This feature is only available if it has been enabled by the administrator.
Side conversations are perfect for reaching out to other departments or external partners, but for many teams, they can become repetitive, especially if there’s a specific structure to the initial messages. You may want to use macros to start side conversations and ensure that key information is included automatically when the conversation is started.
- The requester’s initial message
- Some additional questions from the agent
- Some custom field values
- The originating ticket’s ID and URL
About macros for side conversations
You can add a Side conversation action to any macro and when it runs, a new side conversation is started and immediately pops open. Ticket information and some extra boilerplate are added automatically to the body by means of placeholders, leaving you to add only the recipient and any additional information you want to include.
- When you use a macro to start a side conversation, the macro won’t be applied to any side conversations that are already on the ticket - only to the new side conversation you're starting now.
- Keep in mind that your macro may include other actions that change ticket fields. If you don't submit the ticket, those changes will be lost.
If you are looking for more information about side conversations, see Using side conversations in tickets (add-on).
Creating macros for side conversations
Anyone (agents or administrators) can create a personal macro for side conversations. Administrators can also create shared macros for side conversations.
To create personal macros for side conversations
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Macros. - Click the All shared macros drop-down menu and select Personal macros.
- Click the Add macro button.
- Enter the macro name, and add actions for your macro as described in Building macro action statements.
- In the Actions section, choose Side conversation, enter a subject, and your message.
For the message, add placeholders for information you regularly need or use.
For example, this macro starts a side conversation and includes the first message from the requester, plus some information from the original ticket:
Note: You cannot add images. Markdown in agent signatures does not render in emails sent through side conversations. - Click Create.
Applying macros to side conversations
Macros for side conversations create a new side conversation and automatically add ticket information and some extra boilerplate to the body of the message.
To apply macros to side conversations
- From the ticket, click the Apply macro button in the bottom toolbar.
- Typically, your five most commonly used macros from the past week appear at the top of the macros list.
You can select one of these, begin typing the name of the macro, or scroll through the list to find the one you want to use.
The most-used macros display can be disabled, in which case, you'll only see the all macros list. For information, see Disabling the most-used macros option.
Note: Macros cannot be set up for specific channels.The actions defined in the macro will be applied. If the macro updated the ticket comment, you can edit the text before submitting the ticket.
- When the macro with a Side conversation action runs, it immediately starts a single new side conversation with the ticket information and boilerplate text specified by the macro. The side conversation is not saved though until you add a recipient and click Send.
- Add a recipient to the side conversation.
- If needed, change the subject of the side conversation and add, remove, or change information in the message.
- Click Send.
- If the macro updated any ticket fields, make sure that you also submit the ticket.
20 Comments
Would be great if when adding a recipient - it searches from current users/agents automatically. Or if you were able to automatically add a recipient as part of the macro.
@Conza the recipients should autocomplete agents and light agents, but not end-users at this time. Autocompleting end-users (and previous external side conversation recipients) is something we're working on. Out of curiosity, what are the use-cases where you'd send a side conversation to an end-user?
Recipients as part of the macro action is something we'd love to do and we're investigating making that happen. Would you imagine most of your side conversation macros would have the recipient pre-filled, or would that only be for special cases?
Hi Toby - just to jump in here, we have a few macros that would send a side conversation to a distro list. There would be quite a few of those cases and pre-populating the recipient would be quite useful to us. Happy to expound more on our use cases as needed!
@Toby Sterrett - Re: "Autocompleting end-users (and previous external side conversation recipients) is something we're working on."
= Brilliant! Very much needed imo.
Re: "Out of curiosity, what are the use-cases where you'd send a side conversation to an end-user?"
= For us, mostly courier companies. Or alternatively having a franchisee model (and not making the individual stores & all their emails - Light Agents), then the stores.
So for instance, customer enquiry about order ETA. We can then contact the store, or chase up courier w/ a side conversation. Or we contact a supplier.
Alternatively, store sends a ticket in - advising delay or issue. We can then side-conversation the customer from there, instead of creating a new ticket.
Re: "Would you imagine most of your side conversation macros would have the recipient pre-filled, or would that only be for special cases?"
= I would be aiming to have them pre-filled, yes. Would be populated with the macro.
Pasting the text from a zendesk to the side conversation results in a un readable array of character (example enclosed).
Can this be avoided?
Hello Niels,
I am going to spin up a ticket with you to get a better understanding of the issue you are referencing. We can work together in that ticket to see what resolution we can find to help!
We also have plenty of situations where we want to "forward" a conversation to an internal user. Adding the recipient to the macro would be great.
Is there any way that we can do something like this with triggers? We could save a lot of time automating something like this and take the macro step out completely.
Hi,
Any idea when you can prefill the "To" section in the side conversation by using the macro?
(Like we all do know with "Add CC" in macro's?
Thanks!
Thomas
@Toby,
Do you have any idea when it would be possible to add a recipient by macro for a side conversation?
Thanks!
Hey Thomas,
Our team is currently investigating having recipients be part of macro configuration. No ETA of when this will be implemented but I've passed this feedback along to the appropriate team :)
Hi team,
Appears to be a bug - no side conversations macro's are working at the moment (adding content)
They create a pop-up etc. but there is no content - although there is clearly in the macro, and has worked previously!
Big issue please assist.
Hello Conza,
I've created a ticket on your behalf so one of our experts can look into this for you.
Best regards!
macro can only be used to initiate a new side conversation? Or you can use macros to write a response to an existing side conversation? This is quite important.
Hey Antonio,
In its current state, macros cannot be used to write a response to an existing side conversation. However, we reached out to the Product Team in charge of this feature and they informed us that this is something they want to work on in the future.
Do you have some additional information on how exactly you'd like to see this work?
Hi Brett,
If we sign up for side conversations, it is because we need to talk to our external partners to solve an issue, today we do so with a 2 connected tickets systems. We use macros at every stage of the conversation with our partners, opening, updating, solving. If we move to side conversations to talk to our partners, which has the huge advantage of having 1 single ticket, limiting the macro to just the initial message, is not a solution for teams like us, that makes an extensive use of macros, where the conversation with the partner is quite complex and requires different communications.
I would expect the macro to have a new action together with start side conversation such as: add message to existing side conversation.
Thank you
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Antonio!
I'll be sure to pass this along to the appropriate team :)
Cheers!
Hi Brett Bowser
Do you know if a fix for "Only plain text is supported at this time. You cannot add rich text formatting or images" is on its way? It would be nice to be able to use e.g. pictures in the signature in SC
Best,
Thomas
Hey Thomas,
I confirmed that Rich Text should already be available so this article will need to be updated. It looks like in it's current state, macros in side conversations do not support attachments.
Our PM's will get this article updated to reflect this. Thanks for the heads up!
Our team would really like to see support for Brand signatures with markup & placeholders added to Side Conversations. Right now we use Brand signatures for the entire team, leaving the "agent signature" field for individual notes like future time off, unique hours, etc, so having Side Conversations pull the agent signature is not helpful at all.
Are there any plans to enable the regular signature for these?
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