The Out of Office v2 app is a tool for managing the availability of an agent in Zendesk Support, and ensuring that tickets assigned to unavailable agents are properly handled if updated by a customer.
This article covers the following topics to help you install, use, and extend the app:
- How the app works
- Installing the app
- Changing the app settings
- Using the app
- Understanding the 'agent_ooo' tag
- Known limitations
- Troubleshooting
How the app works
The Out of Office v2 app displays the availability status of the agent assigned to tickets in Zendesk Support.
For administrators, it also displays a list of agents and their availability.
The app prevents tickets from being accidentally assigned to an agent who is unavailable. When this occurs, a pop-up notification is displayed to the agent.
Installing the app
To install the Out of Office app
-
In Support, click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Apps > Marketplace.
- In the search bar, search for Out of Office, and select the app from the results list.
- Click Install in the upper-right corner.
- Select or unselect the Confirm status change checkbox. Unselecting this option disables the status change confirmation message. As a result, you cannot choose to unassign an agent's open tickets when marking them as unavailable.
- Select or unselect the Force unassign tickets checkbox. Enabling this setting unassigns an agent's open tickets automatically when their status is changed to unavailable. This option is disabled by default, allowing the unassign action to be run on a case-by-case basis.
- Select or unselect the Prevent assignment checkbox. Disabling this option allows tickets to be saved if they're assigned to an agent who's unavailable. A warning is still displayed that the assignee is unavailable, and agents can assign tickets to themselves regardless of their status.
- Select or unselect the Surface errors encountered
when bulk updating tickets? checkbox. Enabling this option causes the unassign process to take longer. Some tickets may still not get updated by Out of Office even with this setting turned on. This setting simply verifies the ticket updates and surfaces any errors encountered whilst updating tickets. - If required, select and configure role restrictions and group restrictions.
- Click Install to complete the setup.
Changing the app settings
You can modify the app's default behavior by changing the app settings.
To change the app settings
- In Support, click Admin (
), then select Apps > Manage.
-
In the Out of Office app icon, select Change Settings from the dropdown options menu.
- Modify your settings and click Update.
Using the app
An agent can modify their status using the app in the ticket sidebar or accessing their user profile.
To modify your availability
- In Support, click View, and double click on a ticket to open it. Alternatively, select your user profile icon the upper right, and then click View Profile.
- In the ticket app sidebar, under the Out of Office app, select the Availability toggle button. A confirmation dialog box opens to confirm the change.
- Click Set as Available to enable availability, or Set as Unavailable to set your status as unavailable.
An administrator can access the Out of Office dashboard to view the availability of agents and modify an agent's status.
To view and modify an agent's availability
- In Support, select the Out of Office icon in the left navigation bar. The dashboard opens.
- Click on the Availability toggle button next to agent. A confirmation dialog box opens to confirm the change.
- Click Set as Available to enable availability, or Set as Unavailable to set an agent's status as unavailable.
Changing the availability status either adds or removes a tag on tickets with a Pending, On-Hold, or Solved status, and optionally for all tickets with an Open status. For more information, see Understanding the agent_ooo tag below.
When a pending or on-hold ticket is reopened by an end user and the assignee is unavailable, a trigger fires that returns the ticket to the unassigned ticket queue.
The app checks the status of the assignee each time a ticket is saved. If the assignee is unavailable, the app warns the updater that the assignee is unavailable. If the Prevent assignment? setting is enabled, it also prevents tickets from being saved if the new assignee is unavailable.
The following functions and behaviour can occur when using the Out of Office app in Zendesk Support:
-
An agent can assign a ticket to themselves if they are unavailable. The following warning is displayed after the ticket is saved:
- An agent can update a ticket if they're not the assignee and the assignee is unavailable. A warning notification is displayed that the current assignee is unavailable:
- Tickets that are assigned to an unavailable agent with a Pending and On-Hold status, but are updated to Open, are reassigned to the respective ticket's parent group. However, the Assignee field becomes empty. Status changes from Pending or On-Hold occurs when an end-user replies to an email notification.
Understanding the agent_ooo tag
When the Out of Office app v2 is installed, it automatically creates in Zendesk Support the following items:
- A user field that applies an agent_ooo tag to users marked as unavailable
- A trigger to handle the unassign action on a ticket based on the agent_ooo tag
- A trigger to remove the agent_ooo tag from a ticket when it's assigned to a different agent
Note: These items are required for the app to work. Don't delete or modify them.
Changing the availability status either adds or removes an agent_ooo tag on tickets based on the following rules:
- When an agent marks themselves as unavailable, the agent_ooo tag is added to the agent's user profile in the Agent Out? user field
- When the agent changes their status to unavailable, the tag is added to all tickets with a Pending, On-Hold, or Solved status. When the agent changes their status to available, the tag is removed from these tickets
- Any open tickets with the tag are unassigned on update
- If the ticket assignee is changed, then the tag is removed
- If the tag is removed from a ticket, no other tags are removed
Limitations
The Out of Office app has the following limitations:
- If the Prevent assignment? setting is disabled and a ticket is assigned from one unavailable agent to another unavailable agent, the agent_ooo tag will be lost. This means that the ticket will not be unassigned if it is reopened
- Agents are able to assign a ticket to a group with only one agent even if the sole agent in that group is unavailable
- The message 'Error: Unable to get list of agents' is displayed for users if their role has the 'Cannot browse or search for users' permission set
- Agents without administrator rights can't change their status using the app dashboard in the left navigation bar of the agent interface. They can still change their status in their user profile or from one of their assigned tickets
- The agent_ooo tag is added to solved tickets. If the ticket is closed while the tag is applied, the tag will not be removable. This may be undesirable for reporting purposes. If so, the system automation that closes solved tickets can be modified to remove the agent_ooo tag
- When marking an agent as OOO and un-assigning all open tickets, only some of the tickets will actually get unassigned
- When a ticket assigned to an OOO agent gets updated, the ticket is assigned back to the parent group with a null Assignee value. The trigger working in the background during this action does not currently send an email notification to the agents in the group
- The app does not prevent assigning tickets unless the ticket is updated individually through the Zendesk interface. Triggers, Mail API, REST API, and bulk editing will be able to bypass the assignment restrictions
- In some instances, if an agent is downgraded to an end user while unavailable, they will retain the agent_ooo tag until it is removed manually. Any tickets that the end user creates also inherits the agent_ooo tag
- When updating a large amount of tickets API rate limits can be encountered causing the update process to take longer than usual. Please be patient and allow the app to finish the update process. The update process is finished when the app no longer displays "Updating..." in lieu of the agent's OOO status
- Updating 5000 assigned tickets can take up to 8 minutes
Troubleshooting
If you were previously using the Out of Office v1 app and have recently upgraded, please review the following steps if you are having issues with agent availability and tickets being assigned:
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Settings > Customers.
- Make sure that the Tags on users and organizations setting is enabled.
- Click Save tab to save your settings.
- Click the Admin icon (
- Select the Out of Office app. In the settings, toggle the Force unassign tickets setting on and then off, and finally set it according to your requirements.
- Click Update to save your changes.
Release notes
Version 2.8.5 — 2020-12-03
- Fixed an issue where it was possible to assign tickets to OOO agents.
Version 2.8.4 — 2020-09-01
- Allows only one installation of the App on an account
- Fixed an issue with the confirm change setting(dialog) not working
- Fixed some translations
Version 2.8.3 - 2020-02-18
-
Breaking changes: Removed support for IE11. For more information, see Removal of support for Internet Explorer 11
- Bug fixes:
- Fixed an issue where open tickets not un-assigning when the status is toggled from the ticket sidebar
- Fixed issues where a ticket prevented assignment
- Fixed an issue that now allows an update of tickets assigned to OOO agents
- Fixed an issue that prevented updates if changing ticket assignee to an agent that's OOO
- Fixed an issue that prevented assigning new or existing tickets to agents that are OOO
- Fixed an issue with a frozen availability toggle button upon error in changing an agent's status
- Improvements:
- Tickets are updated based on recent updated tickets assigned to the agent
- Light agents aren't displayed in the navigation bar since they can't be assigned tickets
- When "Surface errors encountered when bulk updating tickets?" is selected, it can take up to one minute to validate ticket updates. If validation takes longer than one minute, a warning is shown asking the agent to try again.
- Improved error handling and notifications. Notifications upon error will last for 10 seconds
- Minor CSS and user interface updates
- Known issues: There will occasionally be an issue where an agent's ticket may not get tagged properly. In such cases, the app will show an error. To resolve the error, toggle the agent's status back to the previous state, and then toggle the agent's status to the desired state.
Version 2.8.1 — 2019-11-11
- Fixed an issue with the navbar location not sorting agents in alphabetical order by default
- Fixed an issue where searching for agents is case sensitive
- Fixed an issue where the Out of Office toggle button was showing up in the sidebar for end user profiles
- Fixed an issue where the new ticket screen allowed an agent to assign a ticket to someone who was set to Out of Office
- Fixed an issue with the "Surface errors encountered
when bulk updating tickets?" feature and app setting, where tickets were not properly checked for successful updates or not.
190 Comments
@David -
The most recent version of the app (released last week) has a fix for the unassign open tickets checkbox, which might solve the issue you are having. Could you try again and let us know if it is still a problem?
Hello - We installed this app this week, and have noticed that the app is not letting us flag anyone as out-of-office. Is something going on with the app?
Thanks!
Hey Sarah!
I checked with Ben, who owns this app, and he's not aware of any issues. I've also been able to set agents to unavailable in my test account without any problems. Can you describe exactly what's happening when you try to flag somebody? Are you getting any kind of error message?
@Jessie - Hi Jessie!
When I click on the button/slider to mark an agent or myself as unavailable the button/slider starts to fill in red, but then when it is done loading it goes back to available. Let me know if you would like me to take a screenshot.
Thanks!
Hey Sarah!
There are a couple of things I'd like you to try here: Firstly, try clearing your browser cache and cookies. If that doesn't do it, try uninstalling and re-installing the app in your Zendesk.
If neither of those things fix the issue, we'll probably want you to submit a support ticket so we can do more in-depth troubleshooting.
Let me know how it goes!
@Jessie - Hello! I cleared the cookies in Chrome, but the app would still not allow me to flag an agent or myself as unavailable.
I then went ahead and uninstalled and then reinstalled the app in Zendesk, but again the app will not let me flag anyone or myself as unavailable.
Should I start a ticket and include you somehow?
Thanks!
@Sarah - Have you checked that the correct roles are selected in the app settings? Go to Manage in the Apps menu to edit the settings for the app. You'll be able to view which roles have the app available to them. Hopefully that does the trick!
@Erica - Thank you so much for the suggestion, but unfortunately (or fortunately) all user roles are set up correctly and I did not include any user restrictions within the app.
@Sarah
It looks like the "Agent Out?" user field in your account is disabled. The app can't function without that field to track the agent status, so could you try again after enabling the field?
@Benjamin - That was the issue! The app now functions! Thank you so much!!!
Hi,
Is there any way to customize a trigger or API to notify an agent when they are marked as unavailable? We mark them as unavailable if they are out sick, etc. and would like them to have an email stating they are marked out so they have a trigger to remember to mark themselves as available again when they are back in the office.
Alternatively, if this isn't possible, will scheduling be something that is coming down the pipeline soon?
Thanks so much!
Hi Katie,
You could create a Script that would check if the field "agent_ooo" is false or true, if it is true then send an email to the agent' email mentioning that.
This can be done with our API:
https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/users
Hope this helps!
Hi - I'm just trying this out and testing. We set one of our agents unavailable, created a test ticket assigned to herself. She then responded to the user and marked it pending. The user then replied to that email but the ticket was not reassigned to the group. Are we missing something?
I get the warning message if I try and assign a ticket to her while she is marked Unavailable which is great, but we don't want customers responding to solved, pending, on-hold, or closed tickets and having it assign to an agent that is unavailable. The agent is also an admin (if that matters)
This is from the app marketplace description of the app:
7. Existing Tickets updated by the Requester while Assignee is unavailable resets the Assignee field back to it's parent group and (notifies Requester)
It also didn't notify the requester and I don't see that in the two triggers I see created. Please help.
Hi Brett! Sorry for the delay on an answer here. Could you confirm that you checked the "Force unassign tickets?" box in the app configuration before replying to the test ticket?
The description from the Marketplace listing is unfortunately not accurate for the out-of-the-box installation of the app, but you could definitely customize the system triggers created by the app to notify the requester of the reassignment!
TL;DR Summary:
We are using the Help Center in Zendesk version: 1.202.6 (9dc8a52) and this app version is v2.6.3.
We are having a problem when an agent switches back to being available. Their tickets still carry the OOO tags that leave our tickets into an unassigned ticket view.
The issue is reproducible by following these steps:
I've our Zendesk Administrator we have not done any custom work to this app.
Additional details:
Thanks for any help you can offer. I love this app and appreciate your hard work.
-Mike
Is there a way to change the group e-mail notifications so that someone who is OOO is not notified by e-mail of group assignments? For us, all tickets are initially assigned to a group, and everyone gets the group assignment notification e-mails. The flow quickly pollutes the inbox of someone who is away on a business trip, who isn't in a position to respond to general tickets but needs to respond to specific items.
I suspect this isn't simple based on some poking around with the default trigger. I don't see an easy way to tweak this.
@Mike sorry for the late update. I tried this on my end and follow the steps that you've provided and I'm able to see the app is working fine as expected.
1. Try to create a ticket
2. Click "take it" link
3. Update or don't update the ticket and marked it as Pending.
Note: Clicking on the status toggle displays a dialog box that lets you change an agent's status. Changing the status either adds or removes a tag on Pending/On-Hold/Solved tickets as well as optionally all Open tickets. See Understanding the 'agent_ooo' tag.
4. Marked myself as Unavailable.
5. Ticket now have the tagged agent_ooo this was update via web service of the app
6. I tried to set myself to Available and the tag agent_ooo was removed automatically by the app.
Did you add this tag: agent_ooo_ticket_open into your trigger or user profile since this is not included by default on the app? Can you please check this?
@Gabriel
We did have our own trigger to create the agent_ooo_ticket_open but the agent_ooo tag (which is automatically added/removed by the app) is the part that is not removed when setting the agent to available.
When our agents click OOO to set themselves as unavailable, the toggle turns red then immediately shoots over green and never unassigns a case.
Any idea's?
Hey All. Just having an issue, I have installed the app and made it available with everything click correctly. (According to install documentation) However, agents are still able to assign the cases to the agent who is set as away.
Works fine in out test environment however seems to break in our production instance.
I have checked and It doesnt show that any other triggers are causing an issue so I am kinda at a loss.
Anyone have any ideas?
Just wanted to follow up since I discovered the solution to the agent_ooo tags not being removed from tickets assigned to agents who are set back to Available.
The issue came down to the permissions that our accounts were set to. My account did not have permission to edit the tags of a ticket. So when I would toggle the Unavailable/Available slider, none of the agent_ooo tags could be removed since I cannot add/remove tags.
We are having our admins set the OOO status for the time being and will look into a way to give the ability to add/remove tags to agents without granting them all of the rights of an administrator.
Hopefully this helps someone else out there.
HI,
im really stuck ive got triggers set up to allocated tickets to assignee's and attempted to set up a out of office trigger but its not working and im pulling my hair out.
ive used an additional tag unassigned_by_ooo_app but it doesnt seem to be working
Looks like a good app. But, we have over 100 light agents and only 15 agents.
I'd only use it if the list could hide the light agents who can't be assigned a ticket anyway.
Zendesk has obviously put a lot of time and effort into their redesign and new look and feel. I, for one, really love it! However, this custom app is quite an eye sore on the side navbar. Can the app be updated to use the new look and feel? Or is this how all custom apps will look? Could there be an option to hide this icon in the app settings? We only need to use it from the user app sidebar.
Hey all,
Can anyone please tell me if we are able to:
- disable the agent_ooo tag?
- I was reading the article and it says “any open tickets with the agent_ooo are unassigned on update”, is this a setting? Can we disable this too?
Many thanks!
Hi everyone, quick question: what happens when the agent is the only one within the group and "Force unassign tickets" is enabled?
Thanks!
I have created Triggers to Automatically Assign tickets to a specifc Agent based upon an Organization tag.
How can I modify and/or create a new Trigger to either prevent Auto Assigning tickets to an OOO Agent or Un-assign the ticket if the Agent is OOO? (Note: I still want to manually Assign Tickets to OOO Agents)
Also in some cases if the Agent is only going to be OOO for a short period of time we will Assign an Open Ticket to them. How can I adjust the OOO App to still tag these Tickets with agent__ooo so if the Customer responds before the Agent returns the Ticket is Un-Assigned?
(It would make things a lot easier if we could base Triggers off Assignee properties)
Hi Elisa! I apologize for the delayed response!
It looks like you were able to get help with this in a ticket as well, but for anyone else who might have this question, in this scenario the tickets will remain assigned to the agent. They won't be re-assigned anywhere.
Please let us know if you need anything else. :)
Hello Jeff!
I appreciate your patience while I looked into your post!
I'll need a some more information about the triggers you've created and your workflow before I'm able to suggest possible workarounds. I am going to take the request into a ticket for further discussion.
Looks for a ticket from me soon :)
In case this helps anyone...
In my sandbox, the Out of office app is configured to enable "confirm status change" and "prevent assignment", but "force unassign tickets" is not enabled.
I had a problem getting a pending ticket assigned to an unavailable/out-of-office agent to become unassigned after receiving a customer reply.
Once I went into Settings->Tickets and disabled "automatic ticket tagging", it worked fine, the ticket would be unassigned.
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