If you would like Zendesk to automatically generate a ticket for you at specified intervals, e.g. a monthly "run billings" reminder ticket, here's a way to do it.

1. Create a suitable GMail account, e.g. company.task.scheduler@gmail.com

2. Add this "system user" to your Zendesk account as an end user and setup the appropriate triggers to accommodate this user as explained here: https://support.zendesk.com/forums/3199/entries...

3. Using the GMail calendar, create a recurring event

4. Define that calendar should send you an email reminder of this event

5. Configure your GMail account to forward emails to eg. tasks@company.zendesk.com (or whatever inbound address you decided for in step 2). Use a filter for this, such that only emails from calendar-notification@google.com get forwarded to your Zendesk account.

We'll be pushing a lot of infrastructural changes into production in the coming weekend. We aim to do this on Saturday the 19th, and expect this to be done in the early morning EST. We estimate a 1 hour down time at most. Email communication may experience delays over the weekend as we are going to be doing some updates in this area in order to better manage spam.

We recommend that you subscribe to our operations blog at http://operations.zendesk.com/ in order to get these notifications and updates in a timely manner.

Share the Zen with the amazing Zendesk Buddha Machine, that you can now embed directly in your Zendesk help desk. Simply select and copy the html code below and paste it into one the widget areas in your help desk. Widget configuration is located under the tab ACCOUNT, menu item Widgets.

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="200" height="230" id="FM3" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.zendesk.com/media/FM3.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
<embed src="http://www.zendesk.com/media/FM3.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="200" height="230" name="FM3" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>

With the Highrise CRM widget you can lookup any ticket requester in your 37signals Highrise account when handling tickets in your zendesk. You can even add notes to the user.

Configuring your Highrise widget

Insert the following javascript snippet in the ticket widget in the ACCOUNT/widgets page in your zendesk, and type in your Highrise authorization token as the username (the token can be revealed in your "My info" page in Highrise). Remember to type in your HighriseAccountName as well and indicate whether your Highrise account utilizes SSL or not (use_ssl).

<div id="highrise-lookup" use_ssl="false" domain="HighriseAccountName.highrisehq.com"  default="{{requester.name}}"
username="YourHighriseToken" password="X">
<h3 id="title"></h3>
<div id="content"></div>   
</div>
<script src="/javascripts/push/highrise.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

This allows all your agents to lookup users from one Highrise account without individual logins. If you wish to have your agents login to individual Highrise accounts, remove the username and password parts of the widget. This will have the widget prompt your agents for an individual token per Zendesk session.

Now, whenever an agent handles a ticket, the agent can lookup the requester within context:

Furhtermore, agents can add notes to the user in Highrise. The note will also be added as an event to the ticket:

Note in Zendesk

Note in Highrise