You can create side conversation child tickets and assign them to a specific agent or group. A side conversation child ticket is a separate ticket that is subordinate to a side conversation. Child side conversation tickets are useful when you need a formal way to track and measure requests associated with a side conversation. Side conversation tickets can also be routed to agents with omnichannel routing.
Side conversation child tickets must be enabled by an admin. See Enabling and disabling side conversations.
This article includes these sections:
- About side conversation child tickets
- Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets
- Creating side conversation child tickets
- Copying fields to child tickets
- Limitations
Related articles:
About side conversation child tickets
When you create a side conversation child ticket, two things happen simultaneously: you create a side conversation on the original ticket, and you create a new, separate, subordinate ticket that is assigned to a specific agent or group.
These definitions may be helpful to this discussion:
-
Originating side conversation: The side conversation on the original ticket used to create a side conversation child ticket.
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Side conversation child ticket: A ticket created from a side conversation.
There is an invisible connection between the originating side conversation and the side conversation child ticket. This is a parent-child relationship. The originating side conversation is the “parent” and the child ticket is the “child.” There is an invisible connection between parent and child tickets. Some people think of these types of tickets as linked tickets.
The child ticket inherits replies from the originating side conversation because of the parent-child relationship. For example, when an agent replies to the side conversation on the original ticket, the replies are added to the child ticket as public comments.
However, child tickets don’t inherit other forms of ticket data from the parent ticket. For example, if the status of the parent changes, the status of the child doesn’t automatically also change to match. The same is true for adding tags to a ticket, and adding or removing CCs.
There are a few types of ticket data that can be copied from the parent ticket to the child ticket at the time of ticket creation (see Including attributes from the parent ticket).
Generally, there isn’t a reverse connection between parent and child tickets. The exceptions are that public comments on a child ticket become part of the side conversation and events in the parent ticket, and the status and assignee of the child ticket is displayed on the side conversation in the parent ticket.
Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets
Light agents cannot create, send, or be assigned side conversation child tickets. You can't send a child ticket to a light agent because they aren’t allowed to be assigned to tickets.
Light agents do have permissions to make private comments, so it is possible for them to open an already existing child ticket in the Support interface and add a private comment to the ticket. There is nothing that prevents them from being able to do this. However, because of the inheritance pattern between parent and child tickets (described above), that private comment will not appear in the side conversation interface of the parent ticket.
Creating side conversation child tickets
Agents and admins can create, send, and be assigned to side conversation child tickets. You cannot add multiple agents or groups to side conversation child tickets because tickets can only have one assignee.
You may notice some minor differences in the side conversations user interface, depending on which side conversation channels your administrator has enabled (Slack, Email, or Ticket).
In the Agent Workspace, side conversations are created from the context panel. In the standard agent interface, side conversations are created from Side conversations at the top of the ticket conversation pane.
| Agent Workspace | Standard agent interface |
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- If needed, create the groups you need (see Creating groups).
- In a ticket, open the context panel and click the Side conversations (
) icon, then click the plus sign (+).
If you don’t have the Agent Workspace, in a ticket click the Side Conversations plus sign (+) in the upper-left.
- Select Ticket.
Note: If no other side conversation channels are enabled (Email or Slack), the side conversation composer immediately opens. You don’t need to choose Ticket.
The child side conversations composer displays.
- In the To field, specify one agent or group.
The side conversation child ticket will be assigned to this person or group.
You cannot send a child ticket to a light agent (see Understanding light agent interaction with side conversation child tickets).
- Fill out the subject and message body, including any inserted comments and attachments as needed (see Using side conversations in tickets).
- (Optional) Click the Copy fields to child ticket icon (
), specify which types of ticket field data you want copied from the parent ticket to the child ticket, and click Add. See Copying fields to child tickets. - Click Send.
Copying fields to child tickets
When you create a side conversation child ticket, you can choose to have the following types of ticket field data copied from the parent ticket to the child ticket.
- Followers: The followers of the parent ticket, at the time the child ticket was created, will be added as followers on the child ticket.
- Tags: The tags on the parent ticket, at the time the child ticket was created, will be added to the child ticket.
- Ticket form: The parent’s ticket form and fields values, at the time the child ticket was created, will be set on the child ticket.
Copying fields to a child ticket is a one time-event that occurs only when the ticket is created. For example, if the parent ticket is updated later on, and the data in those ticket fields change, the child ticket is not updated to match.
To include parent ticket attributes in a side conversation child ticket
- Follow the steps in Create side conversation child tickets, except don't click Send yet.
- In the toolbar at the bottom of the side conversation, click the Copy fields to child ticket icon (
). - Select the types of data that you want to copy from the parent ticket to the child ticket.
- Click the Add button.
The names of the ticket fields appear above the toolbar at the bottom of the side conversation.
- Click Send.
A new ticket, the child ticket side conversation, is created. In the child ticket, the values of the ticket fields you selected match those that are in the parent ticket.
Limitations
- Notification emails will trigger twice.
- When side conversation child tickets are enabled, triggers for side conversations will fire twice. For example, once for the originating side conversation, and once for the side conversation child ticket.
- For agents assigned to custom roles to create child tickets through side conversations, they must have permission to create side conversations and make public comments in tickets. See Creating custom roles.
58 Comments
We have just started using Side Conversations and I am going through the setups. I notice that you can mark a side conversation as 'Done' but the Child Ticket is not notified. How would I set up a trigger to notify the Child Ticket?
Hi Ian Morgan,
Thank you for posting here, hope you are doing well today !
Unfortunately, as per Trigger conditions and actions reference, there is no option to notify / use the Child Ticket in triggers when the side conversation on the parent ticket is marked as "done".
I would encourage you to submit this feedback here : Feedback on Support for our product managers to review this feature.
However, an idea could be to use the HTTP target (with the Tickets API endpoint) in trigger to notify the Child Ticket when the Side Conversation on the parent's ticket is marked as "done" > Closed.
For example on the parent ticket, Condition : Side Conversation is Closed > Action : use a PUT method to notify/update the Child Ticket (inserting a comment for instance) with its own ticket ID.
Nonetheless, bear in mind that I cannot accompany you any further on that approach as the usage of HTTP target is not supported. I just wanted to provide some potential workaround.
Here are some additional resources :
Finally, you can also have a look at our app : Linked Ticket that will allow you to create and link a ticket from an existing one. This might be another alternative to have a look at.
Hope this helps! Have a great rest of your day.
Best regards,
Hi @...
Thank you for your reply. I will submit the feedback as you suggest.
Best regards
I just enabled the ability to use child tickets today in my instance. So far, this is great but there is one issue that I wanted to see if there was a workaround for it.
If I am having to reach out to multiple departments it would be nice if I could attach the comments from another child ticket to a new one for a separate department. Is there a work around for this so I don't have to go in and copy paste?
Also- regarding the limitations for the notifications trigger: It would be really nice if we could get something that allowed us to exclude child tickets from this. Has anyone figured out a work around for this?
Hi @..., you could add an exception to the trigger notification using the conditions "Channel IS Side-conversation" AND "Ticket IS Created".
Hello,
Is there any way to assign a side conversation child tickets to an end-user instead of an agent or group? It is illogical that by default they can only be assigned to the latter.
Thanks.
Hi Guillermo - CX Lead, you can create the side conversation as an email to the end user and once they reply it will come back into the side conversation in your ticket.
Hello @...,
I appreciate your feedback. However, I intend to create a child ticket from the side conversation and assign it directly to the end user. For follow up purposes, in some cases it makes more sense to create a ticket than to send an email.
Hi @...,
We have seen a dangerous behavior with Side conversations child ticket: imagine that we receive a request from a customer and it consists of two tasks, one is for me (Agent A) and the other one for another agent (Agent B). I communicate with Agent B through a side conversation ticket child so that a new ticket is generated for him and he can work on it. Agent B changes the requester of his ticket to work on it independently, but I (Agent A) decides to write Agent B to clarify a point in the email, this new comment in the side conversation will reach the child ticket as a public note and consequently also to the customer. This is a big problem.
Is there a solution?
Thanks for your support,
Unai Roiz
Unai Roiz thanks for the question and feedback. I see what you're referring to, and have some ideas (and questions):
Thanks again for the feedback, and let me know what you think about how we can make child tickets even better.
Thanks for reaching out regarding this. Toby has a pretty good recommendation to suppress email notifications for comments made via side conversations. Kindly check it out and let us know if this solves it for you. As always, we would appreciate any feedback that would lead to the feature's improvements in the future.
Cheers!
Hi Toby and Marco, thanks for your detailed reply.
Q: This will prevent the email notification from going to the requester and CCs, but the comments will still be public on the ticket. Do the requesters regularly visit the customer portal where they could potentially see the comments coming from the side conversation?
R: Our requesters don't have access to our customer portal at this moment, but could have in the near future. Moreover, if the comments between agents are public in child tickets, when we communicate with the customer (changing the requester), he/she will see those comments. Again, a dangerous situation.
Q: Would you want those to be suppressed somehow?
R: No, thanks.
---
Q: Would it make sense to always have comments coming from the side conversation be internal notes on the child tickets, and perhaps even just default to being private tickets?
R: It makes all sense. In fact, I was going to suggest it to you. Communicating with your colleagues by internal notes on the child tickets makes much more sense. And use public comments in child tickets to communicating with the customer.
---
Q: How often are child tickets used to communicate with your customers like this vs. internally collaborating with other team members? This scenario seems kind of like "splitting" a ticket – is that more of what you're going for?
R: 50/50. 50% divide a ticket, 50% to request help to a colleague.
Q: When setting the requester of a child ticket to an end-user customer, will subsequent communication with them always be from the child ticket itself?
R: Yes.
Q: Would it ever make sense to communicate with the customer from the side conversation in the parent ticket?
R: No, never. If we need to do that, we use side conversations by email, if the customer is not the requester.
Thanks again,
Unai Roiz
Unai, I think the condition to not send an email notification if the comment update is via side conversations should work if you also set the email notifications to only have the most recent comment instead of the whole ticket comment stream. The placeholder for that would be `{{ticket.latest_comment_formatted}}` – that way only public comments made on the child ticket itself would be sent in notifications, and those notifications would only have that comment and not the entire history (which would include public comments made via side conversation).
Either way, though, I understand this is a workaround that may not be adequate for everyone, and we'll be looking into a possible internal mode of child tickets that uses internal notes to sync back to the side conversation by default. If we were to do that, would it make sense to you to only sync the internal notes from the child ticket back to the side conversation, and not the public ones? Or would you expect the side conversation to essentially be a mirror of the child ticket with both public and internal comments?
Hi Toby,
It's true, however that method would change our way to communicate with our customers and it would be confusing for them.
About developing an internal mode: that would be awesome. We think that side conversation should not be a mirror of ticket child. It should be just a way to communicate with other agents or groups with internal notes by default and nothing else.
Thanks, Unai.
Is there any plan to allow customization of the pop-up window that displays the side conversation - ticket fields? Specifically, adding custom fields, or additional 'default' fields?
We run into the issue that these tickets cannot be marked up with any ticket field values, where often the agent initiating them might know them up front, and they would be relevant for workflows. This leads to cases where a generic ticket enters a group's feed and may not get the right attention. Of course, the agent creating it can take the shortcut to the ticket, but there is on the one hand cases where they are not in the group they assign the new ticket to and other cases where it is just a needless inconvenience.
HI Bryan Haeussler – we are currently finishing up the ability to include data from the parent ticket during the creation of the child ticket. We'll be starting with the parent ticket's tags, brand, and ticket form. You won't be able to customize or initiate those things in the initial release, but customer feedback indicated that at least being able to include e.g. the ticket form as structured data in the child ticket would go a long way to start. Hopefully that will be helpful. We're going to be investigating ways to introduce editing of ticket fields etc, but there's no timeline on that yet.
It would be helpful for the Side Conversation child ticket to display a signature just as a Side Conversation email does.
Ideally, we would be able to choose whether to include the agent signature or the brand signature to use on either Side Conversation option.
Today, we had to create a macro that creates the child ticket Side Conversation with placeholders:
Thank you,
{{current_user.name}}
{{ticket.group.name}}
Hi Jamie, we'll take a look into that.
With the move to agent workspace and chat conversations happening in tickets, does ZD plan on adding a child chat feature. The child tickets already works in a similar fashion to chat but agents have to update the status to post a comment.
Hi Toby Sterrett
I read that Light agents cannot create, send, or be assigned side conversation child tickets. However I am able to pick our light-agents in the ticket to option in the pop-up. As you can't assign tickets to light agents; is there a way to hide the agents with light agent role from the to field? Since we can't remember every agent's role by heart.
Thanks!
Regards,
Ron
Hi Toby Sterrett, is it possible to set the ticket form used in a child ticket side conversation via the Side Conversations API? If not, is that coming soon?
Annie Baker no current plans, though I'd be interested in learning some more details around the type of workflow you envision with that.
Ron de Vries hmm, we'll have to look into that, thanks.
Ben Greeno not possible at this time. To clarify, are you looking to have a way to say e.g. "include the parent ticket form" or to have a way of setting an arbitrary ticket form and its data on the child?
Toby Sterrett looking for a way to control which ticket form is used - so yes, arbitrary.
Hello,
As WhatsApp Connector suggested, it would be very helpful to have the possibility to create a side conversation child ticket with an end-user as a reporter directly. In other words, to be able to enter an end-user email addresse in the recipient field.
For many reasons, it makes more sense to create a ticket than to send an email (SLA, automatic reminders, reporting, follow up stakes,...)
Is it something coming up soon?
It would be great if I could create a child ticket and assign it to an agent directly from the macro. Now it's only possible to assign to a group so we have to enter the assignee manually
Looking at the API documentation for Side Conversations, there is no mention of copying fields to child tickets. Is this feature available in the API?
It looks like you have a ticket open with our Customer Care team regarding this question.
Someone from their team will follow up with you to get your questions answered.
Cheers!
Cas.D it is not available in the API at this time. We'll be looking into adding it in a future update.
Hey, I dont think it is possible at the moment but is there a way to automatically enable tags to be taken from the parent ticket and added into the child ticket the macro which creates the child ticket?
We use macros a lot where I work and it would be super useful to be about to add into the macro, and transfer tags to child ticket. As we want to make agents' lives easier and its something that they can easily forget if its a manual task.
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