You may be wondering how email notifications for CCs and followers work. For example, how and when notifications are sent to CCs and followers, and how to change the text in the email notification to be specific to your company’s needs.
Email notifications for requesters and CCs are controlled by default by two default triggers in Support. These default triggers also define the email subject and body text that is included in email notifications. You can customize the text in email notifications to requesters and CCs by changing these default triggers.
Email notification for followers are handled differently. Followers get email notifications when comments are added to tickets they are following, and this happens as soon as you turn on Enable followers in your admin settings. There’s no way to disable email notifications to followers (other than to stop using followers by turning off Enable followers), but you can customize the text in email notifications to followers using the followers email template (see below).
This article includes these sections:
- Understanding how email notifications are sent to CCs by default
- Customizing default triggers for email notifications to requesters and CCs
- Understanding how email notifications are sent to followers by default
- Customizing the follower email template for email notifications to followers
For more information about email notifications for CCs and followers, see Configuring business rules for CCs and followers and Understanding when email replies become public or private comments.
For a complete list of documentation about CCs and followers, see CC and followers resources.
Understanding how email notifications are sent to CCs by default
Triggers define when email notifications are sent to CCs (but not followers) by default. There are two default triggers in Support that control this behavior. They are:
- Notify requester of received request
- Notify requester of comment update
These triggers are important to CCs because they both include an action called Email user + requester and CCs. This action (in particular the “and CCs” part) is what causes CCs to receive email notifications.
If you don’t have triggers that include the Email user + (requester and CCs) action, CCs do not receive email notifications. We recommend that you do not delete or modify these triggers without carefully considering how email notifications to CCs are affected. For more information about default triggers, see About Support default triggers.
Customizing default triggers for email notifications to requesters and CCs
You can customize the text in email notifications to requesters and CCs by editing the Notify requester of received request and Notify requester of comment update default triggers. You must be an administrator to customize default triggers.
To customize default triggers for email notifications to requesters and CCs
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, and then select Business Rules > Triggers.
- Open and edit the text in the Notify requester of received request trigger.
Change the email subject and body text, if needed. Placeholders are allowed. Remember to save your changes when you are done.
- Open and edit the Notify requester of comment update trigger.
Change the email subject and body text, if needed. Placeholders are allowed. Remember to save your changes when you are done.
Understanding how email notifications are sent to followers by default
By default, the follower email template (and subject line) include some placeholders. For example, here’s what the template looks like before you make any changes:
You can update the template to include any text that you want and use placeholders such as:
- ticket.cc_names—Returns the name of CCs on the ticket.
- ticket.follower_names—Returns the name of followers on the ticket.
- email_cc_names—Returns the names of CCs on the ticket.
For more information about these and other available placeholders, see Zendesk Support placeholder reference. If you haven’t used placeholders before and want general information about how they work, see Using placeholders.
Customizing the follower email template for email notifications to followers
The follower email template only appears and can be configured when then Enable follower option is selected. You must be an administrator to configure the followers email template.
To customize the follower email template
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, and then select Settings > Tickets.
- In the CCs and followers section, make sure that the Enable followers check box is selected.
- In the Follower email subject field, type the text that you want to include in the subject line of email notifications to followers.
- In the Follower email template field, type the text that you want to include in the body of email notifications to followers.
If needed, you can click the Revert to default link to replace the text in the email template with default text.
- Click the Save tab button.
30 Comments
Hi,
Can you explain what the placeholder {{ticket.follower_reply_type_message}} means in the email notification for followers?
I can't find it back in this article or in the "placeholder reference article" https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203662156
Thanks!
We do not have the "requester and CCs" option in our account, can I get an explanation as to why? Enable CC's is checked off.
@Nathan this is gradually being rolled out across all accounts. While the rollout has started this month, it's expected to take up to several weeks to complete.
@Thomas, I'll confirm this internally and follow-up once I have more information :)
@Thomas, I was able to confirm that the placeholder you're referencing indicates whether the comment being notified about is private or public.
Cheers!
How do I configure an individual notification for the ticket CCs only? At the moment I can only set "requester and CCs". Shouldn't CCed recipients get a slightly different text? Or am I missing something?
@Eckhard
Same thing here, I'm struggling to find the CC email template which now seems to be the same one as for Followers notifications. I was also expected to set up 2 different email notifications, one for Followers and another one for CCs. This may be doable by using Liquid Markup I guess.
@Brett I don't really understand what the placeholder {{ticket.follower_reply_type_message}) is aimed to do. It doesn't seem to indicate whether the comment being notified about is private or public, or I may miss something obvious.
It turns out to return the following sentence in email notifications, is that correct?
"Répondez à cet e-mail pour ajouter une note interne à la demande",
i.e. something like that in English "Reply to this e-mail to add an internal note to this request"
Is there any relation? Where can we get more information about this new placeholder?
@Thomas, I had contacted the support before on this and there is only the separate followers email template available in the ticket settings indeed. However, that does trigger an individual notification to followers.
The support directed me to this article and "Understanding how email notifications are sent to CCs".
All I struggle with is why there is no separate CC option available in the triggers but only a requester AND CC option. I don't want the requester and the CC to receive the exact same message.
@Eckhard, thanks for the update. I had also submitted a couple of tickets at support on this subject.
I'm currently waiting for some satisfying replies and clarification since the first answer I got made me think that both Followers and CCs would receive the same message based on the same email template (the one you set in Settings > Tickets > CCs and Followers > Follower email template).
You're right, it looks like both the requester and CCs receive the exact same notification after running a few tests here. This is definitely not the way I want to go. Hope for a quick fix or at least clear explanations from Zendesk.
I've also noticed that triggers which were previously including the action Email user > (requester) have been automatically updated into Email user > (requester and CCs) once 'Enable followers' is active. That's a shame not being warned about this… since by default, CC contacts now receive the exact same notification as the requester, which is definitely not expected!
Would like to hear from other users and see pros/cons about this Followers feature in their workflow.
Hi Zendesk,
Is there any update on this? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021312374/comments/360002423634
i.e. my comment from July 18 about the new placeholder ticket.follower_reply_type_message which is not referenced in your documentation yet?
We also need to understand what is the official reason about the fact that a follower notification is not sent if this follower is also part of the current assigned group/team. Thanks!
@Tomas apologies as it looks like I missed your previous response :( I reached out to our Product Manager to confirm what this placeholder did and was informed that it indicates whether the comment being notified about is private or public. This is most likely related to the Reply to this e-mail to add an internal note to this request message you're seeing on your end.
As for the reason behind the follower notification, I'm not entirely sure why this decision was made. I'll reach out to our team internally to see if I can find out more information for you :)
Thanks @Brett! Hoping for a clear explanation ;-)
Please also let us know about my last comment on triggering actions for followers.
Hello! Is there a way to add the organization's name to the Follower notification? Maybe add it to the ticket contents listed at the bottom of the email? Or the subject? I did not see a tag to add it in the text from Settings > Ticket.
Hi,
I think there is a typo in the article:
Needs to be:
Thanks
Previously the requester and CC`d emails/names in a ticket were not presented for the people which are placed in CC. Now the followers don't see who is the requester and the cc`d people on the ticket ... Once again we should play with the liquid markdown in order to adjust the "Follower email template" to display these. And thanks to Matt and not Zendesk, from this article: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661206-Using-Liquid-markup-to-reveal-CCs-in-a-notification-email for providing the workaround.
And yes, this - email_cc_names returns the names and not the emails which are more important.
Just wanted to add my voice to this issue. The fact that active followers only receive notifications when ticket updates occur has caused major disruption to our workflow. Ideally I'd like agents to be notified every time they're manually added as a follower or @mentioned in a ticket, regardless if a ticket is updated. At the moment, I have little to no recourse because I'm unable to specifically reference Followers in Triggers/Views/Macros/etc.
It'd be great if an upcoming beta could provide us with:
Hi Abigail Iliesi -
That is great feedback to share in the Support Product Feedback topic in the community, which our product managers follow.
If you haven't posted there before, here are our Tips for Writing an Effective Feedback Post.
Thanks Abigal! +1!!!
I totally approve all of these feature requests. There is clearly a lack of followers notification workflow. Hoping for a quick implementation.
As mentioned 8 months ago by Thomas above, the {{ticket.follower_reply_type_message}} placeholder used in the default follower notification is still not listed in the placeholder article. A moderator did respond here with the definition, but, it would be great if someone could get the placeholder article updated!
Hey Lila,
Thanks for the catch! I'll get this information passed over to our documentation team so the article can be updated.
Cheers!
Hi,
Anyone with success in sending separate text to requester and CCs. This is an important feature to have. I've tried finding some workaround using liquid markup but not success yet.
Thanks!
I'm trying to add a ticket link to the CC'd notification template using this code:
```
([{{ticket.id}}]({{ticket.url}}))
```
Instead of becoming a link, it becomes this:
([27375](support.imgix.com/hc/requests/27375))
I'm using the old CC experience. Do I have to upgrade in order to use markdown in this case?
Bryan Matias I think you might need to use the ticket.link placeholder to get a clickable link. You can see in the placeholder reference that the ticket.url placeholder does not include the http: portion which is likely why it isn't working the way you would expect https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203662156-Zendesk-Support-placeholders-reference
Chris Bulin thanks! That's useful info to know.
What I did instead was use HTML formatting since it doesn't accept markdown.
Cheers!
Glad you found a workaround! :D
Hi,
Any update about the ability to set an Email user > (followers) action within Triggers?
For example, I want to create a trigger that sends an email to all Followers that are Agents in an internal note is added to the ticket. I can only notify the Assignee, but not to the followers.
Thanks,
Yaniv
Hi Yaniv -
Followers have not been added to Triggers. If you'd like to submit a feature request for this functionality, you can post it to the Feedback on Support topic in the community.
Hello.
I understand out of this article that it is not possible to define a separate trigger / email just for CCs when using the new Followers / CCs functionality. Is this correct or do I miss something?
Definitely, I consider that the Followers / CCs functionality is a step back in comparison with the "old CC":
- I was able to add end-users on CC and trigger a separate / different notification to them (always the same based on a single template but at least separated)
- It was ensured that those on CC were outside of the communication with the requester, which is desired in some instances
How can I achieve now the same? I cannot add end-users as followers and I cannot define a trigger with a specific notification to CC which is running independently of the email notification to the requester. Could it be possible to add as an option in the trigger to email user -> only CC? that will definitely solve the problem because I can decouple requesters from CCs if desired. Alternatively, another option is to allow any user / email address as follower, then it will just work like the old CC which is a perfect backward compatibility.
Overall, the new functionality has reduced flexibility in comparison to the old CC functionality. I there any plan to improve this situation?
Thanks and regards.
The same message getting sent to the requester and cc's is not ideal. In the pro-active ticket trigger, by default they both get an email notification saying:
"This ticket was created on your behalf."
Which is kind of not true. The ticket is created for the requester. Not the CC. I liked the old, "You are a cc on this request......." (words to that effect). To me it seems confusing for the cc on the ticket.
As a workaround, I use the following in the pro-active trigger:
==============================================
This is a proactive ticket created on the behalf of:
- Requester: {{ticket.requester.name}}
- CC's: {{ticket.ccs}}
{{ticket.comments_formatted}}
To add additional comments, reply to this email.
==============================================
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