Different data, different moment, sometimes different definitions. Two numbers about the same thing that disagree, and neither is wrong.
Explaining this once to the team is easier than the recurring conversation.
Not a reporting source
Nothing to export, nothing to schedule, nothing to put in a monthly pack. If somebody needs it in a document, it is an Explore report.
What to do instead
- Want more than 30 days? Explore.
- Want your own metric or layout? Explore.
- Want it emailed? Explore, scheduled.
- Want a bit of live on a normal dashboard? Live components, remembering they stop displaying data on 25 January 2027.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.