This glossary describes key Zendesk concepts, terminology, and products It's a good place to get started learning how to set up and use your Zendesk products.
@ - A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z
@
@mention
@mentions allows agents to "mention" any other agent (but not end users) in a ticket comment. In the help center, users can @mention any other user, including end users, when commenting on a post or article. See Adding other agents to tickets using @mentions and Enabling @mentions for users in your help center.
A
Account assumption
See Assuming a user.
Account owner
See Owner.
Add-on
Add-ons are supplemental features that allow you to add functionality to your Zendesk account to fit your specific support needs. They are available for Zendesk Suite and Support plans. See About Zendesk add-ons.
Admins
Admins are agents with additional privileges to manage and customize Zendesk accounts. Admins can perform all agent tasks, but they may also do other things like control settings for your instance. Sometimes referred to as administrators. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Advisor
This is a system custom agent role on Enterprise plans. Advisors manage the workflow and configure Zendesk. They create or manage shared automations, macros, triggers, and views. They also set up the service level agreements, channels, and extensions. Advisors don't solve tickets and can make private comments only. See Understanding system custom agent roles.
Agent
Agents are the bulk of your support staff. They are assigned tickets and interact with customers as needed to resolve support issues. The agent's role and privileges are defined by admins. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Agent alias
On Suite Growth and above or Support Professional and above, agents can keep their real names private by setting up an alias that will be used on all communications with ticket requesters. This feature is not available on Team plans. See Adding an agent alias.
Agent collision
Agent collision is a feature that alerts your agents when another agent is viewing and possibly updating the same ticket, to help prevent agents from trying to make updates to the same ticket at the same time. See Avoiding agent collision.
Agent escalation
In an automated conversation, passing the customer to a live agent. Also called agent transfer.
Agent interface
The agent interface is what agents and admins see when they sign in to Zendesk. From the agent interface, you can access and manage tickets. The latest version of the agent interface is called Agent Workspace. The version of the agent interface prior to Agent Workspace was referred to as the standard agent interface. See About the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Agent signature
An agent signature is a standard text signature that can be appended to all public ticket comments and outgoing emails made by agents. Agents can customize their signature on their profile page. See Adding an agent signature to ticket email notifications.
Agent transfer
See Agent escalation.
Agent Workspace
Agent Workspace is the latest version of the agent interface. It is a unified space for agents to manage and respond to customer support requests. The agent interface prior to Agent Workspace was referred to as the standard agent interface. See About the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
AI agent
An AI agent is an automated persona that can interact with the customer through messaging or email channels. AI agent functionality is split into two different levels: Essential and Advanced. AI agents were formerly known as Zendesk bots or conversation bots. See About AI agents.
Allowlist
The allowlist is used to allow email to be received from specific email domains and addresses. It can be used along with the blocklist to, for example, allow email from a specific address in a blocked domain to be accepted into your Support instance (and not suspended). See Using the allowlist and blocklist to control access to Zendesk Support.
Analytics (formerly Explore)
The latest generation of reporting for the Zendesk Suite, including tools to analyze your business information, build reports, and share those reports with other people. See Getting started with Zendesk Analytics.
API
An application programming interface (API) lets you interact with Zendesk programmatically instead of using the UI. See the API docs.
App
A custom-built application that extends or enhances the functionality of Zendesk products. See Using the Zendesk Marketplace.
Archiving
Archiving is the act of moving data into a less-frequently-used storage area. Zendesk automatically archives closed tickets after 120 days, and Zendesk customers can enable automatic email archiving. See About ticket archiving and Archiving ticket email notifications.
Assignee
Assignee is the agent or end user currently assigned to a ticket. Assignee is used in macros, views, automations, triggers, and reports to refer to or set the assigned agent. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Assignee stations
This is the number of agents who have successively been assigned to a ticket. This is used as a condition in triggers. See Creating and managing triggers.
Assuming a user
Admins can sign in to Zendesk Support as a particular end user. This is referred to as assuming a user. This allows admins to see that user's Zendesk account as they see it, which can be useful when troubleshooting problems. See Assuming end users.
Audit log
On Enterprise plans, you can track the account and user changes that have been made by you and members of your support staff. See Viewing the Audit log for changes.
Automated conversation
An automated conversation is a text-based interaction between an end user and an AI agent in a messaging interface. Automated conversations can be configured in Admin Center. See Creating an AI agent for your web and mobile channels.
Automated resolutions
Automated resolutions are the unit of measurement used for calculating and billing your account for AI agent usage. Paying per automated resolution means that you pay only for customer requests that were successfully resolved by the AI agent, without any escalation to a human agent. See About automated resolutions for AI agents.
Automations
Automations are similar to triggers (see Trigger) because both define conditions and actions that modify ticket properties and optionally send email notifications to customers and the support staff. Where they differ is that automations execute when a time event occurs after a ticket property was set or updated, rather than immediately after a ticket is created or updated. See About the standard Support automations and Streamlining workflow with time-based events and automations.
B
Base agent
Base agents are agent seats billed as part of your regular billing cycle, as opposed to temporary agents. See also: Temporary agent.
Billing admin
A billing admin is a Zendesk admin with special permission to manage subscriptions for your Zendesk account. Account owners can give Support admins billing permission. See Enabling admins to manage subscriptions.
Blocklist
The blocklist is used to suspend email received from domains and addresses that you specify. It can be used along with the allowlist to, for example, suspend an email domain while also allowing one or more specific email addresses from the same domain to be accepted into your Zendesk. See Using the allowlist and blocklist to control access to Zendesk Support.
Bot builder (legacy)
Bot builder is a click-to-configure tool to create flows that guide customers to a resolution. Only available for customers who had any drafted or published AI agents as of February 2, 2025. See About bot builder (legacy).
Brand
A brand is a customer facing identity, represented by a collection of contact points for your customers. These contact points can include email support addresses, help center, Web Widget (Classic), and messaging Web Widget. With most Zendesk plans, you can have multiple brands associated with your account. See Setting up multiple brands.
See also: Multibrand.
Built by Zendesk
Apps that are created by Zendesk that can be downloaded and installed into your configuration.
Bulk import
You can add many users in a single batch with a bulk import. To do this, you create a CSV (comma separated values) file that contains the user's data. You can also import organization data. See Bulk importing users and organizations.
Business hours
On Suite Growth and above or Support Professional and above, you can set a schedule with business hours for the days of the week and times of day that your Zendesk is available to respond to requests. Non-Enterprise plans can set a single schedule, while Enterprise plans can set multiple schedules. You can use business hours in views, SLA policies, triggers, automations, and Liquid markup. See Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.
Business rules
Business rules enable you to customize and manage the ticket workflow. Automations, macros, SLA service targets, triggers, and views are all types of business rules. See Streamlining your support workflow.
C
Channels
Channels are the ways that you can engage with your customers (how they create support requests and how you communicate with them). All channel communication is recorded in tickets. You choose and configure the channels you want your Zendesk to support. To find out about the available channels, see About Zendesk channels.
Chat
Chat is a channel that enables your customers to have live chat conversations with your agents. See also Messaging.
Closed Zendesk Support
Your Zendesk Support instance is considered closed when only those users you choose can submit tickets. This means users must be added to your Zendesk instance in order to submit support requests. See Permitting only added users to submit tickets.
Copilot
The Zendesk Copilot add-on is a set of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are purpose-built for customer service experiences and expand on the AI offerings already built into the Zendesk Suite. See About Zendesk Copilot.
Comment
When a ticket request is submitted it contains a subject and a description. All follow-up communication on the ticket is contained in comments. Agents and requesters can add comments to the ticket. Comments can also be added by automations, macros, and triggers. There are two types of comment: public and private (or internal). Everyone, including anyone copied on a ticket, can see public comments but only agents can see private comments.
Community
Part of the help center, the community is where your end users can ask questions, provide answers, or share ideas. Questions and ideas are associated with discussion topics. Community contributions can include ideas, tips, or any other community items. Answers can include observations, clarifications, praise, or any other response that's part of a typical community discussion. See Planning and activating community in your help center.
Context panel
The context panel is part of Agent Workspace and provides valuable information agents can use to get a better understanding of customers and solve tickets quickly. See Using the context panel.
Contextual help
A Web Widget (Classic) feature that uses the web page your visitor is currently on, along with your help center content, to suggest help center articles that may be relevant to their questions. See About Contextual Help for Web Widget (Classic).
Conversation
The thread of messages back and forth between a human and/or AI agent and an end user while working to resolve a the end user's issue.
Conversation history
The record of an ongoing (or past) conversation between a live and/or AI agent and an end user. Conversation history is available to agents in the Agent Workspace. See About conversation history.
CSS customization
You can modify the default elements and styles in your help center using CSS (cascading style sheets) code to more closely match the look of your company's website. See Customizing the CSS or JavaScript in your Help Center.
Current user
In triggers, (current user) is the last person who updated the ticket. The (current user) changes each time someone different updates the ticket. The update can be made by any agent or end user with access to the ticket.
In views, (current user) is the agent who is currently viewing that view. This enables one view to show relevant tickets to each agent, without having to create a specific view for each individual agent.
Custom agent roles
On Enterprise plans, you can define your own agent roles and assign those roles to any agent in your Zendesk account. This allows you to define agent roles that suit your own organizational structure and workflow. See Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
Custom fields
You can add custom fields to tickets, users, and organizations. Custom ticket fields can be visible to agents only or to both agents and end users. Your visible custom ticket fields appear on your support request form in the help center. Custom ticket fields are typically used to gather more information about the support issue or product or service. Custom organization fields and custom user fields are visible to agents only. See About custom fields.
Customer
This is often used interchangeably with end user. See End user.
Customer portal
Part of help center where customers submit tickets and also manage their tickets.
Customer satisfaction rating (CSAT)
Your end users (customers) can provide feedback about their support experience by rating their solved tickets. See About customer satisfaction ratings.
Customized theme
When you use the Theme Editor to edit the page templates, CSS, or JavaScript for the standard help center theme, or when you develop your own theme, it is saved as a custom theme. Custom themes are not supported by Zendesk and are not automatically updated when new features are released. See About standard themes and custom themes in the help center.
D
Dashboard
A space to present analytics about your Zendesk products. Dashboards allow you to view, share, and (on some plans) create and customize reports that give you an overview of your Zendesk data. There are two types of dashboards: prebuilt and custom. See Understanding dashboards.
Data masking
Data masking allows certain roles to have data obscured based on custom role settings. This means that while the original data remains intact, it is hidden from view for agents without permission to see it. This capability allows customers to maintain data integrity while safeguarding user privacy. See About data masking.
Data redaction
Data redaction allows admins or agents in custom roles with permission to permanently remove sensitive information from tickets, ensuring that deleted data can't be retrieved or viewed by any agents. Agents can redact ticket content manually, or, with the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on, admins can create triggers to automatically redact ticket data.
Dynamic content
To provide multiple language support, you can create dynamic content that can then be referenced via a placeholder in automations, macros, triggers and by many of the system generated messages such as those sent in email notifications when a user creates an account. Dynamic content is a powerful tool for streamlining your multiple language support because the appropriate version of content is automatically displayed to users based on their language. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.
E
Email forwarding
Many accounts prefer to use their own email addresses rather than use a Zendesk address. You can set up email forwarding to accept email at your own address (for example, help@mycompany.com) and then forward it to your Zendesk address (support@mycompany.zendesk.com). See Forwarding incoming email from your existing email address to Zendesk Support.
Email notifications
Email notifications can be generated via a trigger or automation when a ticket is updated. Common notifications include a new public comment added to the ticket or a change to the ticket status. You can customize your email templates to match your branding and to modify the wording. See Customizing your email templates.
Employee service
Employee service management is a strategic initiative aimed at elevating employee support by streamlining HR, IT, and other internal support functions, automating routine tasks, and empowering employees with self-service capabilities. See Zendesk Employee Service Suite overview.
End user
End users (often referred to as customers) are people who generate support requests from any of the available support channels (help center, email, voice, messaging, and so on.). End users do not have access to any of the admin and agent features of Zendesk. They can only submit and track tickets and communicate with agents publicly (meaning their comments can never be private). For more information, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Extensions
Extensions are tools that extend the functionality of your Zendesk. For example, you can add CSS and JavaScript widgets to customize the look or functionality of Zendesk or you can enable integrations with cloud-based software applications and services such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Constant Contact - just to name a few. Extensions can be configured by agents with admin permissions.
External email domain
You can change your email address to an email domain other than myaccount.zendesk.com, making it appear that it originated from your own email address (help@mycompany.com). See Forwarding your incoming email to Zendesk Support.
F
First reply time (FRT)
A metric that counts the number of minutes between the time a ticket is created, and the timestamp of the first public agent comment on that ticket. See Calculating first reply time.
Flow (legacy)
A flow is a collection of answers, created in bot builder, that define an AI agent's behavior in an interaction with an end user. Only available for customers who had any drafted or published AI agents as of February 2, 2025. See Creating answers for common customer questions in AI agents (Legacy).
G
Group
Groups are used to create collections of agents. Agents can belong to more than one group. End users cannot be added to groups, only organizations. See About organizations and groups and Creating, managing, and using groups.
Group stations
This refers to the number of groups that have successively been assigned to a ticket. Use the metric in the Support: Tickets dataset to track group station and group station can be used as a condition in triggers. See Creating and managing triggers.
Guided mode
Guided mode is a custom role option that requires agents to work through tickets using the Play button. See Setting up Guided mode.
H
Help center
The help center is the customer-facing self-service portal that can consist of a knowledge base, a community, and a customer request portal. End users can use the knowledge base for help or turn to the community for answers. If they can't find an answer, they can submit a request to an agent. See Getting started with help center and Getting started with community.
Holidays
You can schedule holidays as exceptions to the business hours set in your schedule. You can add as many holidays as you like, and they will be treated as outside of business hours and not count toward any metrics you measure in business hours. See Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.
Host mapping
Host mapping (also referred to as domain mapping) is the ability to map your default Zendesk domain URL to a different URL. For example, rather than using http://support.mycompany.zendesk.com you may want your Zendesk URL to contain your company's name, like this: http://support.mycompany.com. You need to configure this with your domain provider. Changing the address of your help center subdomain (host mapping).
I
Integration
External applications created and designed to work with your Zendesk, to create a bridge between your Zendesk and the external app. Many integrations are offered through the Zendesk Marketplace.
Insights (legacy)
Insights was a legacy analytics offering with data and best-practice dashboards to help you make sense of your data. Insights was replaced by Zendesk Explore, which was later renamed Analytics.
Intent
An intent is an AI-powered prediction of what a customer request is about. It is the purpose or goal behind a common category of questions posed by end users, such as billing, refunds, or sign-in. End users in different organizations and industries may have different intents. Intents are used in the intelligent triage, intent suggestions, and suggested intents features.
K
Knowledge base
Part of the help center, the knowledge base houses the official support content offered by your company or organization. You can create articles and arrange them into sections and categories. Your end users may be allowed to comment on articles. See Organizing help center knowledge base content in categories and sections and Creating articles in the knowledge base.
Knowledge (formerly Guide)
A knowledge solution to provide end users with a complete self-service support option and empower agents to better help customers. See Getting started with your help center.
L
labels
Labels are a single word or a multiple-word phrase you can add to a help center article to influence article search relevance. See Using labels on your help center articles.
Legacy agent
This is a system custom agent role. If you upgrade your account to the Enterprise version, this role is used for all agents who have not been assigned to one of the other Enterprise roles. Each agent's permissions are the same as they had previously on the plan you upgraded from. If you assign all your agents to Enterprise agent roles, this role will disappear. You cannot select this agent role, it's only used to designate agents not yet assigned Enterprise roles. See Understanding system custom agent roles.
Light agent
Light agent is a limited agent role. Light agents can be CC'd on tickets, can view tickets, and can add private comments to tickets within their groups. They cannot be assigned to or edit tickets. Light agents can be given permission to view reports or they can be restricted from viewing any reports. They cannot create or edit a report. See Understanding light agent permissions.
Liquid markup
Liquid markup is the templating language that Zendesk uses to enable placeholders. You can also use Liquid markup to customize how this data is selected and displayed as output in ticket comments and email notifications. See Using Liquid markup to customize comments and email notifications.
M
Macro
A macro is a prepared response or action that agents can use to quickly respond to support requests that can be answered with a standard response or to modify a ticket. Macros contain actions, which can include updates to ticket properties. Agents manually apply macros when they are creating or updating tickets. Macros can also be organized into categories to help agents quickly locate them. See Using macros to update tickets and chat sessions .
Managed account
A type of Zendesk account that requires contacting Zendesk to make subscription changes. The account owner and billing admins cannot make changes using the Subscription page in Admin Center. They must contact Zendesk to make the change. Also called a sales-assisted account. See About Zendesk account types for billing and subscription management.
Markdown
Markdown is a simple markup language you can use to easily add formatting, links, and images to plain text in certain fields in Zendesk. See Formatting text with Markdown.
Metrics
Metrics are quantifiable measures used to track and assess the status of a specific process. Zendesk collects time-based metrics (first reply time, full resolution time, requester wait time), effort metrics (number of replies, reopened or reassigned tickets), agent activity metrics (online time, availability, resolved tickets), and others, as well as custom metrics, and uses them to analyze the quality of user services.
Messaging
Messaging is a channel that lets your customers have conversations with your agents that are persistent, with full context and history. You can offer messaging through your website or help center, or mobile apps. See Getting started with messaging. See also Social messaging.
Mobile SDK
The Mobile SDK enables you to embed Zendesk support options directly in your native app, including help center browsing and searching, ticket submission and viewing, and a Rate My App component. SeeUsing the Mobile SDK to embed customer service in your app. Also see our Mobile SDK developer documentation for Android and IOS.
Multibrand
The ability to set up multiple brands in your instance. Brand is a customer facing identity, represented by a collection of contact points for your customers. Brand is also a ticket value added to all your tickets. Depending on your Zendesk plan, you can add from 5 up to 300 brands. See Setting up multiple brands.
N
Non-restricted agent
A non-restricted agent is an agent who has access to all tickets. In other words, they have not been restricted to only the group or groups to which they belong, the organization they belong to, or to the tickets they have been assigned to. The ability to refer to these agents can be useful when creating triggers. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
O
Omnichannel routing
The Zendesk routing solution that directs tickets from email, calls, and messaging to agents based on availability and capacity. See About omnichannel routing.
Online-assisted account
A type of Zendesk account that allows the account owner and billing admins to make a limited set of changes to their subscription directly from the Subscription page in Admin Center. Also called an assisted-online account. See About Zendesk account types for billing and subscription management .
Open Zendesk Support
Your Zendesk Support instance is open if any user can see your help center and submit support requests. See Enabling anyone to submit tickets in Zendesk Support
Organization
Organizations are collections of users (agents and end users). After you create them, you can use organizations to define views, as criteria for assigning tickets, as conditions in automations and triggers, to define access to forums, and in your reports. See About organizations and groups and Creating organizations.
Owner
The account owner is a type of admin. The account name is associated with the account owner, who is usually the person who created the account. There can only be one account owner. However, account ownership can be reassigned by the account owner to another admin. The account owner can access areas of Support that other regular admins cannot, such as invoicing, payment options, and benchmarking for the account. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
P
Permissions
Authorizations granted to users that define which parts of Zendesk they can access and what tasks they can perform. Permissions are attached to roles. See Adding agents and admins, and Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
Personalized email replies
The email address used in replies to show the user's name as a friendly name (for example, "Claire Grenier <notifications-support@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com>"). You can turn personalized email replies off to show your Zendesk account name instead (for example, "MondoCam Support Center <notifications-support@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com>"). See Understanding personalized email replies.
Placeholders
The references to ticket and user data that you include in the subject and text fields of email notifications. Without placeholders it is impossible to create automatic notifications. You'd have to manually enter the data for each ticket. Placeholders are contained in double curly brackets,for example: {{ticket.assignee.name}}. For example, you can view the list of available system placeholders when creating macros. Custom fields can also be referenced as placeholders. See Using placeholders.
Play mode
Automatically guides you through the available tickets in a view. Depending on the settings configured by your admin, you might be automatically launched into Play mode when you select a view. See Using Play mode to quickly work through tickets.
Priority
Each ticket is assigned a priority. The ticket priority is used to generate views and reports, as conditions and actions in automations and triggers, and as actions in macros. See About ticket fields.
Private ticket
A private ticket contains only private (internal) comments and no public comments. A private ticket can be created by enabling the first ticket comment to be private. When enabled, new tickets created by agents default to the internal note option, as do all subsequent comments, until a public reply is made. See Creating a private ticket on behalf of a user.
Private ticket group
Admins can designate a group as private. This means that agents outside the group generally can’t access tickets assigned to it, although agents may be granted permission to view private tickets. See About private ticket groups.
Products icon; product tray
The product tray is an icon (
) in the header that enables agents to easily switch among the
various products that Zendesk offers. Clicking a product icon within the tray will open
the product in a new browser tab/window. See Switching among Zendesk products.
R
Redaction
See Data redaction.
Remote authentication
Refers to the process of authenticating your users outside of your Zendesk (for example, via social media single sign-on providers such as Facebook and Google, or via Enterprise single sign-on using JSON Web Token (JWT) or Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML). See Setting up single sign-on.
Requester
A requester is the person who is asking for support through a ticket. By default, the requester of a ticket is the submitter, but the requester can be changed. For example, if an agent opens a ticket on behalf of a customer, the customer would be the requester and the agent would be the submitter. The term is used in macros, views, automations, triggers, and reports to refer to the person that the support request is intended to help. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Request portal
See Customer portal.
Restricted agent
The term is used for agents whose ticket access has been limited to all tickets in the agent's group, tickets requested by users in this agent's organization, or tickets assigned to the restricted agent. An agent's access can be restricted via their user profile. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Restricted help center
In a restricted help center, end users are required to sign in to access your help center. Anonymous users cannot access your help center. See Restricting help center access to signed-in end users.
Restricted Zendesk Support
Your instance of Zendesk Support is restricted if you are an unregistered user. Only users with email addresses in domains that have been approved can register and submit support requests. All other users' requests are either sent to the Suspended Tickets queue or completely rejected, depending on your setup. See Permitting only users with approved email addresses to submit tickets.
Roles
Roles define the permissions and access that a user has in your Zendesk account. Roles are assigned to both external users and internal users. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles and Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
S
Sales-assisted account
See Managed account.
SAML
Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is one of the two types of single sign-on available for remotely authenticating users, the other is JSON Web Token (JWT). See Single sign-on (SSO) options in Zendesk.
Sandbox
A sandbox is an internal-only instance of Zendesk that you can use to set up and test changes before moving them to your customer-facing production instance. See About Zendesk sandbox.
Schedule
You can set a schedule for your Zendesk account that includes a time zone, business hours, and holidays. On Enterprise plans, you can set multiple schedules. You can use your scheduled business hours in views, SLA policies, triggers, automations, and Liquid markup. See Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.
Self-service account
A type of Zendesk account that allows the account owner and billing admins to make changes to their subscription directly from the Subscription page in Admin Center. See About Zendesk account types for billing and subscription management .
Sell (legacy)
Zendesk Sell is a legacy sales force automation (SFA) tool for the Zendesk product family. It enables your sales teams to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
You can define Service Level Agreement (SLA) policies so you and your agents can better monitor your service level performance and meet your service level goals. SLAs are typically an agreed upon measurement of the average response and resolution times that your support team delivers to your customers. Providing support based on an SLA ensures that you are delivering a measured and predictable service, and have greater visibility when there are problems. See Defining and using SLA policies.
Shared organization
A shared organization allows all users within that organization to see all of the organization's tickets and (optionally), allows those users to comment on each other's tickets. An admin can set up shared organizations when creating or editing an organization. As an admin, you also have the option of granting this privilege to select end users instead, setting it up in the user's profile. See About organizations and groups.
Side conversations
Side conversations, also known as private conversation threads, are spaces in a ticket where agents can have a side conversation with a specific group of people, or discuss a specific area of concern or course of action. You can use a side conversation to organize information about a ticket. See Using side conversations in tickets.
Single Sign-On
In addition to the user authentication provided by Zendesk, you can also use single sign-on (SSO) to authenticate your users outside of your Zendesk. There are two types: social media SSO and Enterprise SSO. Social media SSO has additional login options that you can provide for your customers convenience. For example, you can make Facebook, Google, and X (formerly Twitter) logins available on your login page. Enterprise SSO is provided by JSON Web Token (JWT) and Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML). See Single sign-on (SSO) options in Zendesk.
Social messaging
A channel for customers to communicate with their end users through third-party social media services. See Getting started with social messaging. See also Messaging.
Staff
Collective term sometimes used for users with an admin or agent role in Zendesk. Does not include end users.
Staff agent
This is a system custom agent role. A Staff agent's primary role is to solve tickets. They can edit tickets within their groups, view reports, and add or edit personal views and macros. See Understanding system custom agent roles in Zendesk.
Standard theme
The default theme that comes with a help center and is used to define the layout of your help center, is the Copenhagen theme. This theme is supported by Zendesk and automatically updates when new theme features are released. You can also update the Copenhagen theme by using branding and advanced settings in the Settings panel. However, you cannot edit the code to customize the theme, otherwise it will no longer be considered a standard theme. See About the standard theme and custom themes in your help center.
Status
Each ticket is assigned a status. There are five status values in total: New, Open, Pending, On-hold, Solved, and Closed. The ticket status is used to generate views and reports. It's also used as a condition in automations, macros, and triggers. The status can only be changed to Closed via automations and triggers (not manually). See About ticket fields.
Subdomain
Your subdomain is part of the URL address you use to access your Zendesk account. Your subdomain uniquely identifies your Zendesk account on the network. The convention for accessing your Zendesk account is https://yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. An example would be https://mayfield.zendesk.com, where mayfield is your subdomain. See Viewing account information on Admin Center Home.
Submitter
A submitter is the person who actually creates a ticket. By default, the submitter of a ticket is the requester, but the requester can be changed (the submitter cannot be). For example, if an agent opens a ticket on behalf of a customer, the agent would be the submitter and the customer would be the requester. See Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Support addresses
Any email address you want to use to receive support requests as tickets can be added to your Zendesk as a support address. Support addresses can be either variations of your Zendesk address or external email addresses. See Adding support addresses for users to submit tickets.
Support request
This term is used to describe what end users create in the help center or any other channel, such as email, voice, and messaging, when they request help. Support requests become tickets in Zendesk Support.
Suspend a user
Users can be suspended, which means that they are no longer able to sign in to Zendesk Support and any new support requests you receive from the user are sent to the suspended tickets queue. See Suspending a user.
Suspended ticket
Based on a number of factors (such as an email being flagged as spam) some of the email coming into Zendesk Support might be suspended or even rejected. Email messages that are suspended are added to the suspended tickets queue from where they can be recovered or deleted. See Managing suspended tickets and spam.
T
Tag
To help you categorize, act on, or search for tickets, you can add tags. Tags can be added to tickets automatically based on the words in the request, manually by agents, or via triggers, automations, and macros. Once added, you can create views by tags, search for tags and the tickets in which they are included, and use tags in your triggers, automations, and macros. Tags can be added to users and organizations and these tags can then be used in business rules to manage the ticket workflow. See Working with ticket tags and Adding tags to users and organizations.
Target
You can notify an email target when a ticket is created or updated. See Notifying external email targets.
Team leader
This is a system custom agent role. Team leaders have greater access to Zendesk Support than staff agents. They can read and edit all tickets, moderate forums, and create and edit end-users, groups, and organizations. See Understanding system custom agent roles in Zendesk.
Ticket
Support requests received from any of your channels) become tickets in Zendesk. Each ticket is assigned to an agent to solve and all activity related to solving the support request is captured as details within the ticket. Ticket data includes Subject, Email, Description, Status, Type, Priority, Group, Assignee, Tags, and any other custom fields you create. Each ticket requires a subject, email address, and description. See About ticket fields.
Ticket form
A ticket form is a set of predefined ticket fields for a specific support request. The ticket form determines the fields and data a ticket contains. See Creating multiple ticket forms to support different request types.
Ticket deflection
Providing information to users so they find answers to their questions on their own rather than submitting help tickets.
Ticket sharing
Tickets can be shared between Zendesk accounts so that you can collaboratively solve tickets. You establish sharing agreements with other Zendesk accounts and specify the terms under which sharing can occur, and how shared tickets are managed. See Sharing tickets with other Zendesk Support accounts.
Time-based events
See Automations.
Triggers
Creating or updating tickets generates events. You can use these events to automatically modify tickets and send email notifications. For example, when a new ticket is created Zendesk sends an email confirmation to the person who generated the ticket (the requester). The mechanism that enables this is called a trigger. Using triggers, you can also automatically assign a ticket to a specific support agent or support group based on the email address it was sent to, the organization to which the requester belongs, or keywords contained in the request message. See About the standard Zendesk Support triggers and Creating and managing triggers.
Type
Each ticket is assigned a type. There are four values for type: Question, Incident, Problem, Task. The ticket type is used throughout Zendesk Support to generate views and reports and it's also used as a condition in automations, macros, and triggers. See About ticket fields.
U
User alias
If aliases are enabled for your help center, you can set up an alias in your help center profile that is used in place of your name when you post or comment. See Adding or editing your help center alias.
User segment
A collection of end users and agents defined by a specific set of attributes and used to determine access to help center content. See Creating user segments for help center user permissions.
V
View
Views define a collection of tickets, leads, contact, or deals based on a set of criteria (expressed as conditions). For example you could define a collection of tickets as "My open tickets" or "Recently solved tickets". Views can be formatted to display as lists, tables, or stages (for deals), and you can specify who can access them. See Accessing your views of tickets and Using views to manage ticket workflow.
Voice (formerly Talk)
Integrated voice support in Zendesk. Agents make themselves available to receive calls and their conversations with customers are recorded and added to tickets. When agents are unavailable, customers leave voicemail messages that automatically become tickets containing the voicemail recording and a transcription. You can also make outbounds calls. See Getting started with voice support.
W
Webhook
A webhook sends an HTTP request to a specified URL in response to an event, such as a trigger or automation firing in Zendesk Support. Web developers typically use webhooks to invoke behavior in another system
Web portal (legacy)
Web portal was the original version of the customer-facing, end-user portal. Web portal was replaced by the help center. See the Help Center entry.
Web Widget
The channel for embedding Zendesk messaging on a website or help center. See Working with messaging in the Web Widget.
Web Widget (Classic)
Web Widget (Classic) enables you to embed support options in your website or help center, including help center search, Zendesk chat, and a contact form. You configure the components you want in the widget, then add the widget code to your website or help center. After you add the code, you manage changes via Zendesk. SeeUsing Web Widget (Classic) to embed customer service in your website.
Whitelist
See Allowlist.
Z
Zendesk account
A Zendesk instance. A Zendesk account includes all products and features that are hosted under a single subdomain. For example, "myaccount" in https://myaccount.zendesk.com.
Zendesk bots (legacy)
Zendesk bots was the former name for AI agents. See AI agents.
Zendesk Copilot
See Copilot.
Zendesk Marketplace
The Marketplace is the hub for apps to customize Zendesk. It also offers help center themes for your help center. See Using the Zendesk Marketplace.