Understanding placeholder suppression rules

Zendesk Support includes inborn system rules that suppress placeholders in triggers in certain situations. Inborn system rules are rules that you cannot change, modify, or override, which dictate the default behavior of Support (see About inborn system ticket rules). These rules may sometimes make it seem like placeholders in 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 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

Related articles:

• Using placeholders
• Zendesk Support placeholders reference
• Creating triggers for automatic ticket updates and notifications
• Understanding suppression of CCs email notifications

About placeholder suppression rules

If you have triggers that include an action to email users (the Email user action) and that include placeholders, certain placeholders in the trigger will be suppressed if certain conditions are met. This includes triggers that send email notifications sent to CCs (the Email user + (requester and CCs) action). There are two default triggers that affect CCs email notifications (see Understanding how email notifications are sent to CCs by default).

Placeholder suppression only occurs when the trigger fires upon ticket creation.

Note: Depending on your triggers, you may have a situation where CCed end users get a mostly blank email notification upon ticket creation due to placeholder suppression rules. Since placeholder suppression only occurs when the trigger fires upon creation, subsequent email notifications about ticket updates are not affected by these rules.

We recommend that you do not use lead-in text that describes or announces the presence of ticket comments in the email. The lead-in text will not 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 triggers

Placeholder suppression in triggers occurs when all the following criteria are met, and both Anyone can submit tickets is enabled and Ask users to register is disabled.

• The recipient is an end user.
• The creator of the message is an end user.
• The trigger fires upon ticket creation.

Note: When the Anyone can submit tickets setting is disabled or the Ask users to register setting is enabled, placeholders in triggers are not suppressed.

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 automations.