The Zendesk context panel provides valuable information you can use to get a better understanding of your customer and solve tickets quickly. This article describes how to use the context panel.
This article includes these sections:
About the context panel
When you’re working on a ticket, it’s often useful to have contextual information that falls outside the basic ticket content. For example, you might want to know more about the customer who requested the ticket or start a side conversation associated with the ticket. In addition, you may need to open Zendesk apps that can help you solve the ticket or search for articles in your help center that are relevant to the ticket.
The Zendesk Agent Workspace includes a context panel on the side of the ticket to help you view and manage this information. The icons that appear in the context panel vary depending on which features your admin has enabled for your account. For example, you need to have an account with Guide or Zendesk Suite to use the knowledge features.
Sell also includes a context panel for leads, contacts, and deals. See Using the context panel in Sell.
Opening and closing the panel
You can open and close the panel as needed to do your work. You can also switch between views.
To open and close the panel
- In a ticket, click any context icon in the right sidebar to open the
panel.
You can also open the context panel from a Sell lead, contact, or deal card.
You can click the icon again to close the panel.
- When the panel is open, click an icon to switch between views.
For example, if apps (
) are showing, click the user icon (
) to view user information. In the panel, you can:
If you’re working in Sell, you’ll see additional icons in the context panel for working with leads, contacts, and deals. See Using the context panel in Sell.Icon Name Description User View contact information about the customer and the customer’s interaction history. Social media contact information, if any, is also included. See Viewing customer context in a ticket. 
Record preview View details of object records that are related to the ticket. To see this icon, your account must have at least one active lookup relationship field pointing to a custom object on your ticket form. See Interacting with related object records in tickets. 
Knowledge Search for content in your help center that might help your customers solve issues, view suggestions for articles based on ticket content, or add feedback to flag existing articles. See Searching, linking, and quoting content in tickets and Flagging articles in Knowledge. 
Side conversations Create or view side conversations associated with the ticket. See About side conversations. To see this icon, side conversations must be activated in your account by an admin. 
Intelligence (Legacy) View intelligent triage predictions, ticket summaries, suggested macros, similar tickets, and merging suggestions. See Turning on and configuring Intelligence in the context panel (Legacy). 
Merge suggestions Merge related tickets into the ticket you're currently working on. See Merging related tickets based on suggestions. Apps Open a list of public or private apps to help you solve tickets. You only see apps that have been installed by your admin. See Managing your installed apps.
Resizing the context panel
In some cases, you may want to change the width of the context panel to give you a better view of customer context, sidebar apps, or Knowledge articles.
To resize the context panel
- In a ticket, open the context panel.
You can also open the context panel from a Sell lead, contact, or deal card.
- Hover your mouse pointer over the shared border between the context panel and the ticket
comments, until a resize icon (
) appears and the panel border turns blue. - Drag the border to the left or right to change the context panel width.
These adjustments you make remain when you switch between views in the context panel, or when you open or close the panel. Your changes are maintained across tickets, until you do a hard refresh.
Preparing your apps for context panel resizing
If your company is developing sidebar applications for the Zendesk Agent Workspace or Sell, make sure your application developer uses the flexible property in the application manifest file (flexible = true) to take advantage of changes to the context panel width.
If the flexible property isn't specified in the application manifest file, Zendesk assumes the property is set to flexible = true. This default makes it easier for your apps to be set as flexible, but it's always a good idea to specifically include it. If you don't want your app to be responsive to changes in the context panel width, set the property to flexible=false. See this article for more details.