A lookup relationship field is a type of custom field that you can add to users, organizations, tickets, and custom objects in Zendesk. After adding a lookup relationship field, team members can use it to establish relationships with other users, organizations, tickets, custom objects, or in some cases, articles and brands.
You can add a lookup relationship field to ticket forms, user profiles, organization pages, and custom object schemas. When you do, agents can use this field to look up and select from a list of users, organizations, tickets, custom object records, brands, or articles in your Zendesk account.
You can use lookup fields in creative ways that serve your specific business needs. For example, you could create a lookup field called Manager, tie that lookup field to your account's users, and add the field to your ticket form. Your agents could then use this field on a ticket to select a manager from a list of your organization's users.
If you delete a lookup relationship field, the data in the field is also deleted. To preserve the data, deactivate the field rather than deleting it.
This article contains the following topics:
Understanding the custom field
A lookup relationship field is a custom field that lets you look up and select from a list of users, organizations, tickets, custom object records, brands, or articles in your Zendesk account. The following example shows a lookup relationship field on a ticket. When a team member clicks the field, an auto-populated list of options is provided as you type in the field. You don't have to define the options yourself, as you do for other dropdown custom fields, although you can filter the available options when defining the field.
After selecting a record in a ticket lookup relationship that points to a custom object, you can preview the record details within the ticket.
After selecting a record in a user, organization, or custom object lookup relationship field, you can view the record details by clicking the field name:
You can add lookup relationship fields to the following pages in the Zendesk interface:
- Ticket forms or the support request form in your help center
- The user profile page
- The organization page
- Custom objects
These pages represent the possible source object of a relationship. For example, a user displayed in the user profile page can be the source object of a relationship with another user, organization, ticket or custom object. The lookup relationship field lets you select the other object — also known as the related object — in the relationship.
You can make a lookup relationship field conditional so that it only appears to agents under certain circumstances. See Creating conditional ticket fields and Configuring agent access to custom object records.
Understanding the relationships
A lookup relationship can be expressed as follows:
source object → related object
The source object is the Zendesk object that contains the lookup relationship field (among other fields). It can be a user, organization, ticket, or custom object. The related object is the object specified by the lookup relationship field. It can be a user, organization, ticket, or custom object. Additionally, for custom objects, the related object can be a brand or an article in Zendesk Knowledge. Lookup relationships with legacy custom objects are not supported.
If you create a relationship between a source ticket and a related user, the ticket record will have a lookup relationship field identifying the user. However, the corresponding user record will not have a field identifying the ticket. Instead of a field, the user record will have a Related tab listing the ticket along with all the other source objects it’s related to.
Each source object can be related to only one related object. However, many source objects can be related to one related object. For example, after adding an organization lookup relationship field to users, you could then establish many relationships between users and one organization. Example:
- User 1 - Org A
- User 2 - Org A
- User 3 - Org A
- ...
You can view the relationships in ticket forms, user profiles, organization pages, and custom object record details.
You can also use the Zendesk API to list the users, organizations, tickets, or custom object records related to a specific related object. For example, you can request a list of all tickets related to a specific support manager. To learn more, see Retrieving lookup relationship data with the API in the developer docs.
Searching records by lookup relationship field values is not supported.
Examples of lookup relationship fields
There are many ways you can use lookup relationship fields to build out complex relationship ecosystems within Zendesk Support. The following are some examples to help you start thinking about ways you can use these custom fields:
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You're an admin for a trucking company and you want to associate shippers, drivers, and recipients with tickets. You add three filtered lookup relationship fields to tickets: a user field named Drivers, an organization field named Shippers, and another organization field named Recipients.
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Your company is in the business-to-business (B2B) space and interacts with many other companies. You want to track the relationships these companies have with each other. You decide to use organization lookup relationship fields to create and track these relationships. For example, you might have a field named Partner, a second named Subsidiary, and a third named Competitor.
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In another business-to-business scenario, each of your account managers works with a key stakeholder at each of your customer companies. You create a user lookup relationship field named Account Manager to establish relationships between the stakeholders and your account managers.
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You want to designate emergency contacts for members on your team in case a member is not available. You decide to use a user lookup field named Emergency Contact to create these user-to-user relationships. In a more complex use case, you could add additional user fields, for example Backup 1 and Backup 2, to establish a priority of backups for each person.
- You run an IT desk and want users to select the asset about which they are
submitting a ticket within the ticket form. To accomplish this, you define a
ticket lookup relationship field named Related asset that points to a
custom object named Asset. The lookup field is configured to filter
results so that only records pertaining to the user are available for selection,
and it's marked as required on the IT ticket form.Note: Only lookup fields pointing to custom objects can be visible to end users. Furthermore, end users must be signed in to see lookup fields in ticket forms.