Using views to manage ticket workflow

Fastpath: Admin > Manage > Views

Note: Essential has default views only. You can't modify them or create custom 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.

This article covers the following topics:

• About view types
• Opening views
• Accessing the Views management admin page
• Browsing the views list
• Searching the views list
• Adding views
• Editing and cloning views
• Sharing views
• Reordering views
• Sorting the list of views
• Filtering the list of views
• Deleting and deactivating views
• Exporting views to a CSV file

Related articles:

• Working with tickets
• Streamlining your support workflow
• Views: Best Practice

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.
  Note: On Essential you have default views only. You cannot modify default views and you cannot create custom 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 ().

Tip: Zendesk automatically archives tickets 120 days after they are closed. Archived tickets are not shown in views. This helps views to display faster, especially those that include multiple tickets which have been closed for a long period of time. For more information about archiving tickets, see About ticket archiving.

Opening your views

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.

To open a view

• Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view from the list.

  The first 12 shared views and the first 8 personal views are accessible in the Views list. Views appear in the list even if they currently have any tickets. You can access views that don't appear in your Views list from the Views Management admin page. For more information about using views, see Viewing tickets.

  Tip: If you want certain views you use frequently to appear higher on the list, you can reorder your views.

To open a view that does not appear in your views list

• Click Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.

  You can browse or search for a view.

Accessing the Views management admin page

All of your available views can be managed through the Views management page.

To access the Views management page

• Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views. The Views page opens:

  

Browsing the views list

Views are divided by activation status. The default view on the Views management page is the list of Active views. You can view views that have been deactivated by clicking the Inactive tab. For more information on activation status, see Deleting and deactivating views.

If you have a large number of views, the list will be paginated. You can scroll through the pages using the controls at the bottom of the page:

Searching the views list

If you know the name, or partial name, of the view you want to view, you can enter it into the search box at the top of the page:

All views containing the search term appear in the list.

Adding views

Agents can create views for their own personal use. 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. On the Views management page, click Add view.
2. Enter a title for your view.
3. Add the conditions to define this collection of tickets (see Building view condition statements below).
4. You can test the conditions by selecting Preview match for the conditions above.
5. Set the formatting options (see Setting formatting options below).
6. Set the view's availability (see Setting a view's availability below).
7. Click Create view.

You can also manage views (edit, deactivate, and so on) on the individual view's page. On the Views management page, click the view you want to work with, and modify it as described above.

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. 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 entered. They must be separated with a space.
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".
Ticket: Channel	The ticket channel is where and how the ticket was created. 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 are on Enterprise and have multiple schedules, views based on business hours will 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. Note: Each custom checkbox field must have an associated tag. Otherwise, when you create or edit a view, it will not appear as an available condition.
Requester: Language	Returns the language preference of the person who submitted the request.
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

Setting formatting options

You can decide what ticket data to display in a view, how the tickets are grouped and ordered, and how many tickets are listed per page. There's a List style view and a Table style view.

To select the ticket data you want included in the view

1. Select the Table formatting option.
2. Drag the table columns you want to include into Columns included in table.

   You can 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.

   

   Note: Multi-select fields are not supported in table columns.

To set the order of a view

• Select the ticket data field you want to use as the default data to order the tickets in the view. You can select Ascending or Descending.

  

To set the grouping of tickets in a view

• Select the ticket data field you want to group the tickets in the view. You can select Ascending or Descending.

  

Setting the view's availability (administrators only)

When an administrator creates a view, they have the option of setting who can access the view. They can create a shared view, available to all agents, or they can create a personal view.

Professional and Enterprise administrators have the additional option of creating a shared view that's limited to a specific group.

Note: The Agents in group option is only available in the Professional and Enterprise plans.

Editing and cloning views

You can edit and clone views. Cloning a view creates a copy that you can modify and use for some other purpose. 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 edit a view from the Views management page

1. On the Views management page, locate the view you want to edit.
2. Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().
3. click the icon and select Edit.
4. Modify the title, conditions, and actions as needed.
5. use the drop-down menu to select Update, then click Submit.

To edit a view from the views list

1. Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view.
2. Click the View options menu in the upper right.

   

3. Click Edit. The View edit page is displayed and you can modify the view as needed.

To clone a view from the Views management page

1. On the Views management page, locate the view you want to clone.
2. Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().
3. Click the options menu icon and select Clone.
4. Modify the title, conditions, and actions as needed.
5. Click Create view.

To clone a view from the views list

1. Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view.
2. Click the down arrow next to the title of the view.

   

3. Click Clone. A copy of the view is displayed in the View edit page, and you can modify the cloned view as needed.

Sharing views

You can share a permanent link to a view in emails or web pages. Normal access permissions apply to the users who click the link. See Setting the view's availability. Agents can only share personal views.

To share a link to a view

1. On the Views management page, locate the view you want to share.
2. Click the view to open it.
3. Copy the permanent link in the upper-right side and use it in an email or a web page.

   

Reordering views

If you want certain views you use frequently to appear higher on the list, you can adjust the list order. Agents can reorder only personal views, while administrators can reorder both shared and personal views.

There are some limitations to reordering your views list:

• You can only reorder views on the same page. If your views list is more than one page, you may need to change the sorting order of the list to reorder them in the way you want.
• If your list is filtered by a specific group, you may not be able to reorder it.

To reorder your views

1. On the Views management page, click the options menu icon .
2. Select Reorder page.

   

3. Click and drag the names of views to adjust the order.
4. Click Save at the top of the page.

Sorting the list of views

You can sort your list of views on a number of properties, including:

• Position
• Name
• Created date
• Updated date

To sort your list of views

1. On the Views page, click the Sort by icon () to open the menu.

   

2. Select the property you want to use. The views are reorganized based on that property.

Filtering the list of views

You can filter the list of views by the availability applied to them.

To filter your list of views

1. Click the All shared views drop-down menu.
2. Select the views you want to display:
   • All shared views, views shared with any of your agents.
   • Views shared with all agents, views that are available to all of your agents. Views that are restricted to a subset of agents will not appear.
   • Personal views, views available only to you.
   • Views available to specific groups, a list that varies depending on the groups you have shared your views with.
   Return to the unfiltered list by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting All shared views.

Deleting and deactivating views

If you decide that you no longer need a view you can either delete it or deactivate it. Deleting it of course means that it's gone and can't be retrieved. You can instead deactivate views. Deactivated views are listed in a separate table on the Views page and can be reactivated if needed.

To deactivate or activate a view

1. On the Views management page, locate the view you want to deactivate.
2. Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().
3. Click the icon and select Deactivate. The view is moved to the Inactive tab.
4. To reactivate the view, select it from the list of inactive views and select Activate.

If you decide to permanently delete a view, you must first deactivate it as described above.

To delete a view

1. On the Views management page, click Inactive.
2. Locate the view you want to delete.
3. Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().
4. Click the icon and select Delete.
5. Click Delete view.

Exporting a view to a CSV file

You can export a view to a comma separated values (CSV) file. The CSV file will contain an entry for each ticket and all its associated ticket information in the view.

Note: Because of the processing involved in generating a CSV file, you can export a view only once every 10 minutes. If there is less than 10 minutes between requests, you will receive an error message.

Community tip! Check out Serge's community tip for exporting views in our Community.

To export a view to a CSV file

1. Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view.
2. Click the View options menu in the upper right.

   

3. Click Export as CSV.

   You'll receive an email notification containing a download link for your CSV file. The email is sent to your primary email account in your user profile.

Tip: Larger views might fail to export, even though they display correctly in the Support console. If you don't receive an email with the download link, consider modifying the view to return less information, or using the Zendesk API to retrieve the information you need.