On-hold gives you another level so that you can more accurately track who currently has responsibility for a ticket. For example, imagine that your company produces a product that includes components from partners and other suppliers. If you have tickets that require their input, and for which the assigned agent can do nothing but wait, setting the ticket to On-hold provides a way for distinguishing between tickets that are the responsibility of agents and those that are waiting for a third party.
If you track your agents' performance, using the On-hold status allows you to filter out all On-hold tickets from performance tracking. You can also use the On-hold status to create a workflow for tickets that require input or a resolution from a third party. On Support Professional and Enterprise you have an additional reporting metric called On-hold time in hours.
Enabling and disabling the On-hold status
An administrator can add the On-hold status to Zendesk Support. On-hold status is disabled by default.
To enable or disable the On-hold status
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the
sidebar, then select
Manage >
Ticket
Fields. - Beside
the Status field,
click
the options menu, then select
Edit.
-
Under
Field Values, select
Enable
On-hold
status.
If you are disabling this option, deselect Enable On-hold status.
- Click Update field.
The On-hold status is added to the list of ticket statuses between Pending and Solved. On-hold status is visible to agents only, not end-users. For end-users, tickets that are set to On-hold are always displayed as Open in the Help Center customer portal.
Community Tip! Check out this tip to see how Andrew sets reminders for On-hold tickets.
Using the On-hold status in views and SLAs
You create new views, or edit existing views, to track tickets that are On-hold. You can select On-hold as the value of the Status condition and also use the Hours since on hold condition.
The On-hold status is added to the Status condition between Pending and Solved. This means that the condition statement Status less than On-hold will return tickets that are Pending, Open, or New and Status greater than On-hold will return tickets that are set to Solved or Closed.
The Hours since on hold condition allows you to specify the hours that have passed since the ticket's status was set to On-hold.
Using the On-hold status in your reports
On Support Professional and Enterprise, you can use the On-hold status in two different ways in Insights. To measure the number of hours a ticket is on-hold, you can use the Hold Time (hrs) [Mdn] metric. If you have enabled business hours, you can view the On-hold time within business hours using the [Biz Hrs] On Hold Time (hrs) [Mdn] metric. Results will always be presented in the medium number of hours or minutes.
On-hold time is also included as a value in the Ticket Status attribute. You can use the Ticket Status attribute to break down a metric by each status. On the Insights Ticket pre-built dashboard, Ticket Status is used in the Current backlog by ticket status report.
When you add the On-hold status, it will also affect the Requester wait time in hours and Current backlog metrics. The metrics will include the On-hold state in their calculations.
How the On-hold status works with ticket sharing
The On-hold status only affects ticket sharing agreements that use Make public & private comments; sync status. Because On-hold is an optional status in Zendesk Support, these ticket sharing agreements treat On-hold as Open.
For example, if a shared ticket is set to On-hold by the sending account, the ticket is displayed as Open in the receiving account. All other statuses will sync normally.
65 Comments
Hello,
Is there a way to report how many times a single ticket was placed on hold? I would like to know if a ticket is repeatedly put on hold.
thanks,
Shannon
Hello Shannon,
I would think you could do this. I'm thinking you'd use a trigger for ticket changed to hold, and have a number field that is incremented by a http target. Not a beginners lesson, and something I'd have to play with... not sure if it will work or not - but sounds possible.
Then of course to report, you'd need to pull a report on this number - possible if you have Insights.
What about the First Reply Time? Does on hold status counts in first response time or it pauses the first response time?
Hello Daasaratan, I think the best answer to your question is; has the customer received a response? Putting it simply - FRT is a measure of how long it takes for a customer to receive a first response.
Imagine the behavior of agents if they could put tickets on hold to prevent their first response metric looking too long?
Thanks for responding, Andrew.
What about the following scenario?
1. Customer Emails
2. Agent Replies (FRT is calculated right?)
3. Customer Emails back
4. Agent Replies (does this impact the FRT)?
5. Agent put the case on hold
6. Agent updates the customer (does this impact the FRT)?
7. No reply from customer for 3-5 days
8. Agent put the case on pending
9. Agent follows up with the customer (does this impact the FRT)?
Thanks.
Daas
Hello Daasaratan, FRT is FIRST response time, nothing else. It is a measure of how long it take for the customer to get a response after opening the ticket.
In your example, only no.2 is a first response, after this the measurement is complete. You cannot change the first response then.
Hope that helps.
Hi Andrew and All,
In my organization, after reproducing/replicating an unexpected behavior, the agent would pass the issue to our dev team. All dev related issues are tracked on Jira, so the assignee in Zendesk remains the original agent. At this point, we can use the On Hold status which is useful for our agents to manage their tickets, but status remains Open for customers.
Question: Besides commenting on the ticket or sending an email, can anyone describe how they have configured Zendesk to indicate that the issue is currently waiting for development?
Hi Ivan,
I have a workaround for this - The ticket will still show Open to the customer and On Hold to your agents, but I suggest you create a Custom Ticket Field, drop down is always my go-to, and have it state some Status that might be helpful to your customers for all tickets, not just the Jira-type tickets. Set the Custom Field to Read-Only for Customers when you set it up and then you can have it included using curly brackets in some of your triggers AND have it displayed should your users go to their ticket list.
Let me know if you need me to get more detailed or brainstorm with you.
Thanks!
That's a great idea Heather! I'm now thinking about making the Custom Field drop down to be selected when using the On Hold status. I know I can create a macros to facilitate that. The macros would do 3 things: 1) put the ticket On Hold 2) have the agent select the reason for the On Hold from the Custom Field drop down and 3) make a comment. Is there a way to prevent agents from using the default way of putting a ticket On Hold so that they should only use the macros?
Hi Ivan,
If your agents use macros, you get an award! For some reason I do have some difficulties getting consistent behavior with macros. So to answer the question of how to prevent agents from just setting a ticket to On Hold and leaving out the step of selecting something from the new custom field, i find that a good old fashioned trigger works well until they learn to use the macros:
When a ticket status changes to On Hold
And an agent is the current user
And custom field is -
Send an email to the agent (and copy yourself and their manager)
Subject: ticket 4444 is on hold, did you forget something?
Then in the body of the email give directions on how to correct it and a reminder to use the macro next time.
YES you will have 15 people at your desk that week wondering what is up with that
YES you should do training and communicate the change but you will still get 15 people at your desk
But one day you'll have a customer say to someone, "Hey I really like seeing the status my tickets are in and why" .... And it will all be worth it. Lol
And then brace yourself. You'll be asked to create more ways to do that for customers and a few reports for execs too!
🤣
That's a great tip Heather. We use trigger reminders for some important flows that may get missed too. Most importantly is if agents do not either set a followup time for a 'Hold' ticket, or if it is put on pending without being assigned. There is nothing like immediate direct feedback to train agents in the correct process. I guess if this was set up fully, you could just about train new agents with it!
Is it possible to see the time difference between Ticket: Created and Ticket: On Hold?
We use On-Hold status as our default "solved" so the tix won't go into closed after 30 days/become uneditable. I'm looking for a way to grasp average handle time without using Solved/Closed status. Thanks!
Hello Jesi,
Thanks for your question! It is possible to track the time between ticket creation and the ticket status changing to on-hold but it will require building a custom metric as none of the default metrics track this time.
This article explains how to build a metric that tracks the time between two ticket events: Insights recipe: Duration between two ticket events in minutes
Is there any way for us to allow our customers to see the "ON-HOLD" status instead of "OPEN"? I know you clearly state:
"It's important to also note that the On-hold status is only visible to Zendesk Support agents; it is not visible to end-users. For end-users, tickets that are set to On-hold are always displayed as Open."
It seems that you provided a selection box to allow customers to see this status but don't make it available to select. Is there a plan to allow this soon?
Our customers have a great need no see the different status's for their reporting and have to rely on us to tell them. Needless to say this is very inconvenient.
Hi Phil! Welcome to the Community!
Where do you see the selection box you're referring to?
It's talked about and picture shown earlier in this thread by Lisa Walton
Thanks for clarifying, Phil. The settings UI for every field is exactly the same. So if you view the settings for a different field, you'll see the same check box. In this particular case, because it's not possible customize how status is displayed to end users, we opted to make the box un-checkable, rather than just hide it on a certain page.
@Phil Henning,
The selection box you are referring to is I think the one that allows the Status field to be visible to users. This works. On Hold is what I call a Hybrid status, it shows as OPEN to the user, and ON HOLD to the agent.
The concept of 'On Hold' is that it is a Agent Only status - To my mind, this is because to the customer, the User is still waiting on response from the Agent. The fact that the Agent is perhaps waiting for more info from a 3rd party is beside the point.
An alternative option is to make a second field that is automatically updated and linked to Status.
We have an account with multiple brands. How can I add On-Hold to our brand without impacting the other brands?
Hi Peter! Unfortunately, On-Hold is currently an account-wide setting that can't be enabled or disabled for individual brands.
@Andrew Mills
Thank you for the detailed answer. We were hoping to use it a bit differently than the way it is designed but your explanation makes sense. For us our customers know that an On-hold status means we are waiting for a fix in our next software release and to not expect updates until then. That visibility would allow them to report that status to their management. When all they see is Open ticket status there is no way for them to distinguish what is actively being worked on and what is On-hold.
Thanks again for your time and explanation.
/Phil
check, would you use "on-hold" status set to On-hold are always displayed as Open.
Hi Pawan,
Can you provide some additional information on where the On-hold status is displaying as Open?
Thanks!
On hold tickets show to end users as open, this is the intended function. On hold is a hybrid status, it is used for various situations where the agent cannot work on a ticket now for whatever reason, but where this is not due to awaiting something from the end user. It shows as open to them as from their perspective the issue isn't resolved and they are still awaiting action from us.
We use it extensively. Great for follow ups, waiting on third parties or just to hold a ticket for a length of time when there is too much on. I find it helps to keep views clean.
Hi there!
I want to create a report based on the on-hold status. I want to add a required field to a ticket if the ticket goes to the on-hold status. The field would have a drop-down of our dependencies. As far as I know, we can't create conditions around status. Is there a workaround for this?
Hey Denielle,
Are you using the native Conditional Fields feature mentioned here? Creating conditional ticket fields in Zendesk Support (Professional Add-on and Enterprise)
If so, you should be able to set up a condition that shows a specific ticket field based on the status of the ticket. Screenshot below:
Let me know if that's not what you're looking for.
Thanks!
Hi @Brett!
Yes, I do have it, but it doesn't give me an option to set conditions based on status.
Am I missing a step?
Hey Denielle,
I'm going to create a ticket on your behalf so I can dig into this further with you.
You'll receive a follow-up email from me shortly.
Thanks!
Does putting a ticket "on hold" stop the clock when it comes to First Reply Time? Our company often collaborates with people on tickets and first reply time is being affected due to having to wait for other's input before responding.
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