With Explore, you'll often want to create reports based on the channel from which a ticket was created. Channels are the means by which your customers create support requests and how you engage with them.
The channels you see will depend on the channels you have installed. For example, if you haven't set up Facebook integration with Zendesk Support, you won't see the Facebook channel.
Use this article to learn how to view the channels you can report about in Explore, and to learn how channel names will appear when you create reports that use them.
To learn more about channels in general, see About Zendesk Support channels.
This article contains the following topics:
How to view ticket channels in Explore
Use this simple report to see the names of all ticket channels you have used and the number of tickets assigned to each channel. If you need help creating a query, see Creating queries.
To view your ticket channels
- In Explore, open a new query using the Zendesk Tickets dataset.
- In the Metrics panel of query builder, add the Tickets metric.
- In the Rows panel, add the attribute Ticket channel.
You'll see a table that looks similar to the example below:
Support channels in Explore
The following support channels are available in Explore reports. The channels that are shown will vary depending on the channels you've configured.
| Ticket channel | Displayed in Explore as | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Any channel | Any channel | Tickets created from third-party Zendesk integrations. |
| Web service (API) | Api | Tickets generated or updated from the Zendesk API, for example:
|
| Chat | Chat | Tickets created from a Zendesk Chat session. |
| Messaging | Messaging | Tickets generated from a Zendesk messaging conversation. For more information, see About Zendesk messaging. |
| Tickets originating with an email request. | ||
| Facebook message
Facebook post |
Tickets generated from Facebook posts and messages. | |
| Forum topic | Forum | Tickets originating from a community post. |
| Help Center post | Help Center | Tickets that were created from a community post in the Help Center. |
| Mobile | Mobile | Tickets originating from a Zendesk mobile app. |
| Mobile SDK | Mobile SDK | Tickets generated from a custom app using the Zendesk Mobile SDK. |
| Text | SMS | Tickets originating from a text message. |
| System | System | Tickets created by Zendesk Support. Examples include tickets created by importing from another application. |
| Twitter
Twitter DM Twitter Like |
Tickets originating from a Twitter mention, DM, or like. | |
| Phone call (incoming)
Phone call (outgoing) Voicemail |
Voice | Tickets originating from Zendesk Talk calls and voicemails. |
| Answer Bot for Web Widget | Answer Bot for Web Widget | Tickets created from Answer Bot suggestions in the Web Widget that led to a ticket being solved. |
| Web form
Web Widget |
Web | Tickets originating from a Support web form, the Support agent interface (created by an agent), or the Web Widget. Follow-up tickets are also shown in this channel regardless of how they are created. |
| Social messaging |
|
If you're using the Zendesk Agent Workspace and add a social messaging channel, these appear as ticket channels you can use in your Explore reports.
If you're not using the agent workspace, you can use tags associated with each channel in your reports. For help, see Monitoring your social media channels. |
For more information, see How are ticket channels defined across Zendesk?
29 Comments
How is the web widget channel shown in Explore?
Hello, Kay,
In Explore, web widget is displayed as belonging to the web channel.
I am going to ask the Docs team to add that info to the article. Thanks!
Hi Kay, thanks for pointing this out. I've now added Web Widget to the article (thanks also Ricardo!).
Lumping the Support Web Form and Web Widget into the same channel (Web) in Explore is not ideal. They're distinctly different ways of getting in touch. You've separate out Mobile and Mobile SDK—I would think Web and Web Widget would be a similar case.
Hi Elizabeth,
Completely understand where you're coming from here. I would also recommend sharing your feedback in our Explore Product Feedback forum.
Appreciate you taking the time to share this with us!
It looks like integrations such as Google Play Reviews and Appfollow (for Apple reviews) are called "Any channel".
Has anyone else experienced this behavior?
What I don't understand is that we are able to differentiate between those channels inside Zendesk, views etc. why would they be aggregated to "Any channel" in Explore?
Hi Rob,
In the example you gave in the "How to view ticket channels in Explore" part, is the default tickets nubmer covered the whole time range?
Hi Wycherley Wei
Yes, the example will report for all of your tickets. You could add a date range like Tickets solved to the Filters panel to show only tickets between certain dates. Hope this helps!
Rob Stack was wondering if you could help me with something. We are looking to build a query that looks at when a tag value changes. I,e., we add a tag to a ticket.
Is there any custom metric you could help me think of that could solve this?
Hey Bobby,
We do have a recipe for Reporting on the duration of fields that may point you in the right direction.
I hope this helps!
Hello, When i filter my total ticket count by channel and select "Chat" I see a higher number then the value in "Chats Dataset" chats count. Any idea why that might be?
Hi BAKO,
I've attempted to answer your question over on this post. Thanks!
Brandon
Hello!
Has there been any update on separating Web Form and Web Widget? If not, how do you separate inbound vs outbound Web tickets? I don't see that as an attribute in the Tickets dataset.
Thanks!
Hi Duggan,
We can separate the Web Channel into more granular channels using the Update Channel under the Support: Ticket updates dataset:
The configuration above should show us all the tickets that were created via Web Widget, Web Form and Web Service, respectively.
If you don't want to change datasets, the web_widget tag that comes standard on tickets submitted via the widget can also be used to help filter for the tickets coming via that method.
Hope that helps!
Can we please separate the Channels "Web" and "Web Widget" in Explore? It will make reporting much easier.
Hi Khajik Khajadourian thanks for this feedback. Please consider posting it in our product feedback forum at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001200913 - Thanks!
Is possible make a classification the all tickets associated or registered to the [ticket channel] = any channel to know specific what channel or integration will be on this field
Hi Mauricio, I'm not sure I fully understood your question, but you can use the procedure in this article to show the number of tickets by each channel.
If you want to see the number of tickets assigned to ALL channels, you could add a table to the query in the example.
Please let me know if you need any more information.
Hello,
I don't think Ayal's question above was addressed. Are Google Play Reviews and Appfollow (for Apple reviews) integrations aggregated into "Any channel"? Is there a reasoning behind not adding separate Google Play Store and AppFollow channels or what context may you provide?
Thank you
lucia - thanks for following up! Indeed, it was never answered...
Rob Stack - can you help here?
Hi Ayal Kellman and lucia
You're right, "Any channel" is for tickets created from any Zendesk integrations like Google Play and Appfollow. As there are many such integrations, it would be challenging to create and maintain separate channels for each one.
I haven't used these integrations myself but am wondering if they create any custom fields in your Support account. If so, you might be able to create reports using those. See https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022182014
Rob Stack - thanks but then I would have to report on them separately. At the moment, I can use "Ticket channel" to create a custom set of channels that are relevant for our account.
If Google Play and Appfollow were to be reported separately via custom fields, how would you suggest integrating them to the same custom set so I can see them alongside our other channels and easily SUM the channels to see the totals? Thanks
Hi Ayal Kellman,
This article goes over how to create a set in Explore: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022184334-Organizing-values-by-groups-and-sets
A set can be used to combine attribute values, as long as they are a part of the same attribute. So if you had a custom dropdown field, two values could be combined into a set.
As far as easily putting them next to the other data, I would recommend using one query to show data for your other channels and a separate query for the different dropdown choices of this custom field and put them together on a dashboard. I know that isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I think it's the easiest way to get you to where you want to be data wise.
I hope this is helpful!
It's not unusual for my team to create tickets from scratch from within their agent view to contact a customer.
Based on the table provided above I wasn't 100% sure what channel these tickets would fall under. Can someone confirm what channel a ticket created in the Zendesk agent (on browser) would fall under?
Thanks!
Hey Pam Pauley -
Tickets created on browser by your agents from the agent interface would fall under the "Web" channel.
Hope this helps!
Brandon
I actually don't need agent created tickets separated for reporting reasons, I need a different notification to go to customers who log a ticket themselves, versus have a ticket logged on their behalf. Please can this be separated asap? Self-logged tickets are a category in many other ticketing systems and it seems odd to lump customer created tickets and agent created tickets together?
Hi Fi Winter -
Zendesk actually does separate these situations via the "out-of-the-box" Triggers:
You should be able to customize the messaging within these Triggers. Hope this helps!
Brandon
Hi All
Just struggling to exclude Follow-up tickets from a query.
It seems that Follow-up tickets have no identification apart from their Update Channel being 'Closed Ticket' that can be used to exclude. I don't believe 'Update Channel' is accessible in the regular Support: Tickets [default] dataset.
Using the Support: Ticket updates [default] dataset, I have created a query and added the 'Update Channel' attribute to the query and excluded 'Closed Tickets'. Which seems to work....however, when I look at the results, some follow-up tickets still exist in the query and are not excluded.
After cross checking with the actual ticket ID in Support, these tickets sometimes have an Update Channel of 'Merge' or 'Rule'...so I'm having trouble finding a way to filter out these tickets....they seemed to have started from a follow-up, but then are merged or are somehow affected by a Rule (API).
Does a ticket Update Channel change over time? If so, is there a way to combine the Update Channels 'Closed Ticket', 'Merge' and 'Rule' as long as the ticket at least has 'Closed Ticket' as an Update Channel?
Or is there some very simple way (as I thought there would be) to exclude Follow-up tickets - I could be getting confused :)
Many thanks for any help.
Chad
Hi Chad,
You are correct that the Update Channel attribute is only available in the Ticket Updates dataset, and not the Tickets dataset.
If you were planning on using the Tickets dataset, we would recommend creating a trigger that tags follow-up tickets upon creation (e.g. Channel = Closed ticket). That way you will be able to effectively identify (and include/exclude) those tickets in the Tickets dataset using the associated tag(s).
As for the Update Channel changing over time, the attribute simply corresponds to the specific channel associated with the particular ticket update (a ticket could have numerous updates throughout its lifecycle). If you wish to combine multiple values (Merge, Rule, etc.) into a single value (Closed Ticket), you could check out creating a Group attribute in Explore (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022184334#topic_epc_gw1_fv).
Warm Regards,
Eric G. Gao | Technical Support Architect | Zendesk
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