When you're grouping or sorting items in a view, you are provided the option to group or sort in Ascending or Descending order.  When working with some datasets, the answer is intuitive, but less so in others.  Here is the unofficial guide to Ascending Vs. Descending when Grouping or Sorting Zendesk Support Ticket Views:

Alphabetical Data

When working with data that is alphabetical, Ascending will rank A>Z and Descending will rank Z>A.  This is the case when grouping/sorting by data such as Requester, Assignee, Brand, Organization, Subject, Channel, Group or Type, as well as any Custom Text Fields.

Numerical Data

Not surprisingly, when working with numbers Ascending results in smallest to largest (1>10) whereas Descending results in largest to smallest (10>1).  Similarly, dates data will rank Ascending oldest to newest and descending Newest to Oldest.  This includes things like Requested Date, Latest Update, Due Date, Date Solved and Next SLA Breach.  So if, for example, you wanted to see the tickets most in danger of breaching SLA first, you would sort your view by Next SLA Breach (Ascending).

Status

When grouping or ranking by status, Ascending will give you an order of New > Open > Pending > On-Hold > Solved > Closed, whereas Descending will reverse that order and return Closed > Solved > On-Hold > Pending > Open > New.

Priority and Satisfaction

The two outlying use cases when it comes to grouping and sorting are Priority and Satisfaction (C-Sat).  With priority, Ascending will result in Low > Normal > High > Urgent, whereas Descending will return Urgent > High > Normal > Low.  For satisfaction, Ascending will go from Unoffered > Offered, whereas Descending will go from Offered > Unoffered.

Did you find one that I missed?  Leave it in the comments below!

Brandon Tidd
729 Solutions