The Zendesk Time Tracking app helps support managers gain visibility into the actual time spent across all your customer service interactions within a ticket. The app tracks the time spent on each ticket update and stores this with the ticket.
This time spent can be measured per ticket or per update. Time spent per ticket is called ticket handling time. Time spent per update is called update handling time. With Explore, you can create calculated metrics for these different handling times and create time tracking reports in Explore.
This article describes the difference between ticket handling time and update handling time. It also links to Explore recipes that show you how to create custom time tracking metrics and reports.
Ticket handling time vs. Update handling time
As with any other Support ticket data, there are two approaches for analyzing time tracking app data:
- Ticket handling time
- Update handling time
Ticket handling time
The first approach is to look at the handling time per ticket. You can use this information to report on individual agent performance, or to report on complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.
If you choose to go with this approach, the best place to create your reports is the Support: Tickets dataset. To do so, you can create a standard calculated metric based on the Total time spent (sec) metric (which is available in Explore only after you install the Time Tracking app) and use it to report on the handling time per ticket.
To learn how to create a custom Ticket handling time metric and use it to produce two example time tracking reports, see Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring ticket handling time.
Update handling time
The second approach is to look at the handling time per update. You can use this information to report on individual agent performance, or to report on complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.
For this approach, the calculated metric and reports should be created in the Support: Updates history dataset based on the data stored in the Changes - Previous value and Changes - New value attributes.
To learn how to create a custom Update handling time metric and use it to produce an example time tracking report, see Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring update handling time.
113 comments
Anton Verhelst
Hi, I'm building a report to show the update handling time per month. But a the update handling time of a reopened ticket will always be added to the month the ticket was created in.
eg. Ticket is created, updated in closed in July.
Ticket gets reopened and updated in August, but the update handling time will be added to July.
Can we get this time added to August somehow?
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Cheeny Aban
Hi Anton,
That is not possible since the Metric used is Ticket Created Date. If you would like to capture the handling time of a reopened ticket, I suggest that you create a new standard calculated metric or attribute that you can use on your report.
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Jasen Samford
For some reason, this recipe ends up showing 0 handling time for about half of our two dozen agents, despite them all taking tickets regularly. Can't seem to figure out where I'm going wrong!
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Jacob the Moderator
Hi Jasen,
One guess here is that you may have some restrictions on the role or group the Time Tracking app is available for, so it does not count time for these users/tickets.
You can check this by going to the manage app section and selecting the Time Tracking app.
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Qin Brian
What is the exact meaning of Update handling time?
When is the start point of calculating? Does it start from when the ticket is assigned or start from the agent starts to reply or add comment?
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Jo Smith
Hi there,
Can you advise, does the handling time record according to the time on the Time Tracking when you submit the ticket as Solved etc. (as the end user can alter this), or does it submit the time the ticket has actually been open, regardless of whether it has been altered at submission? Thanks
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Dave Dyson
Hi @... –
The timer starts as soon as the agent navigates to the ticket in the Support agent interface. Hope that helps!
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Dave Dyson
Hi @...,
The app records when an agent or admin clicks the Submit button (regardless of whether the ticket as been otherwise altered). It does not record if an agent navigates to a ticket and then closes the ticket tab (hitting the 'x' in the ticket tab) without clicking Submit. Does that address your question?
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Jo Smith
Thank you, so the time recorded at Submit is the time the agent records? For example a ticket could be open for an hour, but the agent only actually spent 1/2 hour working on it. The agent may therefore amend the time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes at 'submit'.
I have created a query that reports the sum handling time per agent on a ticket, could you therefore let me know which of these times will be pulled in, the time the agent had the ticket open, or the time the agent recorded and may have altered at submit.
Thanks for you help. :)
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Dave Dyson
No problem, Jo! The query results will be based on the time recorded at Submit.
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Paperchase
Hi!
I have followed this recipe to a T, multiple times. however I am not getting any results. Could I please have some help as to what I am doing wrong when copying and pasting these recipes in? Ultimately I just want to know AHT per user on support tickets (in minutes) - thanks for the help, getting desperate here!
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Chris Bulin
Hi Chandni! You might want to check a couple of things.
I have had unexpected results from both of those things before :)
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Paperchase
Hi there @...
I can confirm I have two ticket fields attached to the ticket form and no role restrictions.
Could it be because the formula is either hours or minutes, that it doesn't work for the below which is in secs? - Can you help where I may be able to either change this ticket field to minutes or how I'd have a recipe for seconds? Thanks for your help!
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Jacob the Moderator
Hi Chandni,
The two fields need to be on ALL of the forms in your Zendesk instance, for time to be recorded - can you please check if this is the case on your end?
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Paperchase
Hi @... upon looking at the settings it looks like its being used on all 4 forms which we have.
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Chris Bulin
Chandni to answer the question about the time, the formulas above labeled (min) convert the seconds to minutes, and then the formulas labeled (hrs) convert to hours. So if you've pasted them exactly, then they should convert.
When you say you aren't getting any results are you seeing zeroes or is it just failing to calculate at all? If it's zeroes, it's possible that you need to adjust your display format to show a couple of decimal places if you are consistently below one minute on time spent per ticket.
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Paperchase
Hi @... to be honest I am not sure where it is tripping up. Is it possible to get some support on a call on this to walk through how to?
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Chris Bulin
Hi Chandni, the Moderators don't work for Zendesk, so we aren't available for 1 on 1 help. You can contact Support by using the Help button in your Profile menu
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Ola A
Hi there,
If you have a number of agents on a specific ticket, are you able to get the handling time of specific individuals on that ticket. Usually the ticket handling time will just assign the total time to the assignee agent so this agents handling time is inflated as they may have only been on the ticket 2 minutes, but the total time is 10 minutes as others were also on the ticket prior to them being on it. Any assistance would be appreciated
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Anton Verhelst
@... Hi, I need this on my report.
How do I do it?
Thanks in advance!
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Tejas
@...
I used 2 customer Metric
1. Update handling time (sec) =
IF ([Changes - Field name] = "Total time spent (sec)")
THEN
IF ([Changes - Previous value]=NULL OR [Changes - Previous value]="")
THEN NUMBER([Changes - New value])
ELIF (REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - New value], "[0-9]+") AND REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - Previous value], "[0-9]+"))
THEN(NUMBER([Changes - New value])-NUMBER([Changes - Previous value]))
ENDIF
ENDIF
2. AHT = (SUM(Update handling time (sec)) / D_COUNT(Public comments))/60"
Filters Used: Updater Role = Agent
Regards,
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Juan Moreno
I've followed the instructions on this article but for some reason when I try to use one of the metrics it gives me the following error:
"The set of calculations isn’t valid. The calculated attribute "SUM(updatehandlingtimemin-a1dc65ad80)" references "Changes - Field name" which is as an unknown attribute."
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Christian Greiner
hey there, i follow the instructions for example 3 but my x axis is totally off. can anyone point me to what im missing?
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Sabra
Hey @...! Based on the error message, I would recommend that you double check that you are building your calculated metrics in the Ticket Updates dataset, not the Tickets dataset.
1
Sabra
Hey @...! In order to troubleshoot your issue further, it would be helpful to see your full query. I'll go ahead an open a ticket on your behalf so we can investigate further.
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Matt Farrington-Smith
Re: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022186134/comments/360003386073
@... post from 2yrs ago - did we ever get a satisfying answer to this?
@... @... @...
We're using the Update handling time metric to report on individual agents, and for the most part it works, but on tickets where multiple agents are responding the time is being added to everyone's totals. This isn't good!
Cheers
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Mistyamber Reynolds
@.... Nope. I still cannot see time spent by agent rather than by case.
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Iain Spirit
I am going round in circles on this one. I've created all the sample data sets, and the examples run fine. I am trying to create a couple of reports;
How much time was spent resolving a ticket in total by all agents. So how many hows were spent in total to get to a resolution.
How much time was spent on a ticket in a Month (Tickets can span several months prior to closure). How much time has been spent on a ticket within a time frame not in total.
How much time has an agent spent on each ticket during a time period.
No matter what I try it never tally's with the Time Stamps in Zendesk. Any help is appreciated as I know its me doing something wrong.
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Nhia Lor
Hey Iain Spirit.
We'll definitely need to dive deeper into the metrics and queries you've created.
I'll reach out to you internally via a ticket and we'll be happy to help take a closer look into this for you!
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OVO
Hi everyone,
I'm trying to review my group's performance on this ticket handling matter. So I have 3 teams and when a ticket came to use, the ticket will be assigned to team A first then assigned it to team B and last team C then team C close the ticket. In this article I did not find any metric or calculation to know how long a ticket is spent on team B and team C. Anyone can help?
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