There may be times when you need to open a ticket on someone else's behalf. For example, you may be providing support to someone using a telephone (and not Zendesk Talk, which creates a ticket for you when you take the call) and you want to capture the support request in a ticket. You can create a new ticket and then set the person you're providing support to as the ticket requester.
Tickets created on behalf of an end-user can be public (the end-user for whom it was created an view the ticket), or private (the end-user cannot view the ticket, until the ticket is manually made public).
This article contains the following topics:
Creating a public ticket for an end-user
When an agent creates a public ticket for an end-user, the end-user is added to the ticket as the requester, and can view and update the ticket as described in Updating and solving tickets.
When you create a public ticket for an end-user, it triggers the following events:
- The end-user receives a notification that a ticket was created on their behalf.
- The ticket appears in the end-user's My Activities list.
- The ticket appears in the end-user's Help Center searches.
In most cases, a public ticket cannot be made private. However, in some cases it's possible. See Changing a ticket from public to private for information.
To create a ticket on an end-user's behalf
- Hover over the +Add tab in the top toolbar, then select Ticket.
- If private ticket creation is enabled, click Public Reply so the end-user can access the ticket immediately. If private ticket creation is not enabled, the ticket is accessible by default, and no action is necessary.
- If the requester is an existing user, begin entering the user's name, email domain, or organization name in the Requester field and the relevant results appear. Select a user.
Note: Alternatively, you can open the user's profile, then click User options in the bottom toolbar and select New ticket. The user's name automatically appears in the Requester field.
If the requester does not yet have an account, add them by clicking +Add user at the bottom of the search results.
- Enter the ticket data, then click Submit as New.
The requester receives the new ticket email notification.
Creating a private ticket for an end-user
Agents can open a ticket that is not visible to the end-user for whom they are creating it, and can choose when (or if) to allow the end-user to access the ticket.
Private ticket creation must be enabled before an agent can use it. You must have administrator privileges to enable this feature. See Enabling private ticket creation.
When a private ticket is created for an end-user, the end-user is included as the ticket requester; however, some notifications and other ticket-related events are not triggered. For instance:
- The end-user is not notified that a ticket has been created on their behalf.
- Private tickets do not show up in the end-user's My Activities list, or in Help Center searches.
These events are triggered when the ticket is made public.
Once your admin enables private ticket creation, you can create a new ticket on behalf of an end-user.
To create a private ticket on an end-user's behalf
- Hover over the +Add tab in the top toolbar, then select Ticket.
The Internal note option should be selected by default.
- If the requester is an existing user, begin entering the user's name, email domain, or organization name in the Requester field and the relevant results appear. Select a user.
Note: Alternatively, you can open the user's profile, then click User options in the bottom toolbar and select New ticket. The user's name automatically appears in the Requester field.
If the requester does not yet have an account, add them by clicking +Add user at the bottom of the search results.
- Enter the ticket data, then click Submit as New.
All comments default to Internal note (private) from then on, including comments added via email, voice recordings, and the like, until you make the ticket public.
Using private tickets internally
There a number of internal uses for private tickets. You can:
- Make records of calls and meetings with your customers. These can be stored as tickets, meaning you get a more accurate picture of your Support team's effort, without bothering your customer.
- Take action on issues that you can't share. Sometimes tasks need to be carried out on behalf of a customer account -- investigations or corrective actions -- that might be sensitive. With a private ticket, it can remain internal.
- Prepare for an interaction before communications open up. Because private tickets can be shared just by adding a pubic comment, you can use the ticket to gather materials, prepare, or take notes, then make the ticket public when you're ready to address it with the end-user.
- Send someone else a task. Throw together a private ticket, record some steps or actions that need to be taken, and assign it to someone else, or set it in a queue for the next available person.
You can associate a private ticket with a customer, meaning the record is there for future reference, and you get the value of reporting, whether that's accurate accounting of what your team is doing, or the amount of work you're doing on behalf of a particular customer or organization, without involving the end-user until you're ready.
Changing a ticket from private to public
Private tickets can be made accessible to the requester and any CC'd end-users. Once a ticket is made public, it cannot be made private again. However, Internal notes remain hidden from end-users, as usual.
To change a ticket from private to public
- Above the comment entry box, click Public reply.
- Enter your comment, then click Submit.
Changing a ticket from public to private
If a public ticket has only one comment, you can make the ticket private by changing the Public reply to an Internal comment. This works only on tickets where there is a single, public comment.
Note that when you change a Public reply to an Internal comment, you cannot make it public again.
To change a ticket from public to private
- In the comment stream, click the conversation drop-down and select Events.
- When the events detail list opens, click Make this comment an internal note.
- A warning pops up, verifying that you want to perform this action. Click Yes, convert to an internal note.
Comments
13 comments
I've created a ticket on behalf of my client, but {{ticket.comments_formatted}} shows my name and not the requester's name.
The thing is this: we are moving all our support emails to Zendesk through support@mycompany.... But still some clients write us to contact@mycompany.... So, in those cases, we copy the text received (the text written by the client), and we create a ticket on behalf of that client.
But then {{ticket.comments_formatted}} shows my name as the author of the comment. Is there a way to avoid that?
Hi Lisandro!
I think the easiest thing to do would be to add contact@yourcompany.com as a support address in your Zendesk so that emails received there are automatically created as tickets.
You can then create a custom "Notify requester of received request" trigger for tickets received via that address to inform customers that they need to submit future requests to your other support address.
Do you think that would work for you?
We also have been trying to improve the workflow for ticket creation.
We want to be able to get the ticket ID so that it can be provided to the customer while on the phone. Then when we submit the ticket, the email that they receive will have the ticket id and the ticket link in the body of that email.
We want the ability to do all of that when creating a ticket on behalf of the customer. Is this possible...?
Hi Nicholson!
If you're using Zendesk Voice, the ticket that is opened when the call is accepted will already have a ticket number assigned to it, so you can give that out at any time.
If you're using another voice service and manually creating a ticket when the call comes in, you will need to submit the ticket before a ticket ID will be assigned.
In order for that information to be sent out when the ticket is submitted, you just need to make sure that the appropriate placeholders are present in your notification triggers.
Please let me know if you have any further questions on this!
Sometimes, we need to reach out to our users first - we do this when addressing negative reviews from Google Play that cannot be solved in the character limit of the reply from the developer. We do this by opening a new ticket on behalf of the user.
I just found out yesterday that when we do this, the user gets an email with the subject "Welcome to Sygic support" with the link to their new ticket. However, I suspect most of our users never notice the link, or do not understand the email at all.
Is there a way to stop sending them these welcome emails, and send them the ticket itself, its text included?
Thanks!
Hi Tereza!
You should be able to take care of this by going into your Admin menu, scrolling down to the Settings section, and clicking on Customers. Scroll down to the Account emails section, and uncheck the box next to Also send a welcome email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator.
When this function is disabled, welcome emails will not be sent out when a user is created by an Agent or Administrator, and should take care of your issue.
In order to send the content of the ticket to the end-user, you'll want to make sure that your "Notify request of received request" trigger is set up to fire when the ticket is created internally. Alternatively, you can create a new trigger specifically for this purpose.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi,
Is there a way for an agent to find all of the tickets they've created on behalf of others?
Thanks.
How would I set up a trigger that only runs on agent-created tickets?
Hi Patrick!
The following trigger would only fire on agent created tickets:
@rebecca - how would I add these conditions to an automation?
We're sending CSAT emails to end-users, 24 hours after their request. They can submit requests via ticket form or by email. I want to exclude any tickets that were created by agents.
Hey Giovanni!
Automations aren't going to have the same conditions as Triggers, since they automatically run on an hourly schedule rather than firing when a ticket is updated with matching conditions. This means you won't be able to re-create the exact thing pictured above.
I did a sanity check and was able to confirm that Automations don't have a Ticket: Creator condition either, so I think the only way to go here is going to be to set up a Trigger similar to what's pictured in Rebecca's comment, and have that add a tag to the ticket (ie: agent_created).
Then you just have to add one additional condition to your existing CSAT Automation: Ticket: Tags > Contain none of the following > agent_created (or whatever tag you specify for this).
Then, when your Automations run, they'll only run on tickets where that tag is NOT present.
I guess the answer to my question is "no".
Hey Scott! I am so, so sorry that this fell through the cracks!
Your agents can view all of the tickets they've submitted by doing a quick search in Support. By typing in the operator Submitter:me the search will return all tickets that were submitted by that agent, regardless of requester.
Apologies again! Let us know if you need anything else!
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