You can simply and effectively streamline your workflow by creating macros for support requests that can be solved with a single, standard response or action. This saves agents the time and effort of manually responding to multiple customers with the same issue.
A macro is a prepared response or action that an agent can manually apply when they are creating or updating tickets. Macros contain actions that can update ticket properties.
Unlike triggers and automations, macros only contain actions, not conditions. Conditions aren't used because nothing is automatically evaluating tickets to determine if a macro should be applied. Agents evaluate tickets and apply macros manually as needed.
Macros can perform tasks:
- Add comment text
- Update ticket fields
- Add or remove ticket tags
- Add CCs
- Change the assignee
- Set the ticket subject
- Add attachments to ticket comments
There are two types of macros: personal macros (created by an agent or administrator for their own use) and shared macros (created by an administrator for multiple users).
This article contains the following topics:
- Creating personal macros for tickets (agents)
- Creating personal or shared macros for tickets (administrators)
- Adding formatting and inline images to macro comments
- Adding attachments to macro comments
- Adding an alternate plain text version of a rich content macro comment
- Using placeholders in macros
Related articles:
Creating personal macros for tickets (agents)
Although only administrators can create the macros that are shared by all Zendesk Support agents, agents can create macros for their own use. A personal macro is only visible to and can only be used or modified by the creator.
You can create macros from scratch, as described here, or you can create macros based on existing tickets.
To create a personal macro for tickets
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Macros.
- Click the All shared macros drop-down menu and select Personal macros.
- Click the Add macro button.
- Enter the macro name, and add actions for your macro as described in Building macro action statements.
- Click Create.
Your personal macros are added to the list of available macros.
Creating personal or shared macros for tickets (administrators)
Administrators (and some custom roles) can create macros that are shared by all Zendesk Support agents or macros that are shared by only agents in a specific group. Administrators can also create personal macros for their own use.
A personal macro is only visible to and can only be used or modified by the creator. Administrators can create shared macros, and can modify all shared macros, regardless of who created them.
You can create macros from scratch, as described here, or you can create macros based on existing tickets.
To create a personal or shared macro for tickets
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Macros.
- Click Add macro.
- Enter a Macro name.
- (Optional) Enter a Description.
- Select an option from the Available
for
menu:
- All agents, available to all agents.
- Agents in group, available only to agents in the group specified. A drop-down menu to choose the group appears when you select this option.
- Me only, available only to you.
Note: The Agents in group option is available on Support Professional and Enterprise. - Click
Add action, then
select
an action for your macro (see
Building macro action
statements)
and complete the corresponding field that appears.
If you choose the Comment/description macro action, and you have rich text formatting enabled, you can add formatting and inline images and you can add attachments to your macro comments.
- Click Add action again to add another action and repeat as needed.
- Click Create.
Adding formatting and inline images to macro comments
If you have rich text formatting enabled, you can add styling, formatting, and inline images to the Comment/description macro action. An administrator must enable this setting. For details, see Enabling formatting options for agents.
To add formatting to your comment
- In the macro, under the comment box, click the T at the bottom of the field.
This opens the rich text editor interface:
- Select the formatting you want to apply to the text.
Toolbar button Formatting Keyboard shortcuts Increase/decrease heading style Increase: Ctrl + +
⌘ + + (Mac)Decrease: Ctrl + -
⌘ + - (Mac)
Bold Ctrl + B
⌘ + B (Mac)Italicize Ctrl + I
⌘ + I (Mac)Bulleted list Ctrl Shift + 8
⌘ + Shift + 8(Mac)Numbered list Ctrl + Shift + 7
⌘ + Shift + 7 (Mac)Decrease paragraph indentation Ctrl + [
⌘ + [ (Mac)Increase paragraph indentation Ctrl + ]
⌘ + ] (Mac)Block quote Ctrl + Shift + 9
⌘ + Shift + 9 (Mac)Code block Ctrl + Shift + 6
⌘ + Shift + 6 (Mac)Code span Ctrl + Shift + 5
⌘ + Shift + 5 (Mac)Hyperlink Ctrl + K
⌘ + K (Mac)Horizontal line Ctrl + Shift + L
⌘ + Shift + L (Mac)
If you created a macro with the Comment/description action before the addition of rich text formatting, you can update your macro by clicking the Use rich content link. This copies your existing comment action, loads in the rich content editor, and places your comment back into the editor. You can then apply formatting and images or attachments as needed.
Now you can add a plain text version of you rich content macro comment, if you want. The plain text version will be intelligently applied in channels that don't support rich text formatting.
To add inline images to your comment
- Drag and drop an image from your computer into the comment window, or paste a copied image into the window by right-clicking and selecting Paste or by pressing Ctrl or ⌘ + V.
Adding attachments to macro comments
Comments in your macros can also contain up to five file attachments.
The maximum file size for a single linked attachment is 50 MB. For more information, see Attachment size limitations.
To attach one or more files to a comment
- Click the paperclip icon in the at the bottom of the field.
- Browse to the file you want to attach.
- Select the file, and click Choose.
The file is added to the ticket.
Adding an alternate plain text version of a rich content macro comment
If you added styling, formatting, or inline images to the Comment/description macro action, you can add an alternate plain text version, if you want.
The plain text version will be intelligently applied in channels that don't support rich text formatting. These include the Zendesk mobile app, Zendesk SMS, the Zendesk Facebook or Twitter integrations, and any of the Zendesk channel apps.
- In the macro, under the rich content version of the comment, select Include plain
text fallback.
- In the pre-populated version that appears, make any modifications needed to create the
plain text version of the macro comment.
Using placeholders in macros
- When you apply a macro with placeholders to a Problem ticket, the placeholder is rendered when the macro is applied, not when the ticket is submitted. This can produce some unexpected results. For example, if you send an email response to Problem ticket using a macro that contains the {{ticket.requester.name}} placeholder, the ticket’s requester name is sent to all linked tickets, not just the ticket associated with the requester.
- To prevent this from happening, add an escape character (\) in front of the placeholder. For example, \ {{ticket.requester.name}}. In this case, the placeholder is not rendered until the ticket is submitted, which will show the correct name to each user who submitted a ticket linked to the problem.
56 Comments
Hi Jenna!
I'm not sure what you mean by "pipe text". Where do you want to send that information once it's extracted from the ticket?
Hi,
Might not be best place to post - but Facebook message integration - using a macro to respond, it populates into the message " <p> [comment] <p> " - this actually is included when sent, and seen form the customer side of things.
How can this be fixed?
Cheers
Hey Conza,
It it looks like Claudia replied to your other post here.
I would recommend checking to make sure you have a plain text version of your macro as Facebook does not support rich text.
Cheers!
Hi There,
When I insert an inline image or image attachment into a macro, the image orientation changes from portrait to landscape. The image width is 600px and the original orientation is portrait.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
UPDATE: I changed the size to 500px wide and are no longer having issues. Solved myself :-) Good on me!
I think it would improve the clarity of this article if you mention that custom roles can create shared macros too if assigned that permission inside the Shared macros section as well. I know it's briefly noted at the beginning but it's slightly confusing when it says only admins can do it when you go into detail below, especially since thats the section that is supposed to go into detail. This is related to the "Creating personal or shared macros for tickets (administrators)" header. Perhaps something like..
"Administrators (or other custom roles) can create macros that are shared by all Zendesk support agents...."
Just a thought!
Thanks for sharing Ryan!
I'll pass this feedback along to our documentation team to see if we can get this added :)
I have a multi-select ticket field used for missing information. The agents would tick whatever information the client hasn't yet provided us and then I'd like a Macro to be created with this where I've already written out a template saying that we are awaiting their reply on the missing details. We'd also set up a similar trigger to follow up on this as well.
I've used {{ticket.ticket_field_option_title_360003324740}} but when I do so it enters the text in one line with commas in between the options. I would prefer it to be a bullet point list.
How it looks:
How I wanted it to look:
Any help would be appreciated!
Hello Tamara,
After looking over your post, we feel it would be ideal for our Community AMA being hosted tomorrow on 7-23-2019 at 11 AM PDT. If you would like your question to be considered, please follow the instructions in the link below to have one of our experts address your issue personally during this event.
Community Trigger AMA
I cannot see that I should be able to add an attachment to a macro.Is that still possible?
Hi Erling -
Yes, you should be able to add an attachment to a comment that was added via a Macro.
Are you not seeing the paperclip icon show up in the comment editor window?
No that is my problem. I cannot see the paperclip.
Hey Erling,
I double-checked on my end and it looks like this option will be hidden if you don't have Rich Content enabled under Admin>Settings>Tickets. Can you try enabling this and then create the macro?
You'll want to hit the save button at the bottom of the page as well. I know that button can be easily missed :)
Let me know if you continue to experience issues.
Cheers!
Hello,
I've been using macros for some years now, and one feature that would really be useful is the ability to preconfigure email addresses in the "Requester" field.
We have a lot of tickets we create ourselves to send to partner companies/suppliers (around 50). Agents have to look up these email addresses and copy or type them, which has caused errors at several instances.
A macro per company/supplier, with the email address prefilled in each macro, would save a lot of time and reduce human errors.
A workaround I'm thinking to apply is adding the email address in the body of the ticket, from where it can be cut and pasted in the Requester field. But this is still not ideal.
Is Zendesk planning to add the possibility to configure email addresses in the Requester field? Or are there other alternatives? (Adding a contact in cc is not the first option ;-))
Thank you!
Hello Giel Vermeulen,
Currently, we have no updates we can announce at this time to our current roadmap. I would recommend posting your feedback in our Support Product Feedback forum so our devs can consider your request for future updates.
Best regards.
Thank you, Devan. I have posted my feedback in the Support Product Feedback forum. Best regards.
Shared macro by group do not works on default group.
This is a problem for us as our agents belongs to more then one group
Therefore the shared filter do not works.
For this reason I would like to suggest to update this filter on default group
Hello!
We use macros also for sending emails to our partners. For specific cases (there's separate macro for each of them) we need to contact different department on different e-mail address. It would be great to be able to define requester in the macro.
Can it be done?
Hello,
Is it possible to add as action for some macros a switch from 'Next ticket in view' to 'Stay on ticket'?
Our agents need more time on some of the tickets and we use macros just to send a canned response to the customer to let them know we're already working on it.
Hi there!
Unfortunately it is not possible for a macro to set that, as it isn't technically a ticket property. I would recommend having the macro instead assign the ticket to the user so when this occurs they can simply close the next ticket and then go back to their personal view. Or, they can set "stay on ticket" manually right next to the ticket status field on the bottom right.
I know this isn't exactly what you were hoping to hear, but please let us know if you have any further questions!
New feature request macro suggestion based on ticket tags. Please upvote this feature if you find it useful. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360052615213-Macro-Suggestion-by-Tag
Can we make a macro that adds a tag and allows users that normally don't have the ability to apply a tag to apply it?
Hi Reneé Lasswell,
Tags themselves cannot alter the permissions on a ticket, however there might be a way to accomplish what you're looking for. Could you describe the scenario that you'd want to do this and a bit more about your use case?
Thanks!
Ben Van Iten
I want to use a tag on tickets to remove them from some views (temporarily) and place them in others.
For example, quarantine. Our agents usually don't have permission to add/remove tags. So I want them to use a macro that sets that tag on the ticket. And give them permission to use that macro instead.
Unfortunately, they can click the macro and it not apply the tag. I assumed this is due to permission restrictions. I really only want them to be able to apply -this- tag.
Hi Reneé Lasswell,
I see what you mean. Macros do not get around permissions, however business rules do. It might be worth considering using a custom field that they can set and either base the view off of that, or have the selection of the custom field initiate a trigger that adds the tag and then that will work.
My apologies that my suggestion is a bit of a workaround, but I don't anticipate any change to that kind of macro functionality so just trying to work out a solution.
Please let us know if we can offer any further assistance!
As an Admin, how can I see my individual agents' personal macros and vet them? I have found how t disable personal macros going forward but need to remove/corral existing macros before the policy change...
Hi there,
Just want to clarify that reference to being able to add CC's in macros is actually referring to what is now known as Followers correct?
We do have a few cases where we'd like to use macros to add actual CC's (non agents) and that doesn't seem possible although mentioned in this article under:
Macros can perform tasks:
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