How can I manually close a ticket? [Video]

Question

I'd like to force a ticket status to Closed. How can I go about that?

Answer

You can't manually close a ticket, or select Closed as a status within the ticket. This is because:

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

As a workaround, use triggers to automatically close tickets based on certain conditions, for example, the presence of a particular custom field value or a particular tag. Below is an example workflow.

To create this workflow

1. Create a new trigger.
2. Under Meet ALL of the following conditions, add:
   • Status category | Less than | Closed
   • Tags | Contains at least one of the following | closenow
     
3. Under Actions, add:
   
   • Remove tag | closenow
   • Status | Closed
     
     

Tips: To avoid agents incorrectly adding the closenow tag, consider creating a macro using Add tags closenow as the Action as well. When applied from a ticket, the macro will add the tag and fire the trigger.

Note: In the trigger, remove the original tag as the first action and only then close the ticket. This order prevents issues with follow-up tickets being automatically closed upon creation.
Finally, in accounts without custom ticket statuses enabled, use Status for the condition and action instead of Status category in the trigger recipe above.