Zendesk Support can monitor one or more Twitter accounts and convert tweets to tickets as needed. All tweet activity between agents and Twitter users is added as ticket comments. Using the Twitter channel, you can do the following:
- Convert a tweet into a ticket and respond to the user with a tweet, or move the conversation to email
- Bulk convert multiple tweets into tickets in one step
- Convert tweets to tickets outside of Zendesk Support by liking a tweet in twitter.com and many other Twitter clients
- Automatically capture public mentions and direct messages as tickets
- Append ticket links to outgoing tweets
- Select which of your accounts agents are allowed to use when sending outgoing tweets
- Monitor and take action on Twitter activity using business rules
If you are looking for information about how your agents can work with Twitter-generated tickets, see Managing tickets from Twitter.
Only administrators have access to the incoming tweets; however, once they've been converted to tickets all agent types have access to them unless you've otherwise restricted their access to certain types of tickets (by restricting them to an organization, or by customizing Enterprise agent roles to exclude this permission, for example).
It's important to note however that once a tweet becomes a ticket it behaves just like any other ticket in Zendesk Support. The one exception to this is that you have the option of replying back to the Twitter user with a public tweet or moving the conversation to email.
Topics covered in this article:
- How tweets become tickets
- Adding Twitter accounts to your Twitter channel
- Editing Twitter account settings
- Removing Twitter accounts from your Twitter channel
- Appending ticket links to outgoing tweets
- Managing Twitter tickets with business rules
- Understanding why your Twitter channel might be deauthorized
How tweets become tickets
You can control if and how incoming tweets become tickets. Here are several scenarios for managing incoming tweets and converting them to tickets.
- Likes. Convert tweets outside of Zendesk Support by liking them in your Twitter client. This approach allows you to manually choose tweets to convert before they ever reach Zendesk Support.
- Mentions and direct messages. Automatically create tickets from public tweets that contain your Twitter account handle or from direct messages. Sometimes, tickets that are not support requests and that don't need follow-up are created. You can manage these out of your ticket queue by manually solving and closing or deleting them.
- Triggers. Use one or more triggers to monitor new support requests that originate from your Twitter channel. You can use the trigger condition Ticket Channel, which has the following three Twitter sources: Twitter, Twitter DM (direct message), and Twitter Like. The advantage to this approach is that you have much more control over the creation and management of Twitter-based tickets. See Managing Twitter tickets with business rules below.
Which approach you take might be based on your overall Twitter traffic or the number of administrators who are available to monitor and convert tweets, or the number of agents you have available to deal with support requests. You may want to use a combination of all of these approaches.
Adding Twitter accounts to your Twitter channel
To start, you need to add at least one Twitter account to your Twitter channel. You can add as many Twitter accounts as you need. For example, your company may have different Twitter handles for different aspects of the company (sales, support, operations, and so on).
You can also watch this short video.
To add a Twitter account
- Click the Admin icon (
), then select Channels > Twitter.
- Select the Twitter accounts tab.
- Click Add Twitter account.
- You'll be prompted to log in to Twitter and then authorize Zendesk Support to use your account. Enter your login information and then click Authorize App.
After your account has been authorized, your newly added Twitter account will be listed on the Twitter accounts tab. You'll want to edit the account's settings to control how tweets to this account are handled (see Editing Twitter account settings for descriptions of the settings).
By default any responses to a tweet will be from the account the tweet was directed to. You can select a different account from the Reply as drop-down list under the ticket reply box. If you want to automatically respond from one account, you can disable Allow replies via this account when editing your other Twitter accounts (see Editing Twitter account settings).
Automatically converting tweets to tickets
As shown in the table above, you can choose to automatically convert public mentions and direct messages into tickets (Capture public mentions as tickets and Capture incoming direct messages as tickets). If you enable these, the option to manually convert tweets to tickets will no longer be available for that Twitter account.
Editing Twitter account settings
After you've added a Twitter account, you should configure some basic settings for the account.
To edit settings for a Twitter account
- Click the Admin icon (
), then select Channels > Twitter.
- Select the Twitter accounts tab.
- Click Edit beside the Twitter account you want to edit.
- Update settings as needed.
The settings are described in the following table.
- Click Update Twitter account.
Setting | Description |
---|---|
Allow replies via this account |
This setting allows agents to use this Twitter account when replying to a Twitter ticket. Agents can select the account below the reply box on a Twitter ticket: Replies to tickets from Twitter retain the original inbound format. For example, if the ticket was created from a direct message (DM), then the agents reply from within Zendesk will also be a DM. If the ticket was created from a tweet mentioning your Twitter handle (for example @Zendesk), then the agents reply from within Zendesk will be a reply tweet, threaded to the senders original mention. |
Make this the default account |
Note: This setting appears in the Support interface when Allow replies via this account is set to yes.
Use this Twitter account by default to reply to tickets that were created from tweets to your other Twitter accounts that don’t allow replies. When yes, the Reply as drop-down list shows the name of this Twitter account by default. However, agents can still choose a different reply-enabled Twitter account from the drop-down list, if desired and available. You can only have one default account at a time. Your old default account becomes a non-default account set to no. Bulk updating tickets Setting a default Twitter account can affect bulk ticket updates in a few ways. When a customer replies to a Twitter account that allows replies:
When a customer replies to a Twitter account that doesn't allow replies:
For information about how to bulk update tickets, see Bulk updating tickets. |
Capture public mentions as tickets |
This automatically converts any public tweet containing your Twitter account handle (for example, @mondocam) to a ticket. |
Capture incoming direct messages as tickets |
This automatically converts incoming direct messages into tickets so that your customers can contact you privately rather than publicly. Depending on your Twitter settings, you can either receive direct messages from anyone or only from Twitter users you follow. You can reply to anyone who sends you a direct message. |
Track Likes |
This automatically converts a tweet that you like to a ticket. For example, if you're managing your Twitter stream using twitter.com, you have the option of manually liking the tweet by clicking the heart icon. Learn more about liking tweets in Twitter help. |
Removing Twitter accounts from your Twitter channel
You can remove a Twitter account from your Twitter channel by deactivating it or unlinking it. If you deactivate an account, it is inactive in Zendesk Support and you can reactivate it at any time. If you unlink an account, it is removed from Zendesk Support.
To deactivate a Twitter account
- Click the Admin icon (
), then select Channels > Twitter.
- Select the Twitter accounts tab.
- Click Deactivate beside the Twitter account you want to deactivate.
The Twitter account is deactivated. It will not turn tweets into tickets and you cannot reply using it. You can reactivate account at any time.
To unlink a Twitter account
- Click the Admin icon (
), then select Channels > Twitter.
- Select the Twitter accounts tab.
- Click Unlink beside the Twitter account you want to remove from your Twitter channel.
- Click OK to confirm.
The Twitter account is unlinked.
Appending ticket links to outgoing tweets
Another option for your outgoing Tweets is to append a shortened URL to the ticket you created from the tweet. This allows the Twitter user to access the ticket page in the Web portal via their Twitter account. In other words, remote authentication is used to log in through Twitter to Zendesk Support (end-users must sign in to Zendesk to see the ticket page).
Once a Twitter user has access to the ticket page, they can add a longer comment than they could have in Twitter given the 280 character limit of a tweet. They can also update their user profile (adding their email address for example).
You have the option of allowing the agent to decide if a shortened or the original URL is used in the response. And, you can choose one of several URL shortening services to use.
To append ticket links to outgoing tweets
- Click the Admin icon (
), then select Channels > Twitter.
- Select the General settings tab.
- Enable the ticket links by clicking Yes next to the Append ticket links to outgoing tweets? option.
- If you want agents to decide when to use shortened URLs, deselect the Always include shortened ticket URL option. It is selected by default.
- Click Save tab.
Managing twitter tickets with business rules
A number of conditions are available to manage your Twitter tickets using business rules.
Like the other Zendesk Support channels, you can detect a ticket's source using the Ticket Channel condition in automations, reports, triggers, and views. There are three Twitter source types you can use in the Ticket Channel condition: Twitter, Twitter DM (direct message), and Twitter Like.
If, for example, you wanted to create separate views of each of the Twitter source types, you simply choose the Ticket Channel condition and then select the type.
In addition to the Twitter channel source types, you also have three other Twitter conditions that are available in triggers:
- Requester's Twitter followers are...
- Requester's number of tweets is...
- Requester is verified by Twitter
The Requester is verified by Twitter condition is a special type of Twitter account that has had its identity verified by Twitter (by submitting proof of business, for example). Knowing that a Twitter account has been verified may be important to you in determining how to handle Twitter tickets. For more information, see FAQs about Verified Accounts in Twitter help.
And of course, you can also adds tags to your Twitter tickets and use them to manage your Twitter tickets through your workflow.
Understanding why your Twitter channel might be deauthorized
Zendesk Support constantly monitors your Twitter accounts for new public mentions and direct messages. If Zendesk Support cannot connect with your Twitter account, it will send an email notification to all admins on your account .
If you receive notification that your Twitter channel has become deauthorized, you need to reauthorize the affected Twitter account in Zendesk Support. To do so, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Channels > Twitter.
Common reasons your Twitter channel might become deauthorized include:
- The password on your Twitter account has changed.
- The Twitter account no longer permits Zendesk Support to view its timeline and tweet on its behalf.
This can happen if the Zendesk Support Twitter app has been removed from your Twitter account’s list of allowed apps.
- Zendesk Support receives a consistent response from Twitter indicating that we are not authorized to access your Twitter account’s content.
This should only happen due to an error in Twitter’s platform.
34 Comments
Does anyone have suggestions on how to identify tweets with images for special routing through triggers? We auto-close most of our twickets, but do look at ones based on string search. We'd like to start monitoring ones that have images attached to the tweet as well.
Hey Jeremy!
The only thing I can think of is to set up a trigger to test for a specific string in the comment text. I'm not 100% sure if all image links are truncated the same way once they make it into Zendesk, but using the first portion of the link (ie: https://t.co) could work.
Say, is the integration working correctly?
We've just tried to add a couple of new twitter accounts to Zendesk, but each time we've been faced with this error message.
It says in the message that you guys have been notified, but just in case anyone else is having the same issue or if it's just us.
Hey Adetona! Sorry for the delayed response here!
It does look like there was an issue where the Twitter authorization was having some issues, but they have since be resolved. If you're still having problems, let us know so we can take a look!
Indeed!
I can confirm that the issue appears to be resolved as far as we're concerned, we tried adding the accounts about the day before yesterday and everything seems to be working.
But thanks for the confirmation none the less!
Has this flow changed at all? I have 3 twitter accounts in ZD and am unable to find where to change one to primary.
Thanks!
Hey Jeremy!
I'm going to go ahead and pull you into a ticket on this one. I'm going to get you in touch with one of my colleagues, Ben, who is a Social Media Product Champion. He'll be able to help you figure out what's going on. See you there shortly!
Hey !
The Twitter integration is really cool. However, I would like an option to create tickets automatically, but with a filter. For example, I don't want to have a ticket created each time that a user is using "RT" or "via" on his tweet.
Is there any option for this ?
Hi Giovanni,
Currently, at this time, you can't use a filter with the automatic ticket creation based on your account handle or direct messages from Twitter users that you follow to filter out tickets that contain certain phrases or words. Messages that contain these phrases, or that are not support requests, would still need to be manually deleted. However, that is a great product request that I encourage you to post in our Product Feedback Forum for automatic filtering!
You can also take those phrases and use them in a business rule to automatically set those tickets to Solved or Closed in your Zendesk, so you do not have to deal with them (only manually delete if you would like). The condition for the trigger would be "Ticket: Comment text... > contains at least one of the following words > RT via". For the actions, you could then choose to set the status to either Solved or Closed.
Let me know if you have any further questions!
Hi there,
We have a couple twitter accounts linked and active. I would like to remove one. What happens to all the tickets created from posts and DMs from that channel? Also, is there a way to create a view to show all tickets that originated from a specific Twitter account? Thanks!
Hey Bill! Welcome to the Community!
You've actually stumped me on your very first question. :D I'm going to follow-up with some of my colleagues to find an answer for you. Stand by!
Hi Bill! I have an answer for you!
If you disconnect that Twitter account from your Zendesk, nothing will happen to the tickets. However, if you respond to any of those tickets trying to use that Twitter account, the tweets won't go out.
Since you have multiple Twitter accounts, though, you can just switch those tickets to respond with the account that you're keeping and you'll be good to go!
Let us know if you need anything else!
When should we see the character limit within Zendesk updated to reflect Twitter's new character limit of 280?
^This
Are you guys referring to the limits in direct messages or public tweets?
Public Tweets
Yes, when are public tweet replies going to have the 280 characters? This is already available in the open Twitter API so it should be available in any 3rd party platform.
Thanks!
Hey Sarah, Alex, and Terry! Thanks for bearing with us while we looked into this for you.
Our Product team is aware that customers are anxious to get the 280 character limit added to the Twitter integration. We do plan to update the integration to accommodate the new character limit, but we do not have a timeframe established for when this might be available.
Other customers have been asking about this as well, and we have a ticket open on our end to track customer who contact us about it. I'm following that ticket, and I'm adding your input to it as well. I'll be sure to keep you posted if new information becomes available!
Hey everyone!
So here's what's happening: in order for us to be able to accommodate the new 280 character limit, we need Twitter to update their text library. Once that's done there will be an API to account for the new character limit, which we'll be able to use to bring 280 character to our integration.
At this point, Twitter says they hope to get this done sometime in December. This is completely up to them; Zendesk doesn't have any control over it, and we can't make any changes on our end until the update is made.
We'll keep you posted as new information becomes available!
QQ re passwords: we need to update our password, I'm assuming that is done by clicking "Reauthorize"? What is the process? Is there a field to update the password immediately or is there some back and forth with emails that happen first? Just trying to gauge how long our Twitter support will be down.
Hey Jon,
If you're able to login and want to update your password, the instructions are here:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012031988-Changing-your-password
If you're looking reset your password and aren't able to log in you'll wan to go to:
[what your subdomain is here].zendesk.com/access/help
Hope that helps!
Hi. Has the 280 character limit been updated? We're about to implement a Twitter-only help center, and this may be crucial!
Hey Jahana -
Yes, it was updated a couple of weeks ago, and is now live in all accounts. Happy Tweeting!
How to make Twitter channel compliant with GDPR? Any user can mention us, which will create a ticket. And we already like storing their twitter ID without any consent.
Hey Anton -
Please email this and any GDPR compliance related questions to privacy@zendesk.com.
We have recently set up our Twitter channel and I have a question about user profiles. When a customer submits a ticket through our support portal, it comes in to Zendesk associated with their email and their account. When a Tweet is converted to a ticket, it comes in under the customer's Twitter name so that ticket isn't associated with any other tickets they already have or with their normal Zendesk profile that is linked to their email and their actual account.
Is there a way to tell Zendesk that these Tweet tickets should be associated with their normal Zendesk profile?
Hey there F Johnson,
Once a ticket comes in via a Tweet, you can click on the end user's name in the ticket crumbtrail (my name in this screenshot):
and then from there choose the "Merge into another user" option from the dropdown at the right:
That will let you associate the twitter-handle-only end user with your existing end user. From that point forward, when someone creates a ticket with you via Twitter, it will be associated with that end user account (which contains both their twitter handle and their email address now). From the ZD interface you can choose to reply via DM or via email.
I believe that if you proactively associate twitter handles with end user accounts then it will automatically associate twitter-created tickets with the correct end user.
Thanks for jumping in to help, Joel!
This is correct. Once the user's Twitter handle is added to their main user profile, any future tweets will be associated with that profile. Let us know if you need anything else!
Now it's my turn for a question. If a ticket gets created via the Twitter channel and we receive an email notification of that ticket, is there any way to use the email API to respond and have our response go back via Twitter, rather than email?
In my experiments it doesn't seem like there is. I've tried two scenarios:
1) Incoming ticket created via tweet or DM by a client who has an end user account that also has an email attached. In that case, responding to the ticket notification will send an email to the end user.
2) Incoming ticket created via tweet or DM by a client who does *not* already have an end user account with an email attached. In that case, responding to the ticket notification seems to eventually result in a suspended ticket indicating the response couldn't be processed. The suspended ticket is not immediate (in my experiments if you attach an email address to the end user account after sending the email, it will notice and then send the update as an email).
I assume this is all expected behavior, and the answer is "no, you can't send tweets by responding to email notifications". Is that indeed the case?
Hi Joel,
That's correct, that is expected behavior. To send a response via Tweet you need to respond from the ticketing interface. The Channel Framework is not set up for responses to emails to then be processed by the ticketing system and spit back out as a Tweet.
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