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Administrators have the ability to prevent certain agents from seeing tickets in other groups or tickets that aren't assigned to them (see Agent group permissions and searching tickets). This type of restriction can be incredibly valuable as it limits exposure of sensitive data sent by your customers to those that don't have a need to see it. 

This type of restriction impacts an agent's ability to search for tickets and also prevents them from assigning a ticket to an agent outside of their groups, unless an agent is assigned to a role that allows these agents to assign tickets to any group (see Creating custom roles and assigning agents). For example, if your agents use a macro that has an action to assign a ticket to a different group, restricted agents see that the macro appears to not actually reassign the ticket.

To work around restricted agent permissions, you can use triggers and automations to take action on these tickets. Triggers and automations fire on a ticket regardless of the assignee's permissions or role, so combining a custom ticket field (such as a check box or a drop-down field) with a trigger allows your restricted agents to effectively assign tickets as needed.

This article contains the following sections:

  • Creating a custom ticket field for group assignment
  • Creating a trigger to assign tickets to other groups
  • Using this setup to escalate a ticket

Step 1: Creating a custom ticket field for group assignment

In this example, we've created a custom drop-down field called "Escalate to:".

To add the custom field

  1. In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Fields.
  2. Click Add field and select Drop-down.
  3. Add a Display name, the name shown to agents.
  4. Add the different groups under Field Values as per the picture below.
  5. Click Save.

Note: If you have a single ticket form, the new field will automatically appear on the form. If you have multiple ticket forms, you need to add the ticket field to any ticket forms where you want it to appear.

Step 2: Creating a trigger to assign tickets to other groups

Next, we need to create three triggers—one for each of the destination groups. These triggers are designed to fire when the ticket is updated, and also remove the value of the custom "Escalate to:" field. This type of configuration ensures the trigger doesn't attempt to fire again on future updates, unless a new group needs to be assigned.

To create the trigger

  1. In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
  2. Click Add trigger.
  3. Click the Add condition button under Meet ALL of the following conditions add:
    • Ticket Is Updated
    • Escalate to: Is Tier 2
  4. Under Actions add:
    • Group Tier 2
    • Escalate: -

 

Using this setup to escalate a ticket

Once you have set up the custom field and triggers, a restricted agent can use the setup to escalate a ticket. The GIF below shows how a restricted agent escalates the ticket.

To escalate a ticket

  1. Open the ticket that needs to be escalated.
  2. Change the Escalate to: field to the respective Group ("Tier 2" in the example).
  3. Click the Submit as button.

When the ticket updates, this restricted agent no longer has access to the ticket, as it is now in a group outside its assigned groups.

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