Zendesk Support includes system ticket rules that suppress placeholders in ticket triggers in certain situations. These rules dictate behavior in Support that can't be changed, modified, or overridden. These rules may make it seem like placeholders in ticket triggers failed to work, but this isn’t a mistake.
These rules protect you because they prevent spammers from using your account to distribute spam messages. Placeholder suppression in ticket triggers keeps content from spammers out of notifications and prevents spammers from forwarding spam.
This article includes these sections:
- About placeholder suppression rules
- Criteria for placeholder suppression in triggers
- Placeholders affected by suppression rules
- Exceptions to placeholder suppression rules
- Frequently asked questions
Related articles:
About placeholder suppression rules
If you have ticket triggers that include an action to email users (the Email user action) and include placeholders, specific placeholders in the trigger will be suppressed if certain conditions are met. Placeholder suppression only occurs when the ticket trigger fires upon ticket creation.
Depending on your ticket triggers, you may have a situation where end users get a mostly blank email notification upon ticket creation due to placeholder suppression rules. Because placeholder suppression occurs only when the ticket trigger fires upon creation, subsequent email notifications about ticket updates aren't affected by these rules.
Avoid using lead-in text that describes or announces the presence of ticket comments in the email. The lead-in text won't make sense if the placeholder that follows is suppressed. For example, don't include text such as, "a copy of your message is below."
Criteria for placeholder suppression in ticket triggers
Placeholder suppression in ticket triggers occurs when all the following criteria are met:
- Anyone can submit tickets is enabled.
- Ask users to register is disabled.
- The recipient is an end user.
- The creator of the message is an end user.
- The ticket trigger fires upon ticket creation.
Placeholders affected by suppression rules
These are the placeholders that are affected:
- {{ticket.comments}}
- {{ticket.description}}
- {{ticket.public_comments}}
- {{ticket.latest_comment}}
- {{ticket.latest_comment_html}}
- {{ticket.latest_public_comment}}
- {{ticket.latest_public_comment_html}}
- {{ticket.comments_formatted}}
- {{ticket.public_comments_formatted}}
- {{ticket.latest_comment_formatted}}
- {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}
- {{ticket.latest_comment_rich}}
- {{ticket.latest_public_comment_rich}}
- {{comment.value_rich}}
- {{comment.rich}}
For more information about the affected placeholders, see the Zendesk Support placeholder reference.
Exceptions to placeholder suppression rules
Placeholders are not suppressed if:
- The placeholder is part of an action to notify an email target (the Notify target action).
- The placeholder is in an organization subscription notification because these notifications are not controlled by triggers at all.
- The Anyone can submit tickets setting is disabled, or the Ask users to register setting is enabled.
- The ticket was created through the Tickets API. This includes any of the functions listed on the Tickets API endpoint.
- The placeholder is part of an email sent by an automation.
Frequently asked questions
Does placeholder suppression apply to agent notifications?
Placeholder suppression only happens in the first reply or automated “received request” notification and only when certain criteria are met. Placeholders are never suppressed in email notifications sent to agents or end users when triggered by comments or ticket updates.
Does placeholder suppression apply to automations or macros?
No. It affects ticket triggers that are set to send an email notification to end users when a ticket is created.
Does placeholder suppression apply to autoreplies?
Yes. Autoreply notifications are ticket triggers that contain the Action “Autoreply with articles.” Placeholders used in the email body of this action will be suppressed if they are one of the placeholders in this list.
Does placeholder suppression apply to dynamic content?
Yes. When ticket triggers run on ticket creation and send emails to end users, placeholder suppression applies to placeholders used inside the body of dynamic content items.
8 comments
Liz W
I'm trying to make sense of this article and the Zendesk Support placeholders reference article and understand whether we can use comment placeholders or not.
We would like to be able to include the content of the customer's message in the all agent or assigned group notification email when a new ticket is created. The "users" in the examples above all seem to be end users (the requester), but I'm wondering about agent notifications, and I wish this page explained this more explicitly.
We'd also like agents to be able to respond by replying to the email; does this functionality still exist in Support?
I'm going to start testing it out, and I'll probably find the answers eventually, but I'd love to see this information spelled out more clearly in this post! And if anyone has insight and can point me in the right direction as I work on it, I'd be grateful.
0
Beau P.
Hi Liz,
Placeholder suppression is specifically enacted in cases when the following criteria are met:
The recipient is an end user.
The creator of the message is an end user.
The trigger fires upon ticket creation.
Placeholders are suppressed in these instances to ensure that end-user created tickets cannot relay spammy content. What spammers will attempt to do is open a ticket against your account with their intended email recipient designated as the ticket requester, meaning if placeholders were not suppressed on ticket creation for end-user created tickets the spammy content of their message would be rendered to the requester notification by the trigger placeholder. Suppressing the content when the three above criteria are met prevents this from happening.
That said, notifications to agents are not inhibited in this manner, and placeholders will render content in agent-facing triggers without interference.
To your second question, agents can certainly reply to tickets via email, the comment privacy off those replies determined in your settings as detailed here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019959754-How-can-I-publicly-reply-to-a-ticket-through-my-email-when-comments-via-email-are-private-by-default-
Beau | Customer Advocate | support@zendesk.com
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2
Liz W
Great. That's helpful. Thanks, Beau.
0
Gregory Clapp
When an end user replies by email to a notification from a ticket that is now closed, a follow-up ticket is created, the CC list is copied to the new ticket, and a notification is sent to the CC recipients. However, placeholder suppression rules prevent the new ticket's subject, description or comments from being displayed in that notification, so the CC recipient has no context or idea what this new ticket is about, rendering the notification practically useless. "You've been CC'd on this request, but we're not going to tell you what it's about."
This has been creating a lot of confusion and a bad user experience for the subject matter experts we rely on to provide input on tickets. Our organization is too large and varied to make all potential SMEs into agents or light agents. This gap in functionality gives the impression that the system is broken, and there's no way for them to get more info without having to reply with dumb-sounding questions like, "What's this about?"
Are there any options for making sure CC recipients get more details about the new tickets they're CC'd on?
1
Joyce
When a follow-up ticket is created by an end user, comment data placeholders will be suppressed which will affect notifications coming out to any end users that are part of the ticket. As this rule is created to protect accounts from being attacked by spammers, I'm afraid that there's no option to bypass this.
We encourage you to create a new post in the General Product Feedback topic in our community to engage with other users who have similar needs and discuss possible workarounds.
0
Leo Ostigaard
This article claims placeholder suppression doesn't inhibit emails to agents, but I'm using a trigger to notify agents of a created ticket via messaging and it looks like placeholder suppression is preventing the ticket comments from being shown.
The trigger is using the action: Notify by > User email and Ticket > agentEmail as the recipient. The placeholder {{ticket.comments_formatted}} isn't being included in the creation notification. Why is this? Is this due to this being an “active” messaging conversation? Is there a way around this? Thanks.
0
Megan Romero
the last FAQ says that placeholder suppression does not apply to dynamic content items (see below). But I am experiencing the opposite… I included the {{ticket.comments_formatted}} placeholder inside my DC item, and the placeholder was still suppressed. Please confirm what is expected and update article if necessary.
Does placeholder suppression apply to dynamic content?
No. Placeholder suppression doesn't apply to placeholders used inside the body of dynamic content items. Review your dynamic content items to remove the use of placeholders in this list if these are used in ticket triggers that run on ticket creation to send emails to your end users.
1
Margareta Nilsson
Placeholder suppression is done on our replies, but a person that is CCd on the ticket still gets all attachments that were entered on the ticket (added through our portal) so why are the attachments sent and not the description from the ticket, is that not as likely to be spam/virus in the attachments?
0