If you have created macros for support requests that can be answered with a single, standard response or action, agents can evaluate tickets and apply macros manually as needed.
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Macros to get you started
There are a number of macros you can use to get started, including:
- Close and redirect to topics
This sets the ticket status to closed. If it is an incident of a known problem, the requester will be informed via a comment that the ticket has been closed and recommended that they visit the forums for more information about the incident.
- Customer not responding
This is a reminder that can be sent to the requester if they have not responded to a request for more information on a pending ticket.
- Downgrade and inform
This tells the requester that the priority of their request has been downgraded to low and that there may be some delay in resolving their request.
- Take it!
This macro is a shortcut for agents to assign a new request to themselves.
Applying macros to tickets
You can manually apply one or more macros to a ticket at once. Keep in mind that what one macro does can easily be undone by another macro.
Just as you can make bulk updates to many tickets at once, you can also apply a macro to more than one ticket using your views. See Managing tickets in bulk.
So why would you apply more than one macro? A typical use case is a ticket that contains more than one question or issue, let's say two in this example. You might have set up two macros that both insert a comment into a ticket to answer each issue separately. By applying each macro to the ticket, you add two comments and address both issues in a single response.
To apply a macro
- In a ticket , click the Apply macro button in the bottom toolbar.
- Typically, your five most commonly used macros from the past week appear at the top of the macros list.
You can select one of these, begin typing the name of the macro, or scroll through the list to find the one you want to use.
The most-used macros display can be disabled, in which case, you'll only see the all macros list. For information, see Disabling the most-used macros option.
Note: Macros cannot be set up for specific channels.The actions defined in the macro will be applied. If the macro updated the ticket comment, you can edit the text before submitting the ticket.
- To apply another macro, click Apply macro again and select another macro.
Tip: Check out how we use macros to manage tickets with Brett Bowser's Improve escalation workflows using macros.
Previewing macros
Enterprise customers have the option to view a description of a macro, and preview the update it will make to a ticket, before applying it.
To preview and apply a macro
- In a ticket, click the Apply macro button in the bottom toolbar.
- Scroll through the list to locate the macro you want to use.
- Hover your cursor over the macro to display its description tooltip.
If the macro does not have a description, the tooltip does not appear.
- If the description matches the macro you want to apply, open the macro preview by clicking the Open preview icon (
), or shift + enter on your keyboard.
The preview shows the macro's title and description, as well as all of the fields and elements the macro will change, add, or remove, including:
- Ticket fields
- Comments, replies, or notes (including placeholders and dynamic content)
- Attachments
- If the macro looks correct, click the Apply Macro button.
You can also click the Cancel button to return to the ticket screen, or click Open in Settings to view the macro's settings page.
53 Comments
Not sure if it has been asked or answered already, but from the article it looks like you can create "folders" of Macros (in example, Flash Photography>). Is there instructions somewhere on how to do this?
Hi @Jen. You create the folders by entering a double colon ("::") in the macro name. Something like Folder1::Macro1, Folder1::Macro2, Folder2::Macro3 etc
This creates a nested list of the macros.
Following up on Jen's post from October 01, 2014 12:48, is there any option to set which problem the ticket will be related to?
Hey Allen!
I poked around in Macros and Triggers, and I don't see the "Linked problem" field available as an action anywhere.
I know right?
We just sent out an invitation to a beta, the requests are all to be turned into Incidents attached to the master problem ticket.
I've created the macro to tag things, set the right reply text, etc. We can make it an Incident, but it would be really nice to peg the right problem as well.
That would be a really handy thing to have...I've experienced a similar pain point with linking problem tickets. I did some poking around, but I didn't find a thread on it in Product Feedback about it. I think that would be a really good suggestion to throw out there for the PMs, if you're so inclined. :)
Second that. I've wanted to use macros to link incidents to their problem ticket for some time.
Hello,
someone knows how I can set-up a trigger that apply a specific macro?
Is it something that is avalaible for professional zendesk licenese?
Hi,
Is there an option to make a personal macro a shared macro, or do I just need to remake it? I try clicking the drop-down but it only shows "Only Me".
Admins can make a personal macro a group or global macro. If you are not an admin - an admin could upgrade you temporarily to perform this action.
Hi,
I am interested in knowing if we can have a select feature for the content of macros. That is for instance we use ***** and _____ for part of macros to fill in with relevant info, for example:
Hello _____,
Thanks for reaching out.... I see that we had delivered your package at ____pm/am.....
Currently I have to select the "underscore section" and replace it with customers name. Is there a feature to just click on the section and have it start ablank to enter the details needed? I feel like we waste some time just selecting those sections. Sorry if my terminology is not correct! Thanks!
Sean
Have a look at placeholders. You can automatically populate your macros with customer specific text.
If I want to reassign a ticket to another department, example: Wrong depart to request a ticket from. How can I apply a Macro without worrying about it setting off a triggered event? I want to be able to manually apply the macro, then reassign.
This would fully depend on the Trigger you're wishing to avoid and the Conditions of that Trigger. If you know the specific Trigger that will fire if you use a specific Macro, what you could do is add a Condition to the Trigger to not Fire if it sees a certain Tag, like "dont_fire". And then add an action to your Macro so that it adds a Tag the Tag, "dont_fire."
That would keep the two form overlapping.
Hope that helps!
Hi, How can I alphabetize our macros automatically, rather than manually rearranging the order?
Hey Anne -
To order them alphabetically in the agent-facing pick list, click the “…” context menu at the top of the macro list, choose Settings, and disable manual ordering.
Give that a try and let us know if it works or if any additional questions come up.
Original Request:
I've searched around and haven't found any discussion about populating public comments with standardized replies for common situations and managing the messages' content.
My team has an extensive list of common replies that we copy from a separate platform and paste as a public comment to get started replying to a ticket. To consolidate our documentation and streamline our responses I would like to integrate the management of common public comments directly into Zendesk instead of storing the content in a separate platform.
Unfortunately, I can't afford to migrate all of the content and run into some unforeseen issue that someone else has already discovered, including but not limited to:
I have already considered running a small test with a select group of template replies but am not able to do that.
My guess is that Macros that are nested according to a common topic, e.g. Desktop, Cloud, and Mobile, would be a good starting point for managing standardized replies for public comments within Zendesk, but I wanted to get a second opinion before I jumped down the rabbit hole.
Any comments or questions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time
TLDR; my team pastes common replies for public comments that are copied from a separate platform, but are Macros the best tool to manage the common replies to public comments within Zendesk?
Simplified Response from Zendesk Support:
...I'm afraid to say you are correct - we at Zendesk would be recommending Macros for commonly used responses, and there isn't another native tool that would assist with this. If Macros are not quite what you are looking for, I would encourage you to check our marketplace for potentially a third party solution, but I'm afraid I don't know of a third party myself....
Hi Andrew!
Macros are definitely going to be the best tool for you. That's exactly what the feature was built for.
I've never heard of anyone having too many macros...how many do you think you'd need?
Hey Jessie,
Good to know.
I doubt we have so many ticket templates that Macros won't be able to handle it. The bigger problem will be getting agents to adopt the new system.
Thanks for the confirmation,
Andrew
No problem, Andrew! Let us know if you need any more help. :)
Hello,
We have a common issue with agents sending customers macros that have previously been sent to the same customer earlier in the thread. Is it possible to have a macro be blocked from being sent to a specific email if it was already sent within a certain timeframe?
Hi Troy -
There is not functionality around blocking macros; we've typically found the best solution to this kind of problem is good old agent training to look through and see if the macro has been previously applied.
How to extract all your created macros from zendesk?
Hello, Suzy!
You can export Zendesk Macros into a spreadsheet by following the steps here: How to export Zendesk macros into a spreadsheet
I've been poring over the documentation, but haven't found an answer as to whether or not we can activate macros on a ticket via the API. This would be extremely useful in automating several of our processes.
As a general example, say we have MACRO A that adds a comment to a ticket, and ticks off a checkbox (basically adds a tag that a certain task has been completed.) I would like to enable my users to fire MACRO A from an app built in-house that we use to process a certain class of tickets, without having to go back into the Zendesk GUI and opening the ticket, and clicking Apply MACRO A.
Is this functionality supported anywhere?
Hi Manish,
As it turns out this functionality doesn't exist within our API and the agents will need to apply these macros directly within the agent interface. I would recommend posting this in our Product Feedback forum along with your use case to help gauge interest from other users.
Thanks!
How do macros handle custom text that I enter? ie. If I apply a macro to a ticket, and edit what's shown there (say to add a coupon code or similar) does that same edit apply to the plain text fallback?
Hey Tony,
If you were to make changes after the macro was applied to the ticket then those changes would reflect in the plain text fallback that is sent to the requester of the ticket. In the end whatever is shown in the comment box when you hit the submit button will be what is sent to the requester.
Hope this clears up any confusion :)
Is there a trick to getting a macro to work from the iPhone Zendesk Support app? I have closed several tickets after applying the macro only to find that I received negative feedback because the macro answer I applied wasn't ever sent to the customer, nor does it show in the conversation history.
Hi Marissa, posting macros should work as it would through a browser. I would like to review a few of these examples and see if we can work to reproduce the issue. I am going to open a ticket so we can dig into this a little further.
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