Typically, when end users submit support requests, they provide the subject and description of their question or support issue in system ticket fields. They may also be prompted to provide additional data such as a product type or model number using custom ticket fields.
Collectively, the predefined set of ticket fields are a ticket form. Ticket fields on a ticket form, are visible to end users in the contact form, in the Help Center or Web Widget for example, and to agents in a ticket, as shown here. You can activate
Tickets contain other data that you can access using placeholders and the Zendesk API. See Ticket data.
There are two types of ticket fields:
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System ticket fields are the standard, default fields that agents see in a ticket. Additional system fields are added to the ticket page when you activate additional Zendesk Support features, such as ticket sharing. You can deactivate and reactivate some (but not all) of the system fields.
See the complete list of system ticket fields below.
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Custom ticket fields can be created in addition to system ticket fields to gather additional information from the person who is requesting support. For example, you may add a custom field prompting them to select a product name or model number.
See the following articles:
- Optimizing your ticket form to understand ticket fields and do some planning to build an optimal ticket form.
- Adding custom fields to your tickets and support request form to create the custom ticket fields you need.
You can view and manage all of you ticket fields on the Ticket fields admin page. See Viewing your ticket fields.
System ticket fields
The system ticket fields that are part of a ticket by default are detailed below. Some system fields are inborn and cannot be reconfigured. See What are the inborn system ticket rules.
System field | Description |
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Requester | All tickets require a requester. The requester is the person who made the support request.
If a ticket is created by an agent and the requester field is left empty, then the agent will be the requester of the ticket. If needed, the ticket requester can be changed to someone else. See Updating the ticket requester. You can also create a ticket on someone else's behalf. See Creating a ticket on behalf of the requester. |
Follower | Followers can be agents, light agents, or admins, but not end users. Similar to a persistent BCC, followers receive notifications when ticket updates occur, and they can view and create internal notes. Followers are invisible to end users, but CCs are not. See When to use CCs and followers. |
Assignee | The assignee can be either a group or a specific agent. See Manually assigning a ticket to yourself, another agent, or a group. |
CCs | If you have been configured to allow it, other people can be copied on tickets. Both the requester and agents can add CCs to a ticket. The requester does it by adding CC email addresses if they requested support via your support email address. Agents can add CCs using the CC field when updating the ticket. See Using CCs, followers, and @mentions. |
Share | The Share field is only displayed if you have enabled ticket sharing, which means that tickets can be shared with other Zendesk Support accounts. See Sharing tickets. |
Subject | The Subject field is required. It's typically included in the support request submitted by the requester. For example, when someone submits a support request via email, the subject line of the email is used as the ticket's subject. If the ticket title does not appear in the ticket subject, your Subject field might not be visible to end users. To correct this, see this Support Tech Note. |
Description | The Description field is required. This is the text of the support request. When an end user submits a support request via email, the body of the email request is used as the description. The description becomes the first comment in the ticket. |
Status | There are six values for status. A ticket's status can be set and updated either manually by an agent or automatically via your business rules.
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Type | There are four values for type. Setting the type helps you to categorize your tickets, which you can then use in your workflow. For example, you can create views of tickets by their type. While the field can be blank initially (and through any number of updates), once you change the field to a specified type, you can't change it to blank again.
If an administrator deactivates the Type field, all your tickets default to Incident. |
Priority | There are four values for priority: Low, Normal, High, and Urgent.
By default, all of these four values are available, but you can allow only the Normal and High values to appear. To do so, edit the priority field, then change the setting under Field values. Priority is not a required field, so you do not always need to select a value. How you weigh the priority of your tickets is up to you. |
Tags | Tags are used throughout to add additional information to tickets, which can then be used in your ticket workflow. Tags can be added to tickets in the following ways:
Tags are enabled by default but can be disabled. See Enabling and disabling ticket tags. |
102 Comments
How can I have a clickable URL in a field description?
It seems like the [Type] field should have an option for "Communication", "Information", or "Updates". Is there an opportunity to add other values to the [Type] field.
Hi David!
Ticket Type is a system field, and as such can't be modified. You definitely have the option to create your own custom drop-down field that better suits your workflow, though. You can find more information on that here: Adding and using custom ticket fields.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi @Cyriac - I've been playing around with several options in making a clickable description field, but it just isn't something that can currently be done. Sorry if that's a bummer! I did find a request for this functionality here, so I would definitely suggest you add your interest!
note A colleague made note of an support tip that should actually get you where you are looking to go @Cyriac! Please visit the following link for more information!
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661336-Customizing-custom-ticket-field-descriptions-with-HTML
Are there any implications to changing the Title or Tag? For example, if I update the title of a field option, will all previous tickets be updated with that new value, or will they be removed, or something else? Same question with the tag of a field option.
Hey @Will! If you update a ticket field's title, then the title for this field on tickets (previous and new) will be updated, as the field itself is based off of its field ID. However, the value of this field should remain the same unless otherwise updated by an agent or admin (if it's still possible to update the ticket).
If a field has added a tag to a ticket, and you rename the field's title, or the tag's title, the tag value on the ticket should remain the same.
@Michael, is there an impact in Insights? I am pretty sure that Insights will now show two separate fields even though there is only one in Zendesk - Is that correct?
Hey @Colin, thanks for reaching out! I'm currently investigating to confirm this and will follow up as soon as I have more information.
Hi Colin, Michael gave me a heads up about this conversation so jumping in now! The answer depends on when the project was created - any projects created in the last few months have been getting a version of Insights that uses the ID of the field. So updating the field is fine as the ID remains the same. For pre-existing projects we've been migrating (much more slowly than I would have liked) to using the custom field IDs as well. We've re-focussed on this more recently to get all projects using the custom field ID approach instead. If you have a specific issue relating to custom field changes in Insights, please raise a ticket and we can take a look at it.
Hi
Are there any plans to allow Administrators / Agents to update the 'Type' field? As it is a System field we're finding it restrictive having the 4 options that are available.
Thanks,
Sharon
Hi Sharon!
This is not something that we have planned at the moment; your best option is still going to be to create a custom Type field with the options you wish to use.
We do have a thread about this in our Product Feedback forum. It hasn't had any comments in a while, but I'd still encourage you to add your voice and use case to that thread. Our Product Managers see all of those posts and comments, and it's the best way to make sure they see your suggestions! You can find it here: Customize ticket type and ticket priority.
I haven't had a chance to review the responses, but can you please explain why deactivating the Type field defaults all tickets to Incident?
Hi Solkem,
Disabling the Type field doesn't change the Type value of existing tickets. However, it will remove that field from your ticket form so it is no longer visible, and any new tickets created while Type is disabled will default to the type "Incident". As to the reasoning, the most common types would be Question or Incident, and I believe Incident is chosen because it covers more situations than Question. Do you anticipate that causing issues?
Can I remove the description from a end user form? I have a type of form with just a series of check boxes and drop downs as I need very specific information from the end customer. The description they try to give is about 90% not useful and I would rather populate this via a trigger or not at all.
Hey Ben,
Since it's a custom field, I'm not sure that it's possible. If it were, though, I imagine you'd only be able to do it with some custom JS magic. I hunted around the Community for some related posts but came up empty handed. Hopefully someone else will have some input!
Hi,
how can I create linked fileds? I mean some option in ticket would be linked with the fields that appeared to be the choice of the option.
Hey Natalia!
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking...are you looking for something like Conditional Fields?
Yes, exactly. Thank you!
No problem!
Can system field TYPE be populated with support form submission?
Hey Michael!
You should be able to edit the properties of the field to make it visible to end-users. In your agent interface, go to your gear icon, scroll to Manage, and click on Ticket Fields. Click edit on the Type field line, and in the end-users section check the box next to Visible, which will make it so that your customers can see it. Once you've done that, you can also make it so your customers can set that field when they fill out the form, and even make it required upon submission.
Hi Zendesk. By default a ticket does not have any priority set, right? If I set priority on a ticket, I cannot remove the priority again, back to "-" again. Is this true and if so, could you make this a feature request? If it can be "-" then I should be able to set it as such again, right? :-)
Hi Svend!
You're right. Once you've set a priority on a ticket, you can change it to any other priority, but you can't change it back to "-".
I checked the Product Feedback area and didn't see any other posts with this suggestion, so I'd encourage you to hop over there and share your detailed use case!
Hi Jessie. Okay, thanks. I created this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115006787707-Set-a-ticket-priority-back-to-no-priority-set-
Thanks for coming back to share the link, Svend!
Hi,
Just wanted to know if different ticket forms for end users can be created for different organizations? Or will the ticket forms remain same?
Can the visibility to end user be changed on the basis of organization?
Thanks.
Hi Shoaib!
One of our other Community members share some JS code that will accomplish this for you, provided you're on the correct plan level. You can find it here: Hide an option in a custom dropdown field from end user on request form. Hope that helps!
For new tickets, does the status automatically change from new to pending once an agent sends a reply email to the end-user/customer?
@Nate not unless you have a trigger set up to do so. If the agent takes the ticket when they make the comment, it does change from New to Open. Otherwise, we manually click on Submit as Pending.
Hi
I have a question about displaying the information in the ticket fields in the main body of the ticket. For example, in our case, we collect various pieces of information from the end user, URL's, troubleshooting steps etc, this information appears in each of the relevant fields on the left-hand side, agents have to scroll up and down and try to copy out those links in order to access them, it can be a little bit fiddly and not ideal.
Is there any way to take certain information from ticket fields and display it in the body of the ticket form so it can be easily read? We thought we might be able to do this using the hide description piece of code but I'm stuck.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
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