With shortcuts, you can save typing time by inserting common phrases with just a few keys. For example, you might want to create a shortcut that says, "Hi there, how may I assist you today?" You can also use placeholders to pull in visitor- and chat session-specific information.
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About shortcuts
There are three types of shortcuts available: Personal, shared global, and shared department:
- Personal shortcuts, which can be created by an agent or administrator for their own use.
-
Shared shortcuts, which can be created only by an administrator, and can be
shared among multiple users. There are two kinds of shared shortcuts:
- Department shortcuts, available to agents in specific departments. A single department shortcut can be used by multiple departments. See Creating shortcuts for more information. Department shortcuts are not available on all plans.
- Global shortcuts, available to all agents, regardless of their department affiliation..
You select the type of shortcut during its creation. Depending on your permissions, you can change the shortcut type by reassigning it. See Reassigning shortcuts for more information.
Administrators can restrict the permissions available to agents:
- All shortcuts: Can add and edit personal, department, and global shortcuts.
- Department: Can add and edit personal and department shortcuts.
- Personal: Can add and edit personal shortcuts.
- None: Unable to add or edit any shortcuts.
These permissions are applied to a user via their Chat role, and are configured on each role's edit page, in the Shortcuts section:
For information on these and other permissions, see Creating custom roles and assigning users.
Creating shortcuts
Shortcuts are created on the Shortcuts settings page, which is accesed from the Chat dashboard.
To create a shortcut
- From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Shortcuts.
- Click Add Shortcut to open the shortcut creation page:
- In the Shortcut field, enter the abbreviated text you want to use as your
shortcut. Note: Shortcut names cannot contain the following characters: /, \ , $.
- Use the Available for drop-down to select the shortcut type you want to create.
See About shortcuts for information
on shortcut types:
- Select All Agents to create a shared global shortcut.
- Select Agents in Department(s) to create a shared department shortcut.
- Select Me only to create a personal shortcut.
- If you selected Agents in Departments in the previous step, enter the names of
the department(s) you want to share the shortcut with into the Required
field.
- In the Message field, enter the complete phrase or question the shortcut should
insert.
To pull in visitor-specific details, you can click the Insert placeholder link to display a list of available placeholders. Click on the placeholder you want to use to insert it into the message body.
- (Optional) If your shortcut is for a question with a discrete list of answers, click
Add Option to add one or more Options to enter answers visitors should select
from, such as in the example below:
- (Optional) If needed, click in the Tags field to add a tag to a chat when this shortcut is used.
- Click Create Shortcut to finish.
Editing, deleting, and cloning shortcuts
You can edit existing shortcuts, delete unneeded shortcuts, or clone a shortcut to copy its content and modify it.
To edit an existing shortcut
- From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Shortcuts.
- Click on the row of any shortcut to edit it.
- Update the information as needed, then click Save Changes.
To delete an existing shortcut
- From the dashboard, select Settings > Shortcuts
- Click on the row of any shortcut to select it.
- Use the Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page to select Delete.
The shortcut is removed from the list.
To clone an existing shortcut
- From the dashboard, select Settings > Shortcuts
- Click on the row of any shortcut to select it.
- Use the Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page to select Clone.
- Update the information as needed, making sure to give the shortcut a new name.
- Click Create Shortcut.
Reassigning shortcuts
Admins and agents can change a shortcut’s type by reassigning them. Shortcuts can be reassigned individually, or in bulk.
To reassign shortcuts
- From the dashboard, select Settings > Shortcuts.
- Select one or more shortcuts. You can select all shortcuts on the list by clicking the checkbox at the top of the list.
- Click the Actions drop-down menu, then select Reassign.
- Select the shortcut type you want to apply:
- Select All Agents to create a shared global shortcut.
- Select Agents in Department(s) to create a shared department shortcut, if available.
- Select Me only to create a personal shortcut, if available.
- If you selected Agents in Departments, enter the names of the department(s) you want to share the shortcut with.
- Click Set to save the new assigned type.
Using shortcuts in chats
Shortcuts are entered into a chat by the agent, who either begins typing the abbreviated shortcut text, or entering a slash. If the agent enters only a slash (/), the first 10 shortcuts appear. You can filter the displayed shortcuts by typing in more of the shortcut name.
Agents and admins will see:
- Their personal shortcuts
- Department shortcuts shared with the departments they belong to
- Global shortcuts
To use a shortcut in a chat
- In a chat, start typing a shortcut, or type a slash (/) to view all shortcuts. The
matching shortcut options appear, like in the example below:
Personal and department shortcuts are labeled as such.
- Highlight the shortcut you want to insert either by clicking it or by pressing the down arrow and then Enter.
- The complete shortcut appears. If your shortcut includes options, they appear with radio
buttons when you send the chat.
10 Comments
It's not 100% clear to me who can manage shortcuts. For example, I have an Zendesk chat regular agent being able to browse to the shortcut page and add shortcuts, but those are not seen by other agents.
Are regular agents (i.e. not the admin) they supposed to be able to add shortcuts? If so, how come shortcuts added by an agent are not seen by other users. Is there a delay? .
Do shortcuts only work when it\s the first thing in a chat message? We cannot seem to trigger chat shortcuts after we already typed some text, i.e. when we want to insert a snippet inside a text block we have already typed.
Since you don't have separate fields in your system for first name and last name - you appear to infer the first and last name by splitting the name on a space, for the purpose of the dynamic first and last name fields available in macros. This could cause trouble depending on the complexity of the name. But that's another discussion, and that said, it's fine and generally works well for the macros.
This is why I can't understand why you don't have that also available for shortcuts, when it's already in place for macros... {{visitor_name}} is ABSOLUTELY USELESS! Nobody greets someone by their full name...ever.
It would be very handy if you can add in the placeholder for first name :)
Agree with Nolan, placeholder for first name would save us a lot of time.
Can we add hyperlinks in Shortcuts?
Hey Chris,
Unfortunately, we don't support the use of hyperlinks in Chat Shortcuts yet. Currently, you can only add the URL of the webpage in Shortcuts.
I've taken a look and found that other users are discussing similar needs here: Hyperlinks on Text
I encourage you to upvote and provide your use-case for our Chat Product Managers to review.
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us!
I'm not sure why we can add hyperlinks to text in every other part of Zendesk but not Chat. Especially as chat is a much smaller screen compared to Guide and Support, which means the full URL takes up a lot of space and looks dreadful. Poor functionality on Zendesk part.
Hey Heather -
I'd encourage you to write a post in the [Chat Product Feedback Topic](Chat Product Feedback & Discussion) so that this gets back to the product managers.
I understand how these common phrases work with the chat function, I was wondering if there is such a function for email tickets as well?
Robin Meijer,
Using macros, you can set up either predefined macros as a whole or pepper it with dynamic content where you predefine parts of it if you'd like. Most people use dynamic content for language translations but you can use it for anything really!
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001236988-Creating-macros-for-tickets
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203458716-Using-Dynamic-Content-with-Macros-on-a-multilingual-helpdesk
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