Workflow: How to manually close a ticket

Admins and agents sometimes want to force a ticket status to Closed for these reasons:

• Closed tickets can't be modified in any way
• Business rules may make changes upon or after a ticket is solved
• The Zendesk API may make changes upon or after a ticket is solved

This article provides a workaround to apply in these situations, with triggers that automatically close tickets based on certain conditions. For example, you can use the presence of a particular custom field value or a specific tag.

The workflow includes the steps below.

• Step 1: Create a trigger
• Step 2: Create a macro for your agents
• Step 3: Ask an agent to refresh the page and use the macro

Step 1: Create a trigger

To create the trigger:

1. In Zendesk, click the product name (Support, Knowledge, etc) from the menu in the top left corner > Admin Center
2. Click Objects and rules in the sidebar > Business rules > Triggers
3. Click Create trigger
4. Enter a Name and a Trigger category
5. Under Meet ALL of the following conditions, add:
   • Object > Ticket > Status category | Less than | Closed
   • Object > Ticket > Tags | Contains at least one of the following | closenow
6. Under Actions, add:
   • Object > Ticket > Remove tag | closenow
   • Object > Ticket > Status category | Closed
     This order of actions prevents issues with follow-up tickets being automatically closed upon creation.
7. Click Create trigger

Step 2: Create a macro for your agents

To make sure that your agents don't forget to add the closenow tag, add a macro.

To add a tag with a macro:

1. In Zendesk, click the product name (Support, Knowledge, etc) from the menu in the top left corner > Admin Center
2. Click Workspaces in the sidebar > Agent tools > Macros > Create macro
3. Enter a Macro name
4. Select who can use the macro from Available for: All agents
5. Under Actions, add Add tags | closenow
   
6. Click Create

Step 3: Ask an agent to refresh the page and use the macro

To apply that macro:

1. Ask an agent to refresh the page on Zendesk 
2. Then, open a Support ticket to close > click Apply macro > select the name of the macro you created
3. Click Submit as Solved

This applies the macro from a ticket, the ticket is automatically tagged, which will start the trigger.

Note: In accounts with custom ticket statuses deactivated, use Status for the condition and action instead of Status category in the trigger recipe above.