Question
My account was spammed and I now have all these tickets which I need to get rid of. Is there a way that I can bulk delete them without having to do it one by one?
Answer
There is no native way to bulk delete every single ticket from a large spam influx in a Zendesk Support account, in one go.
However, there are a couple of available options to delete more than one ticket at a time within Zendesk. Each option has its own set of limitations and choosing the best route is entirely based on your workflow and can vary for each use case.
- Bulk delete in views
- Bulk marking as spam
- Bulk closing with an automation
- Bulk delete tickets via the API
- Zendesk Apps
- Install third-party apps from the Marketplace
Bulk delete in views
The first option to delete multiple tickets at a time is to use the bulk delete feature within views. Identify the spam tickets within your views and manually select each ticket you wish to delete.
Select the Delete option from the dropdown. This option is recommended if you have a relatively small number of spam tickets as you are only able to delete 100 tickets at a time. Tickets can be bulk-selected across pages.
Bulk marking as spam
Similar to how you can manually bulk delete tickets in views, you can also bulk mark the tickets as spam. Marking a ticket as spam in this way not only permanently deletes the ticket, but also suspends the requester, preventing them from being able to create further tickets. You will be able to mark up 100 tickets as spam at a time. Tickets can be bulk-selected across pages.
Bulk closing with an automation
The next option is to close spam tickets with an automation. Automations run hourly and can perform an action to close these tickets. Although this option doesn't delete the tickets, it places them into a closed status and removes them from your live ticket queues. The automation can also be configured to add a spam tag to the ticket, which can be leveraged to filter these spam tickets out of your reports, or to identify them later for deletion. Automations have limitations, so they can only act on up to 1,000 tickets during each hourly run. In the event that you have several thousand spam tickets, it may take a number of hours for those tickets to be closed. For example, if you had 30,000 spam tickets in your account, it takes a minimum of 30 automation cycles, or 30 hours, for the automation to completely remove these tickets.
The first step to setting up this automation is to determine a way to identify these spam tickets. This could be based on identifiers like a specific string in the description, a certain ticket creation timeframe, a specific requester language, etc. Often times, there will be no single identifying feature between all of the spam tickets, so you would need to use a combination of different identifying conditions. These identifiers will then be used as conditions of the automation to help it determine which tickets to run on. Below is an example of how to configure an automation to close and tag tickets based on the presence of a particular string.
Meet all of the following conditions:
- Ticket: Hours since created | Greater than | 1
- Ticket: Status | Less than | Solved
Meet any of the following conditions:
- Ticket: Description | Contains the following string | (common string goes here)
Perform these actions:
- Ticket: Status | Closed
- Ticket: Set Tags | spam
In the example above, Ticket: Description is placed under Meet any of the following conditions, in case there are multiple strings that are used to identify spam tickets. You can add as many of these additional conditions as needed to ensure all of your spam tickets are addressed by a single automation.
Bulk delete tickets via the API
Another option would be to utilize the Zendesk API to bulk delete tickets. Using this option means you are restricted to deleting 100 tickets at a time, however, if you have developer resources, the API can be leveraged in a script to run continuously in the background until all the spam tickets are deleted as well. For more information on using the API to bulk delete tickets, see Bulk Delete Tickets.
Zendesk Apps
"Built by Zendesk" released an App that allows for Bulk Delete of suspended tickets. This is the official app and an alternative to managing spam tickets. For more information about this app, see Bulk Delete App.
Install third-party apps from the Marketplace
Some third-party apps available in our Marketplace can help you delete or restore tickets in large scale. One example of those apps is the GDPR: Search & Destroy.
22 Comments
I went looking around the community and it looks like someone else figured out how to combine using a target to delete it, instead of just simply closing it.
Here's the link for anyone trying to handle this as well:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203723688-Auto-Delete-a-Ticket-with-a-Trigger?page=1#community_comment_211682018
Unfortunately, if you have a basic account, you can't use the automation solution which would be the most helpful for deleting the thousands of spam support tickets I just got overnight from a Russian phishing spammer. The only way is to select all the tickets one page of 30 tickets at a time and delete them. This is incredibly time-consuming. It seems ridiculous that Zendesk doesn't allow ALL accounts some way to bulk delete spam without having to select each one. Or even better, provide a way to stop these spam emails from coming through in the first place. If I'm getting hundreds of new tickets every minute, Zendesk should recognize this as a possible spam attack and stop it automatically.
Hi Tom -
Are you using the "suspend user" functionality? This should help as it deletes everything from a given "user" at once, and prevents them from sending more.
I realize spammers often set up many accounts, but if they sent more than 1 ticket from any given account, this will help wipe them out more quickly.
While there is some spam blocking functionality, we are also in the process of improving spam filtering, I'll see if there's any update on that.
This linking in the section about Marketplace Apps: BULK DELETE TICKETS, takes you to a Brazillian App. You can only download it if you have a Brazillian Tax Number (CJP)... so basically it’s useless.
I don’t have Automation’s
I can only delete 30 messages at one time and I have 6.5K.
So nothing above is helpful.
Why doesn’t Zendesk have a proper bulk delete option?
Hi Tania -
There's another app called Suspended Ticket Bulk Deletion that you could look into; I don't know if it would help with your particular circumstances or not.
If you have development resources, utilizing the API to bulk delete is the way to go, and another Zendesk user offered up a script he built in this comment. One of our Product Managers also suggest how to do so here.
As far as why the bulk delete option doesn't exist... my guess would be that it wasn't thought to be important at the time the platform was initially built, and it has been deemed a lower priority than other things to go back and build since then. That being said, I encourage you to add your voice and vote to this thread in Product Feedback: Add ability to bulk delete closed tickets.
I'm sorry we don't have a better answer for you at this time. I know how utterly frustrating this is when someone gets hit with a large spam attack.
Thanks Nicole
I have good news.
I was able to download the third party app which worked a treat!
thanks
Tania
Thanks for the update Tania! I'm glad you found something that works!
We at formspree.io needed to bulk delete a ton of spammy tickets. I didn't see any tools that made it easy, so I created this command line tool to perform bulk delete using the API. Maybe it will help someone else!
https://github.com/formspree/zdesk
I just used it yesterday to delete thousands of requests from a spammer.
Thanks for sharing that solution, Cole! We'd love it if you'd want to write up a community tip about it.
Spam problem from Russian bots is back. Zendesk... what are you going to do about this now?
Absolutely unacceptable that there is no bulk delete option (100 is the max)
I am also getting thousands of Russian spam email. I emailed Zendesk support who refused to help me because my plan does not include 1:1 support. I've been a customer for 10 years and think that I have sent in maybe one email in that time. I don't need help on some routine thing. Your system is not properly working and I am getting spammed. You would think that you could help someone out in this situation. Ridiculous.
I should note that these are not in suspended tickets or in the spam folder. All of these Russian email are in my inbox.
@Tania, how are these spam tickets being generated? Are they being submitted through email, ticket form, or web-widget? Any additional information you can provide is greatly appreciated :)
@Joe, apologies for you being directed to the Zendesk Community forum. I double checked your ticket and it looks like one of our Customer Advocacy agents sent you a detailed response regarding this issue. Can you confirm you've received this email?
@Brett - Thank you. I got a response from them after posting here.
Glad to hear it Joe :)
Is there support for the new Bulk Delete app? I don't see the filters working properly.
Example:
We are showing 292 suspended tickets. When I apply a filter it shows a subset of those tickets but when I try to select all in that subset the button says all 292 tickets will be deleted. I cannot select just the subset of tickets for deletion unless I check them one by one. This is not the best experience.
Also, the number of tickets being shown by the filter is defaulting to the number you have set for tickets to be shown per page.
The previous app allowed you to set the criteria for what would be removed in bulk and then you could evaluate what was left over. This was very useful.
We now have a paid app with less functionality and the app is pretty buggy.
+1 for Bulk Delete App
Hi Justin and Predintha,
Thanks for the comments, and sorry you're seeing an issue. We are looking into this and will work on an update.
Chris
Can we have a shortcut to mark mail as spam.
If you can't do that, move the mark as spam item nearer the ticket contents, save us all that endless scrolling
Hey Jim,
Thanks for sharing this feedback with us. Totally understand where you're coming from regards to the endless scrolling! I'll be sure to pass this feedback along to the appropriate team.
Thanks!
How can I grant access to the bulk delete/ mark as spam option to one or more agents?
Hello Julie,
If you want your agents to be able to bulk delete/mark tickets as spam, you must grant them permission. Administrators must enable agents to delete tickets under the Admin icon, select Settings > Agents, then click Agents Can Delete Tickets. For help, see Enabling agents delete tickets.
Note: On Enterprise, permission to delete tickets is based on Custom agent roles.
For marking tickets as spam aside from agents must have the ability to delete tickets, they should have access to all tickets set in their profile as well.
Thanks!
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