You might have noticed that drop-down fields and checkbox fields have associate tags attached to their options. Knowing how these interact will give you a greater understanding of the platform and a better idea of how to set up your workflows. For more information on tags see, Using tags.
This tip covers the following sections:
Understanding tag and ticket field interactions
- When you select a field option, the associated tag will automatically be added to the ticket.
- If you add a tag, the associated field option will be selected as well.
Basically, when Zendesk Support tries to populate fields, it looks for tags on the ticket first and then selects the associated field options for those tags. This is why you cannot have duplicate tags associated; the system won't know which field option to use. To prevent this, you will receive an error when you try to use the same associated tag.

This tag and field option relationship causes the following results:
- If you add a tag that is associated with a different field option, the new option will be selected and the original field option's tag will be deleted automatically.
- If you rename a field option, all tickets with the associated tag, including closed tickets, will be updated with the new name.
- Deleting a field option will change the ticket field to 'null' in all tickets with the field option. If you re-add the option, along with the same associated tag, then the ticket field will be selected again automatically.
Changing the field option tag
If you change a field option tag, there will be different repercussions than when changing a field option. For example, you can change the field option title with little repercussions (aside from reporting), but you cannot change the field option tag with the same results. Since the tag is the backbone, if you change the tag, you will create a new field option.
Changing the tag will result in the following behavior:
- Changing a field option's tag will automatically deselect that option from all tickets with the field selected.
- If you change the field option tag to a tag that does not exist on a ticket, the field will revert to a 'null' value.
- If you change the field option tag to tag that does exist on a ticket, the field will revert to a 'null' value until an update occurs. After an update, Zendesk Support re-reads the tags and will select the correct field option.
- Since you need an update to populate the updated field option, you cannot change field option tags to edit closed tickets.
Note: The only exception to this rule is if your field option was deleted and then re-added into the same field (as discussed above). You cannot create the same field option in a different field and expect the results to populate historical tickets.
As you might imagine, this can become especially messy when you delete field options or disable/delete entire fields. Remember, data is important. Once it's gone, you'll never be able to get it back.
26 Comments
Remember, conclusions to Help Center articles are important. Without them, you'll never be able to fully understand the weight of tag/ticket field interactions.
Hello guys,
I would like to know how the selection of a field option can add a ticket field on the user's request apparently thanks to tags but I don't understand how.
Many thanks!!
@diego
Sounds like there might be a little confusion. You can use a tag to set a ticket field from a trigger or an end-users profile.
For example, if a ticket is submitted and a user has the tag "vip" on their profile, on submission this tag is added to the ticket. If a dropdown field option has a tag of "vip" then this field would be selected based on the presence of the tag from the users profile.
Let me know if that makes sense!
Terry
Can we populate a custom text box in organisation with a tag value. We are passing customer information from our CRM which creates a customers support expiry date as a tag. We would like to take the value of this tag and put it in a text box using a trigger. Is this possible?
Hey Ian,
You may be able to set this up using a trigger since Organizational Text Fields do show up as a trigger action. Screenshot for you below:
That being said, if you want the text field to contain the exact value of the tag that is being applied then that could be trickier since there's no action to copy one field value over to another.
You may need to look into External Targets or our API to accomplish exactly what you're looking for.
Hope this helps!
Hey Brett
Thank you for your reply. As you suspect I wanted to take the exact value of the tag. So for example the SugarCRM sends the expiry date 19_02_2019 which I would want to take and put in a 'Support Expiry Date' text box for our agent to be able to easily see whether the customer had current support cover. If it is due to expire the agent could advise them it was nearly due.
I am not sure how the external targets would help as that appears to be sending out of Zendesk but the API might be the answer. Might be a little above my skill set but I'll see what can be done.
Many thanks
Happy to have hopefully pointed you in the right direction Ian :)
Hi,
I would like to know how I can change my tag whose have an accent for example the tag "tést" by "test", because I need to remove accent from some tags and i just can't add extra text, it must be the same word without accent.
And it's because Zendesk doesn't allow us to make that, so is there a solution to by pass this ?
Thanks
Hi,
is it possible to hide the tag field altogether? I do not want to lose the tag functionality but, I would like to remove it from view agents who are working tickets. If that is not possible, is it possible to lock that field so that no one can manually enter tags?
@Aja - you're in luck! Check this out and you should be able to achieve what you're looking to do: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001923688-Enabling-and-disabling-ticket-tags
Shoot I missed this,
I am looking for a way to create a query/report where it relates time spent with ticket tags vs ticket numbers.
-Jared
Hello Jared Allenbrand,
Would you mind explaining what you are trying to report on with more detail? Are you looking for a report that displays average ticket time or something that shows the ticket time on each ticket?
Best regards.
Hello,
When you say
"If you change the field option tag to tag that does exist on a ticket, the field will revert to a 'null' value until an update occurs. After an update, Zendesk Support re-reads the tags and will select the correct field option."
What constitutes an update? what would be the best way to backfill lots of tickets that already have the tag that I want to use for my ticket field?
Thanks,
Ferdia
Hello Ferdia De Paor,
There are numerous ways a ticket update can be implemented in Zendesk Support, and the article listed below goes into more detail on this. Let us know if there is anything else we can assist with.
Updating and solving tickets
Best regards.
It would be nice to see these explanations in a video. It is difficult to understand the results just by reading.
Hi Sirin -
We are working on producing more instructional video content. I'll share your comment with the team that makes those videos!
On Wednesday, July 22nd, from 9:00am-11:00am CDT, we'll have a special team of experts on hand to answer your questions on Setting up Ticket Tags for Explore reporting in your Zendesk Support & Explore instance for an AMA-style conversation!
Just click the "new post" button and write up your question. Be sure to be as detailed as possible. The best questions include:
Questions posted to this topic in advance of the start time will be answered first thing on the 22nd, so if you've got something you want our experts to look at, post it today!
Does anyone know if we can create a custom field in a ticket where an agent can add a pre-defined tag (that would pre-populate when typing), or add a new tag as necessary?
Basically, a replication of the "Tags" field, but renamed for specific tag utilization, and entry.
Hi Jimmy,
Just dropping a link to the discussion we had about this in another thread in case anyone else has the same question down the road.
There should not be a relationship between field options and tags. I don't need tags for drop-down field options. Both fields and tags have completely different purpose.
We are importing organization field drop downs via API. Is there a limit to the number of characters in the tag that we might run into?
Quick Question.
If a ticket is closed, and you have removed a ticket field option. -- Those tags remain on all the closed tickets from before correct? -- I'm asking as today I am removing some adding others - and got pointed to this part of the article: "Changing the field option tag", which makes me wonder why.
Thanks
Hi,
Is there any way to find which ticket field is already using this tag?
It can be really useful.
Thank you in advance.
@Bart, yes you are correct. Those tags will remain on all closed tickets.
@Vincent, I'm not aware of a way to find which tags are associated with each field option outside of manually looking.
Is there a way to change the tag when a custom ticket field is changed?
Hi Frederico,
When a new field is selected on a ticket, the tag should update automatically on the ticket. Or are you referring to something else?
Please sign in to leave a comment.