Insights recipe: Filtering for follow-up tickets

Zendesk is removing Insights reporting on February 5th, 2021. If you are using Insights, you’ll need to move to Explore, the latest generation of reporting for Zendesk products, before that time.

This recipe allows you to filter a report for follow-up tickets. It can be used to include or exclude those tickets.

Skill level: Intermediate

Time: 15-30 minutes

Conditions

This recipe requires two custom metrics and a numeric range filter.

Procedure

Step 1: Create Ticket Creation Events metric

Use the recipe from this article: Insights recipe: Ticket creation events. Make it a global metric, so you can use it in any report.

Step 2: Create Follow-Up Tickets metric

Note: These metrics use the Advanced Metric Editor. For more information, see Creating custom metrics in Insights.

Open the metric editor and create this metric:

• SELECT IFNULL((SELECT(SELECT Ticket Creation Events WHERE Ticket Update Via=Closed Ticket) BY Ticket Id ALL OTHER WITHOUT PF), 0)

Please note: You can't copy and paste in the metric editor. The color-coded items need to be selected from the Elements pick-list on the right:

• Ticket Creation Events is the metric from Step 1. It will be under Metrics
• Ticket Update Via and Ticket Id are under Attributes
• Closed Ticket is under Attribute Values > Ticket Update Via
• When you select "Attribute Values," it will show you the Attributes list. That's normal. Select "Ticket Update Via" to see all available values, then add "Closed Ticket."

Make this a global metric as well, so you can add it to any report.

The "BY Ticket Id ALL OTHER WITHOUT PF" portion means this metric will only consider Ticket IDs; it will ignore all other report and dashboard filters. (The PF stands for Parent Filter.) The underlying Ticket Creation Events metric is only looking at one specific ticket update. On its own, it may not accurately filter a report on other ticket updates. This "ALL OTHER" portion means the metric always applies to the ticket as a whole. It makes the metric more effective as a filter, but less useful to display under WHAT.

Step 3: Add a Numeric Range Filter

You do not need to display these metrics in the report under WHAT. You just need to create and save them, so they'll be available for a filter.

Create a report based on ticket data, then add a Numeric Range Filter:

• For the Attribute, choose Ticket Id
• For the Metric, choose the Follow-Up Tickets metric from Step 2
• For the Range, you have two options:
• "Is equal to 0" means you will only see tickets that are NOT follow-up tickets
• "Is equal to 1" means you will only see tickets that ARE follow-up tickets

Finding other types of tickets

This recipe is designed to find follow-up tickets specifically. You can easily modify the recipe to find other types of tickets instead.

For example, to find tickets from different channels, pick different values for Ticket Update Via. To find tickets created by agents, add a condition for the Updater Role.

You can get into a lot of detail with the conditions in this metric. As long as the overall metric follows this template, it should behave the same way in filters.