This article contains tables listing and describing data property keywords and values that can be used, along with common search operators, to narrow your search results. There are also sections describing more advanced search methods and formatting.
This article is aimed at administrators and support managers with full access to the data in Zendesk Support. If you're an agent, start with Searching the data in Zendesk Support and refer back to this reference article if you want to perform more advanced searches.
This article includes the following topics on advanced search methods:
This article includes the following reference tables:
- Search operators
- Ticket property keywords
- User property keywords
- Organization property keywords
- Group property keywords
- Satisfaction rating searchable values
Search terms and terminology
Search terms
Search terms are user-defined words, phrases, or values. Examples:
- 3245227
- Greenbriar
- serial number
- "Jane Doe"
Search terms are case-insensitive. For example, "App" and "app" return the same results.
A single-word search term returns a result if it appears in the data as follows:
- a single word
- a single word in a longer phrase
- the prefix of a longer word
The search term will not return a result if it appears in the data as follows:
- in the middle of a word
- at the end of a word
For example, the search term "top" would match "top", "top tier", "Top Ten Trucking", "Tip-Top Mops", "Big Top Entertainment", and "Dessert Toppings, Inc". It would not match "Desktop Solutions" or "One-Stop Publishing".
Please upgrade my account
Property keywords
You can narrow your results by combining property keywords with search terms and operators. Example:
status<solved
A property keyword is the name of a property in a ticket, a user, an organization, or a group. Examples:
- assignee
- created
- name
See the following property keyword references for all the properties and details about each:
Example property searches:
Search | Property keyword | Returns |
---|---|---|
priority>normal | priority | Tickets with a priority of high or urgent |
subject:2fa | subject | Tickets with the search term 2fa in the subject |
email:jdoe@example.com | The user with the email jdoe@example.com |
Some properties have predefined values. For example, the ticket status property has the following predefined values: new, open, pending, hold, solved, closed. You can only search by these values. Example search: status:open
. See the property keyword references for details about each property.
Other properties accept user-defined search terms. Example: subject:2fa
. See Search terms. The same matching rules apply for property searches with the exception of prefix matching. Results are not returned if the search term appears as the prefix of a longer word. For example, the search term "tier" would return results for "tier 1" and "tier 2" but not "tiered".
You can search for multiple values of a single property by including the property keyword multiple times in a query. Example:
tags:silver tags:bronze
Search uses OR logic for matching in this case. The previous example returns results that contain either the tag "silver" or the tag "bronze".
Example search
The following search expression looks for anything with the tag "vip" that was created before May 1, 2019:
tags:vip created<2019-05-01
- tags is a property keyword indicating you're searching only within a specific data property, in this case a tag.
- : is the "equal to" operator indicating the tag property value needs to be equal to the subsequent search term. Note that there's no space before or after the :.
- vip is the search term.
- created is a property keyword indicating you're searching the created data property for items created relative to a certain date.
- < is the "less than" operator indicating you're searching for records created before a certain date.
- 2015-05-01 is a search term indicating the date you want to use.
Searching for properties that contain no data
none
as the search term, along with the group, tags, via, organization, or assignee keywords, as in this example:
assignee:none
This returns all unassigned tickets.
Searching by date and time
Date property keywords - created, updated, solved, and due date) can be combined with search operators to return data from a specific date, before a certain date, and after a certain date. To search dates in any locale, use the format YYYY-MM-DD. You can also use locale-specific formats such as MM/DD/YYYY in the United States.
created<2011-05-01
due_date>2010-01-10
solved:2010-01-10
You can also use the <= or >= operators to indicate less-than-or-equal-to and greater-than-or-equal-to respectively.
Searching with combined dates and times
created>2015-09-01T12:00:00-08:00 updated<2015-09-01T12:00:00Z
The first example above searches for anything created after September 1, 2015 at 12:00 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time).
The second example above searches for anything updated before September 1, 2015 at 12:00 p.m. (UTC).
Searching within a date/time range
created>2014-08-01 created<2014-08-05
You can also include specific times in your search range. The following example searches for anything created between August 1, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. (UTC) and August 4, 2014 at midnight (UTC):
created>2014-08-01T23:59:00Z created<2014-08-04T23:59:59Z
Searching with relative times
You can search for a time relative to the present time, using the time units hours, minutes, days, weeks, months, or years. The following search returns anything created in the last four hours:
created>4hours
Sorting search results
order_by:field
sort:asc
orsort:desc
created
commented
priority
status
ticket_type
Using the order_by
and sort
keywords is equivalent to using the API parameters sort_by
and sort_order
.
Using the 'type' keyword
For API searches, one of the tools you have available for narrowing your search results is the type
keyword. It is used to explicitly declare that you want to search for one of the following types:
- ticket
- user
- organization
- group
- entry or topic (forums)
Using the type
keyword means that you are explicitly searching on the type you specify. For example, you can search for all the users that belong to the customer's organization using this search statement:
type:user organization:customers
If you instead searched for organization:customers
you would also get all the tickets that have requesters who belong to this organization. This is because searches that do not explicitly specify type return results for all types, including tickets (and organization is a ticket property).
Using type:user
, your search returns all users that belong to the Customers organization. So, you're narrowing your search to the user type and excluding tickets.
While organizations and groups are properties of the user object, they have their own properties that can be searched as well. The following query allows you search only for organization tags, excluding tags of the same name that may be used in other elements of your Zendesk Support instance such as tickets and forum topics.
type:organization tags:premium
Using the 'user' keyword
To search for a user's profile data, you have the following two options.
user
keyword:
user:amyOr, using the
type:user
keyword:
type:user amy
For more information about the user
keyword and how it's different from the type:user
keyword, see the section about The user and type keywords in Searching users, groups, and organizations.
Search FAQ
- How soon can new data be searched?
When you add new data to Zendesk Support, it typically takes about a minute before it's indexed and can be searched.
- How does punctuation affect search?
Punctuation characters are generally not included in searches.
- Are there limitations to wildcard searches?
You can only do wildcard searches when combined with property keywords (
subject:photo*
). The wildcard must go at the end of the search term. - Who can search what?
Administrators can search all the data in Zendesk Support. Agents can search the data that they've been granted access to. End-users can do full text searches of the knowledge base.
-
What languages are supported?
There is language-specific support for searching in the following languages:- English
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Portuguese
- Spanish
The support includes dictionary-based tokenization for Japanese, because words are not separated by spaces in that language. For the other languages, the language-specific support is primarily stemming, which allows different forms of the same word to match. In particular, the singular and plural forms of a word will generally match.
Search operators
You can use the following search operators to build your search statements.
Operator | Description |
---|---|
: | The colon indicates that the given field should equal the specified value.
status:open |
< | Less than.
status<closed |
> | Greater than.
priority>normal |
<= | Less than or equal to.
status<=pending |
>= | Greater than or equal to.
priority>=normal |
" " | Double quotes. In a simple keyword search, this is referred to as a phrase search and returns the exact words in the exact order.
"Please upgrade my account" Note: In the Japanese version of Support, this feature does not work as expected. A simple keyword search that includes double quotes returns results, but the results are not the exact words in the exact order.
In a search including data properties, use double quotes to perform an inclusive AND search, returning results that include all properties in the search. tags:"superman is_awesome" |
- | Minus sign. Excludes items containing a word (or property value) from the search results. For example, the following statement searches for any tickets with the status 'pending', but excludes any tickets containing the tag 'invoice' from the search results:
status:pending -tags:invoice |
* | The wildcard operator is useful when you want to search various forms of a word. For example, searching for photo* returns results that would include photography, photographer, photograph and any other words that began with 'photo'.
However, because of the performance issues involved with doing wildcard searches, unqualified wildcard searches are not currently supported. In other words, you need to use a property keyword to make your search specific to the data you're trying to locate.
subject:photo* |
Ticket property keywords
You can search on the following ticket properties.
For more information about ticket search, see Searching tickets.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
Ticket ID | There isn't a property keyword for the ticket ID. Instead, you simply search for the ticket by its ID number in the following format:
233 |
created |
The date, or date and time, the ticket was created. Enter date in yyy-mm-dd format.
created:2011-05-01 Search within a date or time range. Enter times using ISO 8601 syntax. For example, to search for a ticket created between 10:30 a.m. and 12 p.m. (UTC) on August 1, 2014: created>2014-08-01T10:30:00Z created<2014-08-01T12:00:00Z For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
updated |
The date of the most recent ticket update.
updated>2011-05-15 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
solved |
The date the ticket was set to solved.
solved<2011-06-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
due_date |
The due date of tickets.
due_date:2011-06-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
assignee |
The assigned agent or other entity. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number.
assignee:"Susan Warren" |
submitter |
The ticket submitter. This may be different than the requester if the ticket was submitted by an agent on behalf of the requester. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number. See Searching ticket user roles.
submitter:me |
requester |
The ticket requester. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number.
requester:amy@mondocam.com |
subject |
The text in the ticket's subject.
subject:"upgrade account" |
description |
The text in the ticket's description and comments.
description:defective |
status |
Possible values: new, open, pending, hold, solved, closed.
status<closed |
ticket_type |
Possible values: question, incident, problem, task.
ticket_type:problem |
priority |
Possible values: low, normal, high, urgent.
priority>low |
group |
Specify the name or ID of a group. Returns tickets assigned to agents who are members of the group. Examples:
group:"Level 2" group:20663166 |
organization |
Specify the name or ID of an organization. Returns tickets by requesters who are members of the organization. Examples:
organization:customers organization:22989442 You can also specify "none" to return tickets by requesters who are not members of any organization. organization:none |
tags |
Specify tags that have been added to the ticket or "none."
tags:premium To find tickets that include either of two tags, use: tags:important tags:urgent To find tickets that include both tags: tags:"important urgent" |
via |
The ticket's source, which can be any of the following:
via:phone |
commenter |
People who have added comments to tickets. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number.
commenter:"Mike" |
cc |
People who have been CC'd on tickets. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number.
cc:amanda@mondocam.com |
fieldvalue |
Search for a specific value in custom ticket fields by using the fieldvalue keyword. For example:
fieldvalue:12345 This returns all the tickets that have a custom field with the value "12345."
For drop-down custom fields, search for tags associated with the field value you want to find. |
brand |
Search for a specific Brand on a ticket. A Brand with two or more words requires quotation marks, while a one word brand can be searched as is. For example:
brand:Nordstrom Or
brand: "Banana Republic" |
has_attachment |
Search for all tickets with or without attachments using true or false .
To search for tickets with attachments:
To search for all tickets without attachments:
|
form |
Search for all tickets created with a particular ticket form.
If the name of the ticket form includes multiple words, use quotation marks. For example:
If the name of the ticket form is a single word, you don't have to use the quotation marks. For example:
|
recipient |
Search for all tickets created with a particular recipient.
This only works for Zendesk support addresses (the ultimate destination) of emails forwarded from external addresses.
|
User property keywords
Here's the list of user properties that can be searched.
For more information about searching users, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
name |
The user's partial or full name.
name:"alex anderson" |
role |
The user's designated role.
role:admin |
email |
Specify the user's email address, or specify none to search for users without an email address.
email:alex@mondocam.com email:"none" Tip: Wildcards do not work for email address searches. For example, the following search returns no results:
email:dwight* |
group |
The user's group name. This only applies to admin and agent users.
group:"Level 2" |
organization |
Specify the user's organization name or ID, or specify none to search for users without an organization. If the user belongs to more than one organization, searching on any of those organizations will return their profile.
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 |
Specify the user's external ID, if used, or specifynone to search for users without an external ID.
external_id:0098884412 |
phone |
Specify the user's phone number, or specify none to search for users without a phone number.
phone:555-111-2222 |
tags |
Specify tags on the user's profile, or specify none to search for users without tags.
tags:premium tags:wholesaleFor more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations. |
customfield |
Custom user fields.
plan_type:platinumFor more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields. |
is_verified |
Search for users with or without verified email using true or false .
To search for users with a verified email address: is_verified:true To search for users without a verified email address: is_verified:false |
suspended |
Search for users that are and aren't suspended using true or false .
To search for suspended users: is_suspended:true To search for users that aren't suspended: is_suspended:false For more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields. |
Search for users based on a WhatsApp phone number.
For more information see Searching for tickets by WhatsApp number. |
Organization property keywords
Here's the list of organization properties that can be searched. For more information, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
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 |
Specify tags that have been added to the organization, or specify none to search for organizations without tags.
tags:premium For more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations. |
customfield |
Custom organization fields.
plan_type:platinumFor more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields. |
external_id |
The external ID of the organization or specify none to search for users without an external ID.
external_id:00112345 |
Group property keywords
Here's the list of group properties that can be searched. For more information, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
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. |
Satisfaction rating searchable values
You can use the satisfaction
keyword with rating values to search your customer satisfaction ratings. For more information on customer satisfaction, see Using customer satisfaction rating.
Value | Description |
---|---|
bad |
Tickets that have been rated 'bad'.
|
badwithcomment |
Tickets that have been rated 'bad' that also include a comment from the ticket requester.
|
good |
Tickets that have been rated 'good'.
|
goodwithcomment |
Tickets that have been rated 'good' that also include a comment from the ticket requester.
|
offered |
When you request a customer satisfaction rating, the ticket satisfaction rating status is set to 'offered'. The following notification is added to the ticket: Customer satisfaction feedback was offered. This means that you've asked for but not yet received a response to the rating request.
|
237 Comments
Hi Ccaputo!
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're pulling Zendesk data into Domo. The ability to change what data gets pulled is probably going to depend on how you have Domo and Zendesk linked up. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the way Domo works so I'm afraid I won't be much help.
You might think about posting about this in our Community to see if any other Zendesk customers use Domo with their Zendesks. Otherwise, you might want to check with Domo directly to see if they can shed some light on it for you.
Hey Ccaputo!
I got some additional information on your question from a colleague that might be helpful to you.
They said that if you're using search to pull data into Zendesk there is currently no way to limit the set of columns/fields that are returned. You might be able to use the API to export your data from Zendesk and then import it into Domo, but that will depend on whether that type of functionality is available in Domo.
Hope that helps!
In Zendesk Classic, we used to be able to obtain a URL corresponding to a Search query. Now with the New Zendesk, is there a way to obtain that? Or do we absolutely to build a view?
The URL seems to have become static: https://<account name>.zendesk.com/agent/search/1
Hey Dominique,
Thanks for reaching out! To answer your question, yes you can obtain a URL through the search function in the new Zendesk, but the URL will become static. The best recommendation I can offer to obtain the URL is to create a view.
Remember that you can always use our search reference documentation to specify what you are looking for and then search for the same string every time :)
Hope that helps!
Strange, the table of content lists "Searching for tickets with a specific ticket form" but there is no section on the page that matches.
@Jonathan Pabon,
"search for the same string every time"
Yeah, that's why it was useful to have the query appear in the URL ;)
How do I search for "not equal to", i.e. say I want to get tickets where "requester id' was not equal to 123. Shall I use:
requester<123 requester>123
syntax?
@BogdanW,
You must then use the minus sign: " - "
You place that minus operator in front of the descriptor, for example:
Status:open -subject:Datafile
This would list all Open tickets but those with "Datafile" in the subject line. Pls. refer to the "Search operators" section above for more details.
Hope this helps
Serge
Serge,
thanks for your answer (however, I think my solution would work as well , i.e. based on documentation above, if the same keyword is used multiple times conditions are 'OR'- ed, see example and comments above for: 'tags:silver tags:bronze').
Anyway, I have a different question. How do I set conditions on custom fields on ticket? There are some examples above but they seem to hit ALL custom fields at once. In my case, I have two custom fields which are of type DATE. Of course, Zendesk has them as string (but it knows that underlining type is DATE from field definition). What I want is to get tickets where these two custom fields meet a condition like first_Field > '2016-04-14' second_Field < '2016-05-14'.
Any suggestion?
Serge,
me again ... . Even a condition for nulls, i.e. something like 'first_Field is not null second_Field is not null' would help me.
Thx,
Bogdan
Hi Bogdanw,
Unfortunately the search tool is quite limited for custom fields. From the tests I conducted, it's limited to the colon " : " operator (equal operator). Also you can't specify a particular ticket field, the search tool will look for matching value in all custom fields with the following:
fieldvalue:<enter your value here>
So not very efficient, however if ever, your custom field happens to be a drop-down type then, at least, you can search with tag values:
"tags:<enter tag value here>"
That's all I could fine, more info here and here, from the second link, there a comment from Laura D. (ZD employee), on June 27, 2013 19:32, which confirms my saying.
Too bad
Serge
Looks like the undocumented 'via:web' works to search for tickets raised directly in the web admin console. Is that correct?
@Dave, you are right. We support via:web and via:"web form" for tickets created from web forms. We will update the document soon.
Question about custom fields on a ticket.
Say, I have a custom drop down field with Id = 123456789.
Can I get all possible options (values) of this field via API?
Hi there!
I'm not an API expert by any means, but I think you might be able to find what you need here: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/ticket_fields#updating-drop-down-field-options
I hope that helps!
Hi All,
We are interested in learning how you, Zendesk customers, use the Zendesk search in your work so that we could continue enhancing and improving this feature.
If you and your team are interested in sharing how search supports your work and are available for talking to us, please sign up using the form here. http://goo.gl/forms/IDuqGK20uu397YAb2
We will follow up from there if we find a match to our study. Due to limited resource available, we may not be able to cover all customers.
Thanks!
Hi
How can I search problem tickets using "incidents count" parameter?
For example: List of Problem tickets with count of incidents more 35?
@andrey
You can find this with a custom metric for insights!
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/205006388-Reporting-Show-Open-Problems-with-of-linked-Incidents-
Hi Zendesk,
I stumbled across some functionality for searches that I don't see referenced here. The following appears to search a specific custom ticket field for the value specified:
It also supports ">" and "<" operators for numeric and date fields.
Is this officially supported? We're trying to develop code that needs to perform this exact type of search, and I don't want to rely on functionality that might vanish into the ether.
Hey Jason,
Although that is an awesome find, I talked to the team and it sounds like it is not officially supported, so I agree with the plan to not build code on it in this situation. As mentioned in the article, using fieldvalue:value will search all fields for the value being searched for, but it will not filter for a specific custom field, as your solution will! I am sorry! If you have further questions, let us know.
Thanks, Megan!
I was afraid of that. We ended up going with your suggestion for now. If anything changes, can we be notified here in the comments? I'm not able to subscribe to content updates for the article itself...
Request / question here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203440746-Search-Results-Tooltip?page=1#community_comment_219778948
How can I search for suspended users? Mainly interested in using it in conjunction with the Search API
Hi.
Similar request to Pat:
How do I use the search API to get a list of not suspended end-users? I need this to automate user accounts clean-ups based on last login date and since I'm not going to do anything to already suspended users I don't want them increasing my pagination overhead. So it would be great to be able to filter them out upfront. Is there a way to do this?
Thank you!
Frankly - still not understanding why that option is not being provided inside the GUI directly. An ability to filter on suspended/active users would be very useful!
Hi Pat, Carlos, and Neil,
First, as Neil pointed out, there is not any native functionality which would allow you to filter out suspended users. There is a current feature request in our product feedback forums which would be worth following in this regard - the more feedback we get there, the better!
Zendesk Feedback: Admin tool request: List of suspended users
Now about your inquiry, Carlos - You can use the Zendesk API to list all users in your Zendesk, which you can then filter by role (end-user). Unfortunately, you cannot filter results based on suspension status when requesting users in the API, so you would then need to either create a script to look for the users that are suspended based on that attribute in the results, or manually pull them out yourself from the results.
I'm sorry I don't have an easier answer for you here, but I hope this helps!
Is there any way to do side loading with search? It appears as if not - but I thought I'd check.
(Btw, I really hope I get an email notification if this comment is responded to. :)
Any way to limit the number of results returned? I'm looking to only get the 5 most recent tickets created by a user.
@Nate not exactly what you are asking for, but you can get much the same effect with, e.g. "created>2months" for all tickets created in the past 2 months. If you have a rough sense of the customer's activity level, you can ballpark the time range, otherwise can start small and adjust up as needed.
@Jonathan
Thanks for the response, many APIs that I've used have had a "limit" parameter that you pass in a number to and performs whatever query and then returns that number of records. This would be nice to have so we can shorten the response size.
Obviously that is easy enough to do on our end, but it would be nice to be able to pass a limit parameter and just get 5 tickets back from the request as doing a date range isn't super sustainable.
All good if that isn't possible yet, but might be a nice feature to consider :)
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