Ensure tickets are addressed in the appropriate order with Guided mode, a custom role option that requires agents to work through tickets using the Play button.
Understanding the agent experience in Guided mode
In Guided mode, agents can access views using the Play button. When agents click the Play button, the system automatically opens the first ticket in the view. After addressing the ticket, the agent clicks Submit to update it and automatically move to the next ticket. The Submit button is not available until a change is made to the ticket.
The next ticket is the next ticket in the view according to the view's sort order (see Using views to manage ticket workflow) that the agent hasn't already skipped and that no other agent is currently viewing. For more details, see Using the Play button.
When an agent completes or skips the last ticket in the list, the list wraps back to the top and the first ticket in the view is opened.
) in the sidebar, they can do either of the following:
- See and open all tickets assigned to them in the system Your assigned tickets view.
- Click on any other view to open its available ticket and start Play mode. They won't be able to see a list of the tickets in the view. Once they've started a view in Play mode they can click Skip to skip a ticket, but are prompted to enter a reason.
Keep in mind that agents in Guided mode will still be able to view and open tickets they have access to from end-user or organization profiles and through search.
Setting agent access to Guided mode
You'll need to create or edit a custom role and assign it to the agents who should have Guided mode access. For details, see Custom agent roles (Enterprise).
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > People. - Select Roles.
- Next to the role you want to modify, click edit.
- In the Agent workflow section, select View permissons > Play views only.
- Click Save.
Viewing skipped tickets
In Guided mode, agents can choose to skip a ticket. After they click Skip, a window appears prompting them to enter a reason.
Note that Guided mode agents can still click Skip in the above window without entering a reason. If you're looking for specific information from agents when they skip tickets, you should communicate expectations on entering reasons and how you'll be using the responses.
Review skipped tickets and reasons in a Guided mode agent's user profile. Looking through skipped tickets can help you identify specific knowledge areas and processes that agents are struggling with.
Admins can view skipped tickets for any agent in Guided mode. Guided mode agents can view their own skipped tickets only.
- Click the Admin icon ( ) in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
- Click Agents.
- Open the agent's profile you want to view.
- Click Play only.
- A list of tickets the agent has skipped, along with each reason entered, appears. Click on a ticket to open it and view additional details.
70 Comments
Crucial updates: on/off reason table, and ability to make reason as mandatory
Agent role permission to review skipped tickets. It's not admins work to review skipped tickets but more for managers or team leaders.
Best,
We'd like to make use of this feature, but often our agents need to put tickets on hold for various periods of time. How can they update the customer when they get an update without skipping through the entire list of on hold tickets?
Any way to just set specific views to guided mode rather than the entire experience?
This feature setup should be great to have under Views or group, not role. Also if agent just close opened ticket, it's not counted as skipped.
When will this function be available to Professional level accounts? Seems pretty basic, as others have stated, since there is rather limited ability to control which tickets are worked on next.
Cherry Picking tickets is becoming a bit of a problem for my group as well.
Agreed with setting play-only mode per view instead of per role. For play-only agents, their views list is split into "Views" and "Playlists," where the only view is the (bafflingly) uneditable "your assigned tickets." If we could create playlists and views as separate entities, we could protect the main support queue from cherry-picking while still offering custom views for specialty/personal tickets where skipping is not a concern.
@collin I'd like to vote that up 10 times
The main issue we are facing with Guided Mode is the fact people need to proactively go to "Your New/Open tickets" view to check for any replies from a customer. This allows for a lot of people not picking up on their replies from customers by just staying on Guided Mode (whether it happens voluntarily or not is a different topic).
We need to have Open tickets going into Guided Mode directly and this will solve all these problems - how viable would it be to have that implemented?
@Vladimir Guided mode doesn't affect which types of tickets are served. You can implement this by changing the played view to include tickets assigned to the user. e.g. under "meet any of the following conditions" add both "assignee is (blank)" and "assignee is (current user.)"
Guided mode just serves an existing view's tickets from top to bottom.
Hi Everyone, i can't see the option mentioned by @nora in the article. "To view a Guided mode agent's skipped tickets"
I'll send you a screenshot of my agent view.
1- Should I do any additional set-up to see it?
2 - Is there any way to prohibit the omission of tickets by the agent?
Thnaks,
Hi Diego, you will only see the option when you are looking at a Guided mode agent's profile (i.e. the user is assigned a role with "Play views only" selected for "What can this agent do with views?"). That screenshot is of an Administrator user profile, which wouldn't have any skipped tickets. In English it is labeled "Play only" and is the third option from the left.
It's not possible to disable the skip button or prevent leaving the reason blank. Best to control that through QA or performance management processes for now, rather than configuration.
Still, one possible blind spot is an agent "skipping" by closing a ticket, waiting a few minutes for someone else to pick it up, then starting the playlist again. Third party apps like Tymeshift can give visibility into that. (I find this behavior is a symptom of inadequate escalation processes, or a perception that skipping is always bad)
I would still like to see a list of all skips for all agents, though. I don't like having to visit profiles individually.
Idea is good, but it's not working. Many issues. Agents still can filter tickets from "Search" as unassigned. also turn on-off tab and it wont be counted as skipped. Can skip the ticket if one of fields is selected.
@Collin , is it possible to set the default button to be "solved" instead of "new" so I would avoid having to click twice to solve a new ticket?
@Sasho I don't know of a way to do that, but I use keyboard shortcuts to sidestep the issue. You can hit ctrl+alt+s to submit a ticket as solved. (Also note I don't represent Zendesk, I'm just a user.)
@Collin sorry I did not realize that, but your suggestion certainly solves my problem, thanks for that!
Hello, I am in trouble with Play function. When active it enable a sort of "phantom" view (in Italian is called "Ticket assegnati a te") to agents in Play mode but is not customizable. Any suggestion on customization? This view is not included in standard views, Thank you! :)
It would be nice to have the ability to restrict which priority tickets that a guided agent sees. IE, we have urgent tickets that have keywords around tickets that require a manager/special team response.
Hi! We've been using Guided Mode for about a month, and very sporadically we have agents reporting that they're not being placed in older tickets, instead newer ones. There's not really a way for us to prevent this/figure out why this is happening, so I wanted to know if it's possible the tool might temporarily glitch and place an agent in a random ticket in the queue.
@Sarah,
I wonder if your agents are using IE? I have always had better luck in Chrome...
I definitely suggest asking your agents to grab a screenshot if they can and if not, at least get the details from www.supportdetails.com and send to support@zendesk.com because I don't think that's expected behavior. Be ready, though, because of course you'll be asked how to replicate it but you're describing a sporadic behavior. If you
Is there a way of preventing having multiple agents have the same ticket surfaced by using the Guide mode?
Having agents all use the play feature from the same view and they keep battling for the same ticket since it doesn't automatically assign the ticket to them. Current workaround is having them "take it" to assign the ticket before responding but we are still seeing this occurrence frequently.
Thanks in advance!
@Ruby, good idea, in my opinion Play mode should assign tickets directly to the user. It would resolve a lot of issues.
Hi any insight into when the glaringly obvious flaw of simply using the cross on the ticket tab to exit the ticket, never enter a skip reason and this never show in the audit may be fixed? As it stands its a feature to stop cherry picking that simply doesnt work, its like you got halfway and called it finished. Really frustrating for us as we look for a way to actually stop difficult tickets being left longer.
I agree with Alex, the idea is good, but the current state of Guided Mode doesn't prevent cherry picking.
Skip reasons should be manditory (maybe with some dropdown with common choices) and tickets should be 'virtually assigned' or something, so agents can't just close the ticket.
This was also mentioned by several people when this functionality was still in beta. Some time after the release (back in 2016), I've also created this topic which alos mentions these two problems:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/245206007-Guided-Mode-improvements
We looked at this feature some time ago and sadly coming back now to see that the same issues exist. The agents are able to close tabs without providing a reason which negates any ability to prevent cherry-picking of tickets. Also, there is no way to limit the views that are affected by this feature. Agents in the "play-only" role cannot manage their "My Tickets" view, and other views, without "playing through". There needs to be a way to designate the views that are affected by this feature. Example: we would only need this feature on the "All Unassigned Tickets" view as it does not make sense on the other views.
Thanks for the feedback, Justin. I encourage you to follow the feedback thread in Sebastiaan's comment; if there are updates on this functionality that's where they would get posted.
With skip tickets aside, is there any way to see if a ticket was served to an agent via guided mode? (We have a lot of agents with a mix of play only and play opt out)
Hey Amber,
Unfortunately, it is not possible to report on this natively. An app could theoretically report on this but there are not any in our marketplace designed for this purpose. I apologize for that limitation
Has anything been done to allow reporting on skipped tickets? It would be great to see # tickets skipped and who is skipping, without going directly to an agents profile
Hi Schuyler,
At this time there aren't any updates in regards to this functionality, but you can pull this information using our API, which you can take a look at here: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/ticket_skips
Let us know if you have any other questions!
Just tried to implement this and it was an epic fail. Role based options is not suitable for our use.
To use the feature we would require the following to be an option with setup.
1. Play feature by view, not by role
2. The play feature to not serve up tickets that are assigned to other agents
3. The play feature to have an option to not serve up tickets in a certain status, ie Paused & On Hold
4. An option to setup a skipped-tickets view. This would be helpful for escalated support / team leaders to quickly view tickets that have been skipped.
5. An option for agents to not be able to re-sort a view that has Play enabled.
6. Built-in reporting
I'm happy to provide any further context to the info above or if anyone has ideas to get around these limitations. Cheers.
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Aaron!
I'm going to pass this feedback along to the appropriate team so they're aware.
They will follow-up if they need additional information from you.
Cheers!
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