If enabled by your administrator, you can create side conversation child tickets and assign them to a specific agent or group (but not a light agent). A side conversation child ticket is a separate ticket that is subordinate to a side conversation.
This article includes these sections:
- About side conversation child tickets
- Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets
- Creating side conversation child tickets
- Limitations
Related articles:
About side conversation child tickets
When you create a side conversation child ticket, two things happen simultaneously: you create a side conversation on the original ticket, and you create a new, separate, subordinate ticket that is assigned to a specific agent or group.
These definitions may be helpful to this discussion:
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originating side conversation: the side conversation on the original ticket used to create a side conversation child ticket.
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side conversation child ticket: a ticket created from a side conversation.
There is an invisible connection between the originating side conversation and the side conversation child ticket. This is a parent-child relationship. The originating side conversation is the “parent” and the child ticket is the “child.” There is an invisible connection between parent and child tickets. Some people think of these types of tickets as linked tickets.
The child ticket inherits replies from the originating side conversation because of the parent-child relationship. For example, when an agent replies to the side conversation on the original ticket, the replies are added to the child ticket as public comments. However, child tickets don’t inherit other forms of ticket data from the parent ticket. For example, if the status of the parent changes, the status of the child doesn’t automatically also change to match. The same is true for adding tags to a ticket, and adding or removing CCs.
Generally, there isn’t a reverse connection between parent and child tickets. The exceptions are that public comments on a child ticket become part of the side conversation and events in the parent ticket, and the status and assignee of the child ticket is displayed on the side conversation in the parent ticket.
It’s also important to note that marking the side conversation as Done in the parent ticket doesn’t fulfill First time reply and Next time reply metrics when an SLA is applied to a child ticket. This is because the SLA is applied to the child ticket, not the parent ticket.
Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets
Light agents cannot create, send, or be assigned side conversation child tickets. You can't send a child ticket to a light agent because they aren’t allowed to be assigned to tickets.
Light agents do have permissions to make private comments, so it is possible for them to open an already existing child ticket in the Support interface and add a private comment to the ticket. There is nothing that prevents them from being able to do this. However, because of the inheritance pattern between parent and child tickets (described above), that private comment will not appear in the side conversation interface of the parent ticket.
Creating side conversation child tickets
Agents and admins (but not light agents) can create, send, and be assigned to side conversation child tickets. You cannot add multiple agents or groups to side conversation child tickets because tickets can only have one assignee.
You may notice some minor differences in the side conversations user interface (UI), depending on which side conversation channels your administrator has enabled.
- If needed, create the groups you need (see Creating, managing, and using groups).
- Make sure you have added the ticket channel to the side conversations menu.
- Open a ticket and then click the new side conversation button (+).
If no other side conversation channels are enabled, the side conversation composer immediately opens.
If other side conversation channels are enabled (Email or Slack), you will need to choose Ticket from the menu, and then the side conversation composer opens.
- In the To field, specify one agent or group.
The side conversation child ticket will be assigned to this person or group.
You cannot send a child ticket to a light agent (see Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets).
- Fill out the subject and message body, including any rich text, inserted comments, and attachments as needed (see Using side conversations in tickets).
- Click Send.
Limitations
Notification emails will trigger twice. When side conversation child tickets are enabled, triggers for side conversations will fire twice. For example, once for the originating side conversation, and once for the side conversation child ticket.
6 Comments
We have started using this instead of the "Linked Ticket" app and are finding it very easy to use.
One thing that has come up is that, as we also use the "Out Of Office" app, if the person that sent the side conversation is marked as unavailable, the person who has been sent the side ticket is not able to transfer it to someone else in their Group because it is picking up on the originator being unavailable.
We have just started using Side Conversations and I am going through the setups. I notice that you can mark a side conversation as 'Done' but the Child Ticket is not notified. How would I set up a trigger to notify the Child Ticket?
Hi Ian Morgan,
Thank you for posting here, hope you are doing well today !
Unfortunately, as per Trigger conditions and actions reference, there is no option to notify / use the Child Ticket in triggers when the side conversation on the parent ticket is marked as "done".
I would encourage you to submit this feedback here : Feedback on Support for our product managers to review this feature.
However, an idea could be to use the HTTP target (with the Tickets API endpoint) in trigger to notify the Child Ticket when the Side Conversation on the parent's ticket is marked as "done" > Closed.
For example on the parent ticket, Condition : Side Conversation is Closed > Action : use a PUT method to notify/update the Child Ticket (inserting a comment for instance) with its own ticket ID.
Nonetheless, bear in mind that I cannot accompany you any further on that approach as the usage of HTTP target is not supported. I just wanted to provide some potential workaround.
Here are some additional resources :
Finally, you can also have a look at our app : Linked Ticket that will allow you to create and link a ticket from an existing one. This might be another alternative to have a look at.
Hope this helps! Have a great rest of your day.
Best regards,
Hi Remi Saumet
Thank you for your reply. I will submit the feedback as you suggest.
Best regards
I just enabled the ability to use child tickets today in my instance. So far, this is great but there is one issue that I wanted to see if there was a workaround for it.
If I am having to reach out to multiple departments it would be nice if I could attach the comments from another child ticket to a new one for a separate department. Is there a work around for this so I don't have to go in and copy paste?
Also- regarding the limitations for the notifications trigger: It would be really nice if we could get something that allowed us to exclude child tickets from this. Has anyone figured out a work around for this?
Hi Megan Lalock, you could add an exception to the trigger notification using the conditions "Channel IS Side-conversation" AND "Ticket IS Created".
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