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 |
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.
|
236 Comments
But in the view I can't sort with a specific tags or words...
Hey Wisam!
I'm sorry, I think I'm confused about what you're trying to do here. So are you searching for tags or keywords and then needing to sort the results by ticket subject?
Please just file a ticket that we would like to be able to sort by any column on any report or search results. The fact that it can't already do this is kind of silly, considering that the underlying database can clearly return sorted results.
How can we search for the exact custom ticket field (text)?
If we use option fieldvalue:44 it returns search by all custom fields
Is it possible to query on whether side conversation messages are present in tickets?
Something like
{"query":"has_side_conversation:true"}
Hey Andrey!
I'm going to open up a ticket for you to discuss this behavior further - stay tuned for that update!
Chris - currently there isn't an option to search for tickets created with side conversations. However, we do recommend adding a tag to your tickets with side conversations for tracking purposes.
I have a feeling I've suggested this already, but it would be great if we could search by the "received_at" of a ticket.
Thanks!
The help section above, under operators, states "In a search including data properties, use double quotes to perform an inclusive AND search, returning results that include all properties in the search."
"inclusive AND" is not a logical principle in Boolean logic. The options are "inclusive OR", "exclusive OR" and "logical AND". As far as I can tell through testing, searching the API with multiple quoted strings is an "inclusive OR".
Can you clarify if it is fact an inclusive OR under all circumstances?
I believe that the search guidelines for organization are incorrect here. you have to change the search from
organization:yournorganizationname
to name:yourorganizationname
as the top search does not work in my search or the integration with zapier.
Hey there, is there a way for me to search for specific MAQL strings such as:
Is there an option to search by next SLA breach? This would be super useful in the API.
Something like:
group:K24x7 assignee:none sla_next_breach_at<2019-04-01 12:00:00
I know I can execute a view via the API and get that (sort of), but I'll need to do much more work to filter out the results that don't match my filter... All I really need is a COUNT of tickets that match some SLA breach time filter.
Thanks!
Is there any way to use regular expression (regex) to search in tickets' description?
Hi Tim. You're not missing anything -- requests for regular expression search in this area and others have come up before. It isn't in the product at this time. I'll pass this along to our product management group.
How can I search other user fields such as active, created_at, or time_zone ?
Hey Elliot,
You should be able to search the time the user was created by using the created keyword. More information can be found in the documentation above. I've also attached our Zendesk Support advanced search article which I believe you'll find useful as well.
As for the timezone and whether the users are active or not, you'll most likely need to use the Support API to pull this information.
Hope this helps!
Can someone tell me how to search for archived tickets so i don't have to read 165 comments to see if this is possibly addressed? I need to see all archived tickets
Hi
Is there a way to search multiple tickets in zendesk support ?
@Syndi I replied to your post here: Searching Tickets. Hope this helps!
@Jerry how exactly are you searching for these tickets? Are you searching by ID or ticket fields? Let me know!
I am using the Support API (PHP SDK) to grab tickets by organization and created time (monthly tickets for an organization) and am having trouble getting ticket metrics side-loaded from the search endpoint.
I can't find anything documented about it other than using '?include=metric_sets' should include this side-loaded data, but it seems like this may only be on the tickets endpoint.
Is it supported to side-load ticket metrics on a search endpoint or do I have to make additional calls to the API? Either to ticket_metrics endpoint for each ticket, or to the tickets endpoint with a side-load to get information just so it has the resolution_time that I need?
Can I search by "number of comments/replies" ?
@Shane this isn't possible in Search so you'll most likely want to use Incremental Exports instead. I also recommend taking a look at the upcoming changes to the Search API here: New Search API Result Limits
@Scott you can't search by the number of comments/replies at this time.
Is there a way to have your search results sorted from most recently updated to oldest update by default? Or do you always need to use "order_by:updated_at sort:desc" with your search in order to do so?
Hey Nadia,
There's no way to change the default search at this time. If you want to sort the results you'll need to use "order_by:updated_at sort:desc" with your search.
Let me know if you have any other questions :)
So, I'm trying to filter by "updater".
I have found the field updater i can add to a view. This is useful because i can sort by updater to more easily see tickets that were updated by "end user" and know that we have an update we should pay attention too. Is it possible to search something like updater:"end user"?
I have tried that and it didn't work.
Hey Matthew,
I double-checked with our Advocacy team and it looks like this isn't possible using Search. That being said, you could use the API which will provide the submitter ID and you can then parse that data.
Hope this points you in the right direction!
Is this possible to search tickets that not belong to two different groups
I tried like -group:"Group A -group:Group B" and seems not working correctly
Hi Liqiong. If that's exactly what you're trying, you'll want to change where the quotes are. Something like this should work:
type:ticket -group:"Group A" -group:"Group B"
This will give you all tickets that are not assigned to Group A or Group B.
Can I know how do I search tickets that has voice comment?
Thanks!
Hi Hi Liqiong. You can use: type:ticket via:phone
Check out Zendesk Support search reference above for more details on this and other "via" values:
Does via:phone searches the ticket that "HAS" a voice comment? Or ticket created from a phone?
What if I want to search all tickets that has a media?
I want to redact all media from tickets so have to locate ones with either: attachment, inline image or voice comment
It seems that I can use has_attachment:true to locate attachment and inline image, how to do OR between has_attachment:true and via:phone?
Thanks
Please sign in to leave a comment.