Searching users, groups, and organizations

Data in the user, group, and organization objects can be searched. Searching these objects returns user profiles and group and organization summary pages; each of which also lists any associated tickets.

Note: Groups and organizations are not available on the Essential plan.

This article covers the following topics:

• About searching
• Searching users
• Searching for users by email domain
• Searching groups
• Searching organizations
• Searching custom user and organization fields

About searching

You can search users, organizations, and groups by using the search tool that is displayed in the People page.

When you search from this page the results are restricted to this people data.

If you search using the global search tool, you need to also use the type keyword if you want to restrict results to specific types of data. If you don't, your search results will include matches from the data in your Zendesk Support instance.

type:organization tags:premium

For more information about using search, see Searching the data in your Zendesk. All the user data properties you can search are described in the tables below. All of the searchable data in your Zendesk Support instance (including ticket data) is described in Zendesk search reference.

The user and type keywords

To search for a user's profile data, you have the following two options.

Using the user keyword:

user:amy

Or, using the type:user keyword:

type:user amy

What's the difference between the two? The keyword user when not combined with type is just a shortcut for finding users by ID, name, and email address. The user keyword, like the ticket user role keywords (assignee, requester, submitter), accepts the ID, name, and email address as valid user identifiers.

user:52789480
user:amy
user:"amy moore"
user:[e-mail]

If you want to search for additional user data, such as the user's phone number, the organization they belong to, and so on, you need to use type:user.

type:user tags:beta_user organization:customers

This example also illustrates the usefulness of type keyword. With it you can search for user data that is shared by more than one user. You can search for users that are in the same organization or group or any of the other searchable user data. For more information about the type keyword, see Using the type keyword.

The type keyword is also used to search the group and organization data objects.

type:group name:"level 2"
type:organization name:customers

Searching users

The user data object contains all of the user properties that you can set in the user profile. Not all of the user profile data is searchable; those properties that are searchable are described in the following table.

Keyword	Description
name	The user's partial or full name. name:"alex anderson"
role	The user's designated role. role:admin
email	The user's email address. email:[e-mail]
group	The user's group name. This only applies to admin and agent users. group:"Level 2"
organization	The user's organization name. organization:mondocam
created	The date the user was added to your Zendesk. created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time.
notes	All text in the notes field in the user's profile. notes:"manager"
details	All text in the details field in the user's profile. details:"madison, wi"
external_id	The user's external ID, if used. external_id:0098884412
phone	The user's phone number. phone:[phone]
tags	Tags that have been added to the user's profile. tags:premium tags:wholesale For more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations.
customfield	Custom user fields. plan_type:platinum For more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields.

Searching for users by email domain

All users belonging to the same email domain can be returned with this search statement:

type:user mondocam.com

To search for more than one email domain at a time, you just add more email domains to the search:

type:user mondocam.com zendesk.com

Searching groups

Here are the group properties that can be searched.

Keyword	Description
name	The group's name. name:"level 2"
created	The date the group was added. created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time.

Searching organizations

Here are the organization properties that can be searched.

Keyword	Description
name	The organization's partial or full name. name:mondocam
created	The date the organization was added. created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time.
notes	All text in the notes field in the user's profile. notes:EMEA
details	All text in the details field in the organization's profile. details:london
tags	Tags that have been added to the organization. tags:premium For more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations.
customfield	Custom organization fields. plan_type:platinum For more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields.

Searching custom user and organization fields

You can search for data in custom user fields and custom organization fields by using the key that identifies the custom field.

To locate the key for a custom field, click the Admin icon () and select User Fields or Organization Fields, then click the name of a custom field. The field key appears in the properties panel on the right.

You can search for users and organizations that have no value in a specific custom field, by using none as the search term, along with the custom field key. For instance, if you have a custom field key foo, a search for foo:none returns all users or organizations with the empty custom field foo.

Note: You cannot search for data in custom ticket fields the same way that you can for custom user and custom org fields. For custom ticket fields you can search for data in drop-down and checkbox fields based on their tags. For more information, see Searching custom ticket fields.

Field type	Operators	Examples
Drop-down list	:	Find users or organizations where plan_type is platinum: plan_type:platinum Find users or organizations where plan_type is platinum or gold: plan_type:platinum plan_type:gold
Text Multi-line text	:	Find users or organizations where product_name contains widget: product_name:widget
Regular expression	:	Find users or organizations where product_name contains the multi-word phrase "red widget:" product_name:"red widget"
Numeric	>, <, >=, <=, :	Find users or organizations where num_agents is exactly 5: num_agents:5 Find users or organizations where num_agents is between 4 and 10, inclusive: num_agents>4 num_agents<10
Decimal	>, <, >=, <=, :	Find users or organizations where avg_score is greater than 14.5: avg_score>14.5 Find users or organizations where avg_score is between 10.1 and 15.3, exclusive: avg_score>10.1 avg_score<15.3
Check box	:	Find users or organizations where is_active is true: is_active:true
Date	>, <, >=, <=, :	Find users or organizations where subscription_date is before 2013-06-23: subscription_date<2013-06-23 Find users or organizations where subscription_date is between 2012-05-23 and 2013-06-23, exclusive subscription_date>2012-05-23 subscription_date<2013-06-23