Creating views to manage ticket workflow

Fastpath: Admin > Manage > Views

Views are a way to organize your tickets by grouping them into lists based on certain criteria. For example, you can create a view for unsolved tickets that are assigned to you, a view for new tickets that need to be triaged, or a view for pending tickets that are awaiting response. Using views can help you determine what tickets need attention from you or your team and plan accordingly.

Many support teams use views to guide the workflow by requiring agents to address tickets in one view first and then others in a specific order. Views can also mirror the support structure you've created. For example, if you provide different levels of service for different customers or manage escalation using a tiered support group structure (Level 1, Level 2), you can create views for each of these scenarios.

This article covers the following topics:

• About view types
• Adding views
• Cloning a view

About view types

Zendesk Support includes the following types of views:

• Default views. There are a number of pre-defined views created when you open a Zendesk Support account. You can deactivate or edit most of these views; however, the Suspended tickets and Deleted tickets views cannot be edited or removed from your list of views.
• Shared views. Administrators can create views that are available to all agents or to all agents in a specific group. The first 12 shared views are accessible in the Views list () .
• Personal views. Agents can create views that available to themselves only. The first 8 personal views are accessible in the Views list ().

Adding views

Agents can create views for their own personal use. For agents in custom roles, views permissions depend on their custom role setting. Administrators can create personal views, as well as shared views for use by multiple agents.

Community tip! Graeme shares real-world best practices for setting up and using views in this community tip, Views best practices.

To add a view

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.
2. Click Add view.

   Alternatively, you can clone a view to create a new view based on an existing view (see Cloning a view). Agents in custom roles might not have the option to add a view, depending on their permissions setting.

3. At the top of the page, enter a name for the view.
4. Enter a Description for your view.
5. Select an availability option to determine Who has access to the view:
   • Any agent, available to all agents.
   • Agents in specific groups, available only to agents in the groups specified. You can enter one or more groups in this field. If you enter mulitple tags, hit Enter between each tag.
   • Only you, available only to you as a personal view.

   

6. Under Tickets must meet all of these conditions to appear in the view, add the conditions to define this collection of tickets (see Building view condition statements below).

   You can also add conditions under Tickets can meet any of these conditions to appear in the view.

7. Click Preview to test the conditions.
8. Set the formatting options:
   1. Drag the view Columns into the order you want. Click Add column to add up to 10 columns.

      Status is always shown in the view before the columns. You don't have to add it manually to the table. Multi-select fields are not supported in table columns.

      

   2. Under Group by, select the ticket data field you want to group the tickets in the view, then select Ascending or Descending.
      Tip: If you select Request date from the Group by dropdown list, any settings you change in the Order by dropdown list will not be applied.
   3. Under Order by, select the ticket data field you want to use as the default data to order the tickets in the view, then select Ascending or Descending.
9. When you are finished, click Save.

   The view is created.

You can manage your view (edit, deactivate, and so on) on the individual view's page, accessed from the Views management page. See Managing your views.

Building view condition statements

As with the other business rules, you select collections of tickets using conditions, operators, and values.

You must have at least one of the following ticket properties in the Meet all of the following conditions section:

• Status
• Type
• Group
• Assignee
• Requester

Some conditions may not be available, depending on your plan.

Condition	Description
Ticket: Status	The ticket status values are: New is the initial status of a newly created ticket (not assigned to an agent). Open means that the ticket has been assigned to an agent. Pending is used to indicate that the requester has been asked for information and the ticket is therefore on hold until that information has been received. On-hold means that the support request is awaiting a resolution from a third party—someone who is not a member of your support staff and does not have an agent account in your Zendesk. This status is optional and must be added to your Zendesk (see Adding on-hold ticket status to your Zendesk). Solved indicates that the customer’s issue has been resolved. Tickets remain solved until they are closed. Closed means that the ticket has been locked and cannot be reopened or updated. When selecting a status, you can use the field operators Less Than and Greater Than to specify a range of tickets based on their status. New is the lowest value, with values increasing until you get to Closed status. For example, a condition statement that returns only New, Open, and Pending tickets looks like this: Status is less than Solved.
Ticket: Form	Select the required ticket form. For more information on ticket forms, see Creating ticket forms to support multiple request types.
Ticket: Type	The ticket type values are: Question Incident is used to indicate that there is more than one occurrence of the same problem. When this occurs, one ticket is set to Problem and the other tickets that are reporting the same problem are set to Incident and linked to the problem ticket. Problem is a support issue that needs to be resolved. Task is used by the support agents to track various tasks.
Ticket: Priority	There are four values for priority: Low, Normal, High, and Urgent. As with status, you can use the field operators to select tickets that span different priority settings. For example, this statement returns all tickets that are not urgent: Priority is less than Urgent
Ticket: Group	The ticket group values are: (—), which indicates that no group is assigned to the ticket. (current user's groups), which includes all the groups to which the agent viewing the view belongs. (assigned group), the group assigned to the ticket. Group name, the name of the group that is assigned to the ticket. Group name is the actual name of the group that is assigned to the ticket.
Ticket: Assignee	The assignee values are: (—) indicates that the ticket is unassigned. (requester) is the ticket requester. You can select this option to return tickets that were opened by and then assigned to the same agent, for example. Agent name is the actual name of the person assigned to the ticket. Additional value for views: (current user) is the person who is currently viewing the view. For example, if the view condition was Assignee > Is > (current user) then the agent viewing the view would be shown all the tickets for which they are the assignee. This enables one view to show relevant tickets to each agent, without having to create a specific view for each individual agent.
Ticket: Requester	The requester values are: (assignee) is the person assigned to the ticket. The condition statement ‘Requester is Assignee’ is true if the requester is also the person assigned to the ticket. This is possible if an agent created a ticket and was then assigned to it. Agent name is the actual name of the agent. Additional value for views: (current user) is the person currently looking at the view. If you are looking at the view, you will see tickets for which you are the requester.
Ticket: Organization	The organization values are: (—) indicates that no organization has been added to the ticket. If you have multiple organizations, (—) displays for a certain number of organizations, but is a blank value above that number. Organization name is the name of an organization.
Ticket: Tags	You use this condition to determine if tickets contain a specific tag or tags. You can include or exclude tags in the condition statement by using the operators Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following. More than one tag can be added. Press Enter between each tag you add.
Ticket: Description	The description is the first comment in the ticket. It does not include the text from the subject line of the ticket. If you are using the Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following operators, the results will consider words containing part of the entered search terms. For example, using "none" for this condition will return (or exclude) ticket descriptions containing "nonetheless". The description condition also pulls data contained within the HTML and the original source of a ticket.
Ticket: Channel	The ticket channel is where and how the ticket was created. The contents of this list will differ depending on the channels you have active, and any integrations you are using. For more information about the channels you can configure, see About Zendesk Support channels. For a list of the available ticket channels, see How are ticket channels defined across Zendesk?
Ticket: Received at	This condition checks the email address from which the ticket was received. The ticket can be received from a Zendesk email domain such as [e-mail], or from an external email domain such as [e-mail]. The external email domain must be set up as described in Forwarding your incoming support email to Zendesk or the condition won't work.
Ticket: Satisfaction	This condition returns the following customer satisfaction rating values: Unoffered means that the survey has not previously been sent Offered means that the survey has already been sent Bad means that the ticket has received a negative rating Bad with comment means that the ticket has received a negative rating with a comment Good means that the ticket has received a positive rating Good with comment means that the ticket has received a positive rating with a comment
Hours since...	This condition allows you to select tickets based on the hours that have passed since the ticket was updated in the following ways: Hours since created Hours since open Hours since pending Hours since on-hold Hours since solved Hours since closed Hours since assigned Hours since update Hours since requester update Hours since assignee update Hours since last SLA breach Hours until next SLA breach Hours since due date (for tickets with the type set to Task) Hours until due date (for tickets with the type set to Task) Note: If you have multiple schedules, views based on business hours use your default schedule (that is, the first schedule in your schedules list). In a upcoming release, this will change so that views will use the schedule that is applied to the ticket.
Ticket: Custom fields	Custom fields that set tags (drop-down list and checkbox) are available as conditions. You can select the drop-down list values and Yes or No for checkboxes. The following field types aren't available as view conditions: Text, Multi-line, Numeric, Decimal, Credit Card, Regex. Note: Each custom checkbox field must have an associated tag. Otherwise, when you create or edit a view, it won't appear as an available condition.
Ticket sharing: Sent to	Checks whether a ticket was shared to another Zendesk Support account via a specific ticket sharing agreement
Ticket sharing: Received from	Checks whether a ticket was shared from another Zendesk Support account via a specific ticket sharing agreement

Cloning a view

You can clone an existing view to create a copy that you can modify and use for some other purpose. You can clone a view from the Views admin page or from the views list.

If using custom roles, agents will need to be permitted to add and edit personal, group, and global views (see Creating custom agent roles). Agents will receive an error message if not given the permission.

To clone a view from the Views admin page

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.
2. Hover your mouse over the view you want to clone, then click the options menu () and select Clone view.
3. Modify the title, conditions, formatting, and availability as needed.
4. Click Save.