Updating and solving tickets

During a ticket's lifecycle, there is often a need for further questions and requests for clarification, by both the customer and the agent solving the ticket. As part of this process, a ticket's status can change multiple times. Knowing how to manage ticket status changes, including when to use each status label, can make the customer-agent relationship smoother.

This article describes different scenarios and how they can (and should) affect ticket status. It includes the following sections:

• Ticket status basics
• Submitting updates and changing ticket status
• Solving a ticket and understanding how it is closed

If you haven't already, you should familiarize yourself with the Zendesk Support agent interface.

Ticket status basics

There are five standard statuses you can apply to a ticket:

• New indicates that no action has been taken on the ticket. Once a New ticket's status has been changed, it can never be set back to New.
• Open indicates a ticket has been assigned to an agent and is in progress. It is waiting for action by the agent. You can view all open tickets using the Open tickets view.
• Pending indicates the agent is waiting for more information from the requester. You can view all pending tickets using the Pending tickets view. When the requester responds and a new comment is added, the ticket status is automatically reset to Open.
• On-hold indicates the agent is waiting for information or action from someone other than the requester. It is similar to the Pending status in that you as an agent can't proceed with resolving the ticket until you receive more information from someone else. However, the On-hold is an internal status that the ticket requester never sees. While a ticket is set to On-hold, the requester sees the status as Open. On-hold is an optional status, and can be activated by an administrator as described in Adding the On-hold ticket status to your Zendesk.
• Solved indicates the agent has submitted a solution.

If an admin has activated custom ticket statuses, then you may have access to additional ticket statuses, for example:

Submitting updates and changing ticket status

The Submit button applies any updates you make to a ticket (status changes, public or internal comments, and the like), and allows you to select the ticket status.

To submit updates to a ticket without changing the ticket status

• Click the Submit button.

To submit updates to a ticket and change the ticket status

1. Click to open the status options menu:

   

2. Click the status you want to apply upon submitting the ticket.

Solving a ticket and understanding how it is closed

Once you've resolved a requester's support issue, you change the ticket status to Solved, using the Submit button as described above. This should mean that you're done with the ticket and that the requester is satisfied with the resolution you provided. However, a requester can reopen the ticket after it has been set to Solved just by responding back and adding a new comment. For example, perhaps the requester disagrees that their support issue was resolved or that something new occurred that invalidates the fix.

Note: To have reopened tickets be automatically unassigned, you will need to set up custom triggers (see How do I make a reopened ticket unassigned in our Support tech notes).

After you set a ticket to Solved, the next status change is to Closed. However, you can't manually change a ticket to Closed; it is set to that status using a predefined business rule called an automation (see standard Support automations).

Note: When custom ticket statuses are activated, any tickets that are solved with a status in the Solved status category retain that status even after they are closed. See Solving tickets with a custom status.

An administrator creates automations and determines just how long tickets remain in the solved state before they are closed. The default automation setting is that a ticket is closed automatically four days after it has been solved. If an administrator deactivates the automations that close tickets, the tickets will be closed automatically 28 days after they're solved. This 28-day rule is a system ticket rule that can't be changed. This means that any business rules created to close tickets after longer than 28 days won't be honored.

To manually change ticket to Closed, you can create a trigger as a workaround (see How can I manually close a ticket? in our Support tech notes).

After a ticket's status has changed to Closed, the requester can no longer reopen it. They can, however, create a follow-up request that references the original, now closed, ticket. Agents can also create a follow-up for a closed ticket. See Creating a follow-up for a closed ticket.

Tickets that are follow-up requests for a closed ticket are marked as such. For example:

Closed tickets are saved indefinitely. You can view the tickets by searching for them or by creating views of closed tickets. See Using views to manage ticket workflow.

You can delete closed tickets if you have permissions to delete tickets. Open each ticket and select the Ticket options arrow in the upper right, then select Delete.

You can't delete closed tickets in bulk in a view. However, an administrator can use the API to delete closed tickets in bulk. See Bulk deleting tickets in the REST API guide.

Solving a ticket with a custom status

When custom ticket statuses are activated, any tickets that are solved with a status in the Solved status category retain that ticket status even after they are closed. This helps provide context of how or why a ticket was solved.

For example, if you solve a ticket with a custom ticket status named "Refund processed" and it is then closed, the ticket retains the "Refund processed" ticket status. The ticket is still in the "Closed" state though.

Being in the "Closed" state means the ticket is closed, no longer editable, and in the Closed status category. You can use the Closed status category when creating views of closed tickets and in reporting.

There are also visual indicators that a ticket is closed. For example, if you have a view that includes closed tickets, then closed tickets are identified by an icon (). You can hover over the icon to view additional information: