You can use the Time Tracking app to monitor how much time agents spend on tickets. Once you've set up the Time Tracking app, you'll find instructions for using it at Using the Time Tracking app.
If you're looking for help using Zendesk Explore to generate reports about your time tracking, see Time Tracking app: metrics you need to be measuring.
Note: If you originally installed the private Time Tracking app from Zendesk Labs, installing the public version of the app from the Marketplace will reset your time tracking data, and you'll lose any data previously collected.
Installing and configuring the Time Tracking app
You can download and install the Time Tracking app from the Zendesk Marketplace. With this app, you can track how much time agents spend on working on tickets. Light agents can't use this app.
To install the Time Tracking app
- In Admin Center, click the Apps and integrations icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Apps > Channel apps.
- Click Zendesk Marketplace.
- Find the Time Tracking app, then click the title.
- On the app details page, click Install.
- From the drop-down, choose the account you want to install the app to, then click Install.
- On the app settings page, configure any settings you want as described below. You can return to this settings page at any time by clicking Apps > Manage > Time Tracking:
- Title: Displays the name of the app. You can edit this to be any name you want.
- Display timelogs to agents: Determines if agents can see a log of time spent on that ticket so far, including the agent and status for each time interval.
- Hide the app from agents: Only displays the app to agents with the admin role. If the app is hidden, agents without the admin role cannot see or edit the timer.
- Auto pause: Automatically pauses the timer when the agent navigates away from the ticket, such as by switching to another tab. The timer resumes automatically when the agent navigates back to the ticket.
- Display timer controls: Determines whether agents see the play and pause buttons next to the timer, allowing them to manually control when the timer starts and stops.
- Reset current time: Determines whether agents can see the refresh button next to the timer, allowing them to start the timer over.
- Resume on changes: When changes are made to any fields, the agent will be asked if the timer should be resumed.
- Edit time submission: When you enable this setting, the window below appears when an agent submits a ticket. Agents can review and edit their time spent on a ticket if, for example, they spent significant time discussing the issue with a colleague outside of Zendesk.
With this feature enabled, agents are required to confirm their time in order to submit the ticket. They have 15 seconds from when the window opens to cancel.
- Simplified time submission: Enables agents to be able to edit and submit their time spent in minutes, rather than in hours, minutes, and seconds. For example, with this setting enabled, an agent could enter "5" for five minutes. Without this setting enabled, the agent would have to enter it in the format "00:05:00". This setting only applies if you've also enabled the Edit time submission setting.
- Enable role restrictions: Select which roles can use the Time Tracking app. The app will not appear and will not track time for roles you don't select if you have this setting enabled.
Note: If you enable role restrictions, roles without access to the app will see the custom fields the app creates in their tickets. By design, roles with access to the app won't see the custom fields. For details, see Understanding Time Tracking custom ticket fields.
- Enable group restrictions: Enables you to select which groups have access to the app.
When you've finished configuring settings, click Update.
- If your Zendesk plan includes mutliple ticket forms, you'll need to update all of your forms to include to include two new custom ticket fields created by Time Tracking. For details, see the section below.
Understanding Time Tracking custom ticket fields
When you install Time Tracking, it automatically creates two custom ticket fields, Time spent since last update and Total time spent. You can view the fields by clicking the Admin () icon in the sidebar, then selecting Manage > Ticket Fields.
By design, agents with access to the app won't see the custom fields on their tickets. If you enable role restrictions, roles that don't have access to the app will see the custom fields on their tickets.
If your Zendesk plan includes multiple ticket forms, you'll need to manually move the new fields to all of your ticket forms. If you don't add the new fields to all of your ticket forms, you will receive an error message, see Time Tracking app error message in Support tech notes.
To add the custom fields to your ticket forms
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Forms.
- Click the name of a ticket form to open it.
- Drag the Time spent since last update and Total time spent fields from the list on the right onto your ticket form.
For more information, see Creating ticket forms to support multiple request types.
16 Comments
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Hi Jessie and Dennis! I was under the impression that the time log would stamp regardless of if the agent has submitted the ticket (bottom right hand corner). From playing around with this, it seems like the time is only stamped when it is submitted. Is this correct and part of the intentional design?
Is there anywhere we can see the raw tracking regardless of if an agent submits it? Is there anywhere we can see the date of when the agent was on the ticket?
Thank you!
Hi Kristen,
Yes, the time tracking app does work based off submission so if an agent does not update the ticket it does not track their time.
Thanks,
Keiko Ishida | Technical Support Engineer - Tier 2
Hi,
Can someone clarify a few things for me.
This has been running for some time and i'm trying to understand the data:
1) Auto pause is enabled so does this mean that the time spent i'm seeing is only when the ticket was the active tab in a browser window? Imagine a user has two active windows on 2 screens and the windows have with multiple tab, but the active tab in one of the windows is the ticket. And the active tab in the other windows is a totally different domain/software. Is it counting?
2) What happens if i turn off auto pause ? Will it be counting any open tab with a ticket?
3) What is total time spent since last update? Does this mean that the agent has not submitted but is logging time? To monitor if they're updating? Or does this mean like client-facing updates?
Hi Florian,
Thanks for reaching out to us regarding this.
If the ticket is still the active tab in the window, the time would still continue running. Though I do understand what you're saying since you have another screen. When the article about the time tracking app mentioned that it pauses when switching to another tab, it meant the ticket tabs within Zendesk when you are working on multiple tickets at the same time, and not the browser tabs. Sorry for the confusion here.
If auto-pause is turned off, then yes. As long as a ticket is opened by an agent, even if it is not the active tab it will continue running. So for example you opened ticket 1, then opened ticket 2 and worked on it for 15 minutes, then went back to ticket 1 to work on it for another 15 minutes, then ticket 1 would show 30 minutes since it was open though it was in an inactive tab.
Total time since last update starts from when the last update was submitted, instead of when the ticket was opened by an agent.
Hope this answered all your questions!
Cheers!
Marco M. | Zendesk Support
I tried this app out in my organization. Had to uninstall as the requirement to have the two custom fields on each and every ticket form does not suit our environment.
Use Case:
We have 3 separate departments (or Groups) that utilize Zendesk as a ticketing system, each with their own ticket forms applicable to the type of requests they receive. We only want to use the time tracking app in one of those Groups and have it only be visible to agents in that Group.
Setting up the app, we had added the two time tracking custom fields to each ticket form in our Zendesk environment and had configured the app to only be accessible to one Group. With that said, it works for the one Group that has access however the other Groups see the two custom fields on the agent view.
Seems like an all-or-nothing type of solution.
Dear Zendesk Support,
we're currently setting up the Time Tracking app and would like to know, if there is any possibility to delete particular times out of the tracking app?!
Following use case: an agent is typing the wrong time by accident, and would like to correct this time. Once a time is set, there seems to be no chance to delete the wrong time? A small button for each time would be great. Maybe make this as as option which can be activated in the settings... this small function would be important to us.
Many thanks,
Fabian
Thanks for reaching out to Zendesk. At the moment, I believe this isn't possible but I'm confirming that on my end.
Best regards,
Tim
We have found that if you add the negative number that reflects the time you want to remove, it will deduct from the overall time. Not sure if that helps at all but thought I would share!
Hello,
does anybody know if there are any tools to analyze this log data - how much time agents spent on all tickets per day. what type of tickets took most time. and etc.
Unfortunately, Dana Barker's previous suggestion is no longer a viable workaround; I'm unable to submit a negative time as it throws an error: "Invalid time format, expected HH:mm:ss". Administrators and agents alike need a way to modify timings if this is not available otherwise (which I'd prefer there to be an actual implementation vs a workaround).
Welcome to the community! For better visibility to our product team, would you mind posting your feedback to our Feedback - Platform: Apps & Integrations community topic, using this Template? That way other users can upvote your idea and add their own comments to it. Thanks!
I think we had some issues with our chatbot this morning - can you give it another try when you get a chance?
Hi, fyi, the link above under "Time Tracking app error message" gives a "oops - The page you were looking for doesn't exist" result.
Thanks for sharing this with us! This is the correct link to the article: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4411267942810-Time-Tracking-app-error-message
I'll let our documentation team know that this article needs to be updated.
Cheers!
We have installed time tracking and activated both fields, but there was no data to show.
Can Zendesk help?
Hi Qin,
I have created a ticket for you to investigate on this behavior. Please wait for my update via email.
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