Key takeaways
- Zendesk says the change does not apply to customers who bought the AI agents Advanced add-on.
- Zendesk’s pages give 10 December 2026 for removal and January and February 2027 for automatic migration, so confirm with Zendesk before planning around one date.
- Answers become dialogues, intents become use cases, and bot builder becomes dialogue builder.
- Staying on Zendesk is a rebuild, not a data migration. Moving platform adds a help centre and ticket history migration.
The dates, as Zendesk states them
| Date | What Zendesk says happens |
|---|---|
| 31 August 2026 | Maintenance mode: development stops except for critical bug fixes |
| 10 December 2026 | Essential AI agents, bot builder, answers, intents and autoreplies with articles no longer available (About AI agents page) |
| January 2027 | Essential AI agents not yet migrated are migrated for you, with some exceptions (removal announcement) |
| Beginning of February 2027 | Legacy AI agents not yet migrated are migrated for you, with some exceptions (removal announcement) |
What changes on Zendesk’s current AI agents
| Legacy | Current AI agents |
|---|---|
| Bot builder | Dialogue builder |
| Answers | Dialogues, or generative procedures |
| Intents | Use cases |
| One essential agent on several channels | One agent per channel type |
Before anything changes, write down what your current agents do: each agent and its channels, every answer flow and where it hands over to a person, every intent, and a baseline of automated resolutions and escalations. Zendesk itself suggests listing your answers and intents first.
Your two options
| Aspect | Rebuild on Zendesk AI agents | Move to another platform |
|---|---|---|
| What moves | Nothing; the help centre and tickets stay where they are | Help centre articles, ticket history, contacts and organizations |
| What is rebuilt | Agents, dialogues or procedures, use cases | The AI agent, plus the workflows, macros, views and SLAs around it |
If you move, migrate the help centre first, keep the Zendesk agent running while the new one is set up, then migrate ticket history with a catch-up run at cut-over. DataGrine handles that migration self-serve on the platform or fully managed by the migration team, with 24/7 support either way. See Zendesk to Intercom or Zendesk to Freshdesk.