) in the sidebar.As an agent, your primary responsibility is to solve your customers' support requests. To do that, you work with tickets, which can arrive in various ways such as via the Help Center request form, directly through email, by telephone and text chat, and from social media such as Twitter and Facebook. The options your customers have for requesting support are called channels. Your account owner or the administrator who set up your Zendesk Support determines what channels are included.
Depending on how you manage your ticket workflow, you may manually select and assign tickets to yourself or other agents. Tickets can also be automatically assigned to you and other agents via automations and triggers, which are referred to as business rules (you can read about these workflow management tools in Streamlining your support workflow in the Administrator Guide).
This article covers the following topics:
Related articles:
About the agent home dashboard
The agent home dashboard displays information about tickets assigned to you and your groups, including open tickets and ticket satisfaction statistics. You can view the agent home dashboard by clicking the Home icon (
) in the sidebar.
In the main window of the dashboard is a view of tickets requiring your attention and a list of up to the last 100 updates made to your tickets.
The tickets in this list:
- Have the status New or Open.
- Are assigned to you, unassigned in one of your groups, or not assigned at all.
- Are grouped by Priority, and by the latest Requester Updated date (oldest first). If the requester updates the ticket in any way, it is moved to the bottom of the list.
You can click on any of the columns (ID, Subject, Requester, and the like) to sort Ascending or Descending. However you cannot customize the dashboard view.
Viewing tickets
Tickets are organized into views, groups of tickets based on certain criteria. You can preview or open tickets from your view.
Tickets in a view are preceded with a colored icon indicating each ticket's current status. Here are the corresponding ticket statuses and colors:
Depending on your permissions, you may see the Deleted tickets view. For more information, see Viewing deleted tickets.
This section provides the steps you'll take to:
- Display a ticket view
- Preview a ticket
- Open a ticket
- Return to a view
- Move to the next ticket in a view
- Submit a ticket and move to the next ticket in a view
To display tickets in a view
- Click the Views icon () in the sidebar to open the Views list.
- Click the title of any view in the list to display tickets in that view.
To preview a ticket in a view
- Hover your mouse over a ticket title or a ticket status icon. The ticket preview appears:
Note: Formatting applied to ticket comments does not appear in the preview. Instead, preview text appears unformatted, or as Markdown syntax (if applicable).
To open a ticket
- Locate the ticket in the view list.
- Click the ticket subject.
The ticket opens in the main window.
To return to the current view from a ticket
- Click the Views icon () in the sidebar.
- From a ticket, click the Next ticket arrow in the upper-right corner of the ticket.
The next ticket in the current view opens, even if another agent is currently viewing it. If another agent is viewing the ticket, you will see the agent collision notification.Note: If you click the Next ticket arrow after clicking Play, the Next ticket arrow serves the next ticket that is not being viewed by another agent. See Using Play mode for more information.
To automatically go to the next ticket in the view when you submit a ticket
- From a ticket, click the menu to the left of the Submit button, then select Next ticket in view.
You do not have to select this option each time you submit a ticket. Once selected, the next ticket in the view will always open when you submit a ticket update. You can chose Close Tab if you prefer to open the current view after you submit a ticket.
Expanding and collapsing your views list
You can expand and collapse your list of views by clicking the arrow at the top of the views list. When collapsed, the views list will auto-show when you mouse over it, and auto-hide when you mouse away from it.
When the arrow is pointing towards your Views, the list is locked. When the arrow is pointing towards your tickets, the views list will auto-show and auto-hide.
By default, your views lists are expanded.
- Click the arrow at the top of the views list.
Your list of views collapses.
To expand the views list and lock it
- Mouse over the collapsed views list to auto-show the list.
- Click the arrow at the top of the views list to lock it in place.
The views list is locked in the expanded position.
Tracking your recently viewed tickets
You can see the last five tickets that you viewed by hovering over the +add tab in the top toolbar.
Avoiding agent collision
In views, an eye icon appears next to tickets that are being viewed by another agent. You can also hover over the ticket to see details:
In tickets, collision details appear in the upper left corner:
- Agents outlined in blue are editing the ticket
- Agents with regular pictures are viewing the ticket but not actively editing any fields.
- Agents with dimmed pictures have the ticket open, but have navigated away from it.
You'll also see the agent collision message in the ticket summary pop-up that is displayed when you hover over a ticket in a view with your mouse.
Using Play mode
The Play button guides you through the available tickets in a view automatically. Press the Play button or icon to open the first ticket in the view. After addressing the ticket, click Submit to update it and automatically move to the next available ticket.
The next available ticket is the next ticket in the view according to the view's sort order (see Using views to manage ticket workflow) that you haven't already skipped and that no other agent is currently viewing. Views are also refreshed every five minutes, so you might see a ticket that wasn't part of the view when you started Play mode.
Enterprise and Enterprise Plus customers have an additional option, Guided mode, which automatically launches Play mode when an agent opens a view. If your administrator has enabled Guided mode, some of the procedures described in this section may not apply. For details, see Setting up Guided mode.
See also Troubleshooting agent collision in Play mode.
To open a view in Play mode
- Click the Views icon () in the sidebar and select a view.
- Click the Play button in the upper right hand to open the first ticket. Depending on your settings, you might be able to skip this step.
- The first available ticket in the view opens.
- Click Submit. The next available ticket opens automatically.
- By default, the next available ticket opens when you click Submit. To stay on the ticket after submitting changes, click the menu from the left of the Submit button and select Stay on ticket.
Change this option back to Next available ticket before submitting your final updates so you can move to the next available ticket.
- Click Skip to move to the next ticket without making any changes to the current one.
- If you are in Guided mode and your administrator has configured your role, you might also be required to enter a reason for skipping the ticket. Enter a reason in the window that appears and click Skip again.
40 Comments
Rich content option was way overdue! Bye bye Markdown! Thanks Zendesk.
Are there plans to add some sort of agent collision feature to the mobile app? Maybe it is there and I missed it but I do not believe I can tell when other agents are working on a ticket from the Android mobile app.
We've found that when an agent manually sorts a column in a view, play mode will then function in that order. Is there a way to make sure Play mode only works in the default sort order of the view?
Hey Rachel,
Thanks for your question!
When the view columns are manually sorted, the Play mode functions in the order the columns were sorted in. Based on my testing results, I do not see an option to adjust this otherwise, as it just the way the app was designed :)
Kind regards,
Jonny!
Is there a way to display the amount of tickets left in the PLAY queue when working in Play mode?
Hi Helvijs,
I wish I had better news however this is not something that is possible at this time when using guided mode. I am not exactly sure why this is the case from a technical standpoint, however I could foresee some limitations in that Support does not auto refresh and a live ticket counter of remaining ticket would require some type of live refresh functionality to function effectively.
However I will make this as a feature request for our Product team to track.
Hey Team!
Just want to chime in here because I'm getting a lot of concern around play mode from my org.
We have 3 levels of priority for our inbound tickets from API/Contact us: Urgent, High, Low. My expectation is that urgent tickets get served first always, then high then normal. If only normals are in the view and one urgent pops up that urgent then gets served.
From what I see in the comments this should be true - unless the agent manually sorts the view for some reason.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Also, how does the 5 minute view refresh impact play mode? If I am an agent working tickets and there are 5 normal tickets one minute and 5 urgent tickets the next I expect my agent will be served the urgent. But should I expect a lag here?
Thanks for your help?
Hello Christina,
Thank you for contacting us with your views question.
Regarding your questions, yes! You are right, If your views are sorted by priority as you described, then the order of served tickets will be Urgent > High > Normal.
As for the lag, the way the refresh works in play mode the view is updated every 5 minutes. Now, if a ticket is created at minute 1 of these 5 minutes, it will not appear to your agent in the play mode and would assign an existing ticket to him till these initial 5 minutes are over. Then, once he updates that ticket 5 minutes after he got it he will get the urgent ticket.
An important thing to notice, is that this 5 minutes refresh in play mode, is per agent, not per view. So if you have multiple agents working on tickets in this view, they could as well grab it as soon as it is in the view.
I hope this helps you understand your ticket workflow by using the play button. If you have any other question, feel free to contact us.
One of my agents is reporting that her tickets are being aggregated together and then she has to select a ticket from a drop down
What she is seeing.
what I see
Hey Carlos!
One of my colleagues saw this same issue today. She cleared her browser cache and cookies, and the problem resolved itself.
If your agent is still seeing this after clearing cache and cookies send a ticket to Support so we can take a closer look!
For play-mode you wrote: Depending on your administrator-configured settings, you might also be required to enter a reason for skipping the ticket. Enter a reason in the window that appears and click Skip again.
There are no option to require reason or not. If it's exist can you tell me where?
Thanks,
Mindaugas
I believe the wording is a little off here. There is no option to require play only agents to enter a skip reason. They are asked for a reason, but entering a comment is not mandatory.
In the Agent's profile under the 'Play Only' tab, you can view the instances where they have skipped tickets and not entered a reason.
It'd be nice to see greater consistency here: Strange and awkward not being able to jump into Play Mode or use "Next available" when working a one-off.
Is there a way to delete an update to a ticket? For instance, if you put an update into the wrong ticket or incorrect information in a ticket.
Hey Frank -
The ticket comments are considered a System of Record, and for that reason, comments cannot be deleted or edited. There is, however, a redaction app, which you can use to block out irrelevant or sensitive information in a comment.
Hi,
Is it posible, when we are in a ticket or using play mode, to know how many tickets left we have in this view?
Thanks!
Hi Guillaume,
Play mode is great for helping agents get through tickets, but it does not offer the ability to see what's left in the view.
Hi! If one of our customers has several open/pending tickets at a time, is there a place where they can check that somehow? Or is that tracked only through email?
@Alejandra if your help center is active end-users can sign-in and see all their personal and organization tickets (depends on your settings)
@Mindaugas, thanks for the reply! Where can we edit the settings to allow our end users to sign in?
This play feature is neat, I really wish our admins (Becky and Alex) would have communicated this sooner.
Is it possible to change the color of the eye ball in the agent collision section? If a light agent or manager is looking we still want to have the agent take the ticket and not skip over it
It's not something you can customize at this time, Zachary, but that is a neat idea!
How long until an agent is set to "idle"?
Hey Pedro,
Inactivity will not trigger an idle status only navigating away from a ticket. Navigating away from a ticket can include actions such as viewing a different tab or navigating to the view page.
If the agent is on the ticket but not doing anything they will simply have a "Viewing" status attributed to them.
Thanks for your question!
Hello! I really like the Play feature but it pulls from the most recently received ticket rather than the oldest. It doesn't make sense to respond to the newest tickets first when older support requests are waiting - can this be adjusted?
Hi Susy -
The Play feature will adhere to whatever the sort order in the view is. All you need to do is reverse the sort order so you're starting with the oldest ticket in your view.
If you need more details on that, you can check out this article:
Working with tickets: using the play button
Hi Team,
Can anyone identify that whether I'm doing the tickets in Play mode r picking the tickets manually. Do we have any track for it?
Hi Venky -
No, the only thing an admin can see is within an agent profile, where they can see the tickets that a given agent skipped while in guided mode (and the reasons for the skip). But they cannot tell whether a given ticket was manually picked or served in guided mode.
Venky Gundagoni our Playlist Ticket Assignment app has an "enhanced Play mode" that addresses this issue by assigning tickets to the agent first before they review the ticket.
The app also leaves an audit trail using custom ticket fields, making it very easy for reporting. If the Playlist Assigned? field is blank (and not set to 1), it means the agent manually picked the ticket. See also our article on How can I report on Playlist usage?
Send us an email at support@myplaylist.io if you'd like to learn more.
https://myplaylist.io/zendesk/round-robin-app
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