Deleting tickets
Some support teams never delete tickets; they instead move them through their workflow to close them using an automation. You can however delete a ticket if you want. When you do, it is immediately deleted and cannot be recovered.
You can also delete multiple tickets at the same time. For more information, see Bulk deleting tickets.
Note: Agents must have permission to delete tickets. For Plus, click the Admin icon (
) , then select Settings > Agents. Select Agents Can Delete Tickets, then click Save. For Enterprise, you can allow agents to delete tickets based on role. See Custom agent roles.
) , then select Settings > Agents. Select Agents Can Delete Tickets, then click Save. For Enterprise, you can allow agents to delete tickets based on role. See Custom agent roles.Zendesk Classic: The following procedure is not applicable to Zendesk Classic. To delete a ticket in Classic, select the ticket update option Delete ticket. Click OK in the warning, then click Submit.
To delete a ticket
- Open the ticket that you want to delete.
- Click the Ticket options menu in the upper right, then select Delete.
You'll be warned that the ticket will be permanently deleted.
- Click OK and the ticket is immediately deleted.
Deleting more than one ticket at a time
You can use a view to delete more than one ticket in a single step. See Bulk updating, deleting, and merging tickets.
We use gooddata for creating raports. Some time ago we deleted alot of tickets that we didn't want in our zendesk. How will this affect the reports.
If we have 1000 incoming tickets, and only 300 Solved. does this mean that the deleted tickets can in fact be the missing part of this equation?
What about suspended tickets? Same Effect?
Hey Andre:
Deleted tickets are automatically excluded in that data. If you recover your suspended tickets, they'll be included just as any other ticket would be.
We're using GoodData for reporting. We deleted a bunch of tickets in Zendesk last week. GD is including those deleted tickets in reports.
I suppose it's a good thing for GoodData to have the data, even for deleted tickets - some organizations might want to use GD to report on ticket deletion metrics. For us, however, we want to exclude the deleted tickets from GD reports.
I tried a few things including using the Tag/Ticket Deleted Flag" filter but it didn't make a difference...maybe it doesn't do what it sounds like.
I didn't find an answer in their documentation. Perhaps the solution is to overwrite data that GD uses as the source. I emailed GD Support for guidance.
Below is GoodData's response. I'll be trying it out, hopefully all goes well.
The issue here is that we recently switched some Zendesk projects from being updated via CSV exports to updates via the new Zendesk API. The API only sends us incremental data, rather than a full load, and this has introduced a new ticket status: Deleted.
The workaround here is to modify one of the core metrics in the project: # Tickets.
If you click the Manage link on top and select the "Metrics" link on the left, this will open a page of all the project's metrics. You can click the folder called "Tickets" to limit the metrics shown. Click the "# Tickets" metric to open its properties page. You will need to modify this metric slightly. Since this metric is used as a builder in other metrics, this should fix things.
SELECT COUNT(Ticket ID, Tagged Ticket ID)
You will need to modify this slightly. To modify it, click the "Manage" link at the top, then on the left side select "Metrics." This will produce a list of all metrics in the project. From here, click the # Tickets metric to open the properties page and you can edit this. Since this is a base metric that is used to build other metrics, changing this one should be enough. The modification should look like this:
SELECT COUNT(Ticket ID, Tagged Ticket ID) WHERE Status <> Deleted
When using the metric editor, you unfortunately cannot simply just type this stuff in. All database objects need to be selected from the pick list on the right of the editor. This color-coded guide should help you find things:
Ticket ID >> Purple >> Attributes > Tickets
Tagged Ticket ID >> Purple >> Attributes > Tags
Status >> Purple >> Attributes > Tickets
Deleted >> Orange >> Attribute Values > Tickets > Status
Once this change is made and your project has had a chance to update, then your deleted tickets will not be represented in your reports.
Hey David:
Thanks for update and sharing your response!
Yes, David, thanks so much for sharing this info! Super helpful. Will you report back and let us know if it works? If so, it'd be great to post the solution as a tip in our Community tips forum, and I can add a link in the docs to the tip. Good luck! Thanks!
It worked as expected - success! Our deleted tickets are not in reports.
Thanks again for keeping is updated, David!
Is there any way to disable deleting of tickets ?
Hello Mathias,
Yes, if you are on the Starter, Regular, or Plus plan you can disable the ability for your agents to delete tickets by going to Manage > Settings > Agents and unselecting 'Agents can delete tickets' in the Ticket deletion section. If you are on Enterprise, you can enable or disable 'Can delete tickets' on each specific role that you create. Note that administrators will have the ability to delete tickets regardless of these settings.
Hi Brandon,
I'm using Lotus but am not seeing it as an option to disable Agents from deleting tickets. Is this option available on the new Zendesk?
Hello Collinvine,
This is available on both interfaces for any administrator or the account owner. Do you think you could post a screenshot of what you are seeing or let me know the subdomain of your account so I can take a look myself?
It turns out that I had a support question submitted and the agent working on my case bumped our account from Plus to Enterprise. When I went to change the settings from Settings>Agents, the option wasn't there.
My account's been pushed back down to Plus, and all is good.
Thanks!
Thanks for the update! I'm glad everything is working for you now.
HI there. I wondered if you might help us - we are using the forums functionality of Zendesk but didn't warm to the support ticket part. Might return to it, but in the meantime, it's gathered some 13K emails as unsolved tickets. How can I delete all of them in one go? I can only delete 15 at a time using the delete function and it might take me some time. Thanks!
I am afraid that there is not way via the interface to delete larger number of tickets than the number contained in a view. You would have to rely on the API to delete tickets. You can find our docs to help you started here:
http://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/rest_api/tickets.html
Hi, is there any possible to restore back the ticket if i accidentally deleted the ticket.? (my bad :(... )
Hi Sean,
No, we don't have a way to restore tickets. That said, let me create a ticket with our Support team to see if there's any information we can help you get about the ticket.
Is there option to prevent everyone, including administrators, to delete ticket. Our policy is to not delete ticket ever and we dont want 'accidence' in any case
Hi Ankica,
Starter, Regular and Plus accounts can manage ticket deletion permission at Settings > Agents > Ticket Deletion.
Enterprise accounts can build custom agent roles with or without that permission.
Is there any way on Enterprise to make it so that paid users can be some other role apart from Administrator. We have 3 paid agents, but we would only like 1 to have "Super-Admin" rights, including deleting tickets. I want to create a custom role that has everything but Delete tickets, but cannot assign this to our paid agents.
Hi James,
Yes - this is possible of course. I'll create a ticket for you to troubleshoot this further, because I am unsure why or where it is causing you difficulties :) Watch out for an email-notification in a minute!
I need to make this update (ignore deleted tickets) but I apparently don't have permission to edit the metric for some reason. I am the only Good Data user for my organization and I don't see an option to grant myself permission. How do I go about doing this?
Hi Ryan,
Insights (our integration with Gooddata) doesn't count your deleted tickets, so they will be ignored automatically.
Since you're an Admin in your Zendesk, you should have full permission to play around in Insights. The default insights metrics aren't editable. That's why you see the locks next to each one at Insights > Gooddata > Manage > Metrics. Instead, you can take an existing metric and customize it to do what you need it to.
It is very easy to accidentally select the wrong ticket and then delete it for keeps. Please implement a Deleted Tickets folder, similar to what we have in just about any email app. It seems inexcusable not to have someway to recover an accidentally deleted ticket. It could easily be a request from a Very Important Customer .
Hi Warren!
You are definitely not the only person to have mentioned the need for this type of functionality!
I was able to find an active post about this in our Product Feedback forum; you can find that here: Able to recover Deleted Tickets and Add a Deleted Tickets View.
I would definitely encourage you to add your vote and share your use case in the comments there. Also be sure to follow that article so you can get notified when there's any new information to share. There may be some things on the horizon that will be of interest to you, although I don't have any timeframe on it right now.
Hope that helps!