When someone replies to a side conversation that belongs to a closed or archived ticket, a follow-up ticket is automatically created.
This article includes these sections:
- About follow-up tickets for side conversations
- Workflow example for follow-up tickets for side conversations
Related articles:
About follow-up tickets for side conversations
Most side conversation workflows rely on triggers to take some sort of action when a reply is received, such as changing a ticket’s status to move it into a view, so that agents see that something happened. However, since closed and archived tickets don’t run triggers, replies to side conversations in them can go unnoticed.
The follow-up ticket will be initiated with an internal note to prevent sending any updates to the requester, but a public comment can always be added to it, if the reply contains relevant information that they should know about.
For information about the types of data that is pulled from the original ticket into the follow-up ticket, see Creating a follow-up for a closed ticket.
Workflow example for follow-up tickets for side conversations
Here's an example of what happens when someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket. This assumes that you have triggers for side conversations with condition statements for Side conversation + Is + Replied to and Side conversation + Is + Created.
For additional information about these trigger conditions and how to use them, see Setting up trigger conditions for side conversations .
- Someone replies to a side conversation.
The person replying can be an agent or an end user. They can be replying via email or from the ticket interface. They have some kind of follow-up question, new information, or perhaps some kind of new, but related issue.
- The reply is added to the side conversation.
- You don't get an email notification about the reply.
This happens even though you have a trigger for side conversations that includes a condition statement for Side conversation + Is + Replied to because the ticket is already closed or archived.
- Support creates a follow-up ticket.
The follow-up ticket is a new, separate ticket. The ticket interface indicates that this is a follow-up ticket and tells you what the original ticket was, in case you need to look at it.
The side conversation that was replied to is copied and included as part of the follow-up ticket.
The first comment in the follow-up ticket is a private comment. A private comment appears in the agent interface as an internal note. Private comments and internal notes are the same thing.
- You get an email notification that a side conversation was created.
The email notification is about the side conversation on the follow-up ticket, not the original ticket. This happens because you have a trigger for side conversations that includes a condition statement for Side conversation + Is + Created.
The original ticket remains closed (the ticket status doesn't change).
10 Comments
How do we disable this? What if we don't want a follow-up ticket to be created?
Hi Denielle,
Thank you for writing a comment on our Community.
As of the moment, there is no native way to disable follow-up tickets yet. We understand your need for this functionality so I'll mark this as product feedback.
I've taken a look and found that other users are discussing similar needs here: Disable / Un-check 'Create follow-up' option
You can up-vote that original post and add your detailed use-case to the conversation. Threads with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
Specific examples, details about impact, and how you currently handle things are the most helpful things to share to help our product teams understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions.
We truly value customer feedback and your voice and votes in the product feedback topics in the community help influence future Zendesk functionality.
All the best
Is there any way to control who the follow-up ticket is assigned to? In our case, it's often a different team that is creating the side-conversation on the closed ticket, and we'd like the resulting follow-up ticket to be assigned to the side conversation creator and not the original ticket assignee.
Hi Caitlin Whitney
We currently have an article posted by the Zendesk team which would walk you through on how to set up follow-up tickets to retain the original ticket assignee: How can the follow-up tickets retain the ticket assignee?
I recommend testing it out first so you can see what conditions would work best for your team's workflow with the side conversation follow-ups. Let me know if you have any additional questions!
Thank you @Dainne Lucena, but this article is about standard follow-up tickets and not follow-ups to Side Conversations on Closed tickets. For follow-ups to Side Conversations on Closed tickets, Zendesk automatically creates a new ticket for the side conversation and assigns it to the same group/assignee of the original ticket, regardless of who created the side conversation. I would like to disable this automatic group/assignee behavior during the creation of the Side Conversation Follow-up.
Hi,
This: -
Note: Follow-up tickets are not created if a side conversation within a child ticket is updated while the parent ticket is closed. For more information about the parent-child relationship of tickets, see About side conversation child tickets.
Is causing us a real problem, why does this not work???
Side conversation tickets are being responded to when the main ticket is closed but those replies are going nowhere. This is really poor, is there an alternative solution to this?
Hi Caitlin Whitney
Side conversation follow-up tickets still function the same as normal follow-up tickets. They retain the ticket details but not the assignee. Like in this sample follow-up side conversation ticket, it kept the details but the assignee is " - ".
You may have a business rule (trigger or automation) that is automatically assigning the ticket to a group or agent even though it is a side conversation. I recommend checking the ticket event logs to review what added the assignee to that ticket.
Hi Adrian Bishop
At the moment it is a system limitation. However, I do agree that it would be a nice feature to have.
In addition, I 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. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
Specific examples, details about impact, and how you currently handle things are helpful for our product teams to understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions. You may also want to review the Product feedback guidelines and how to write an effective feedback post.
Hi Dainne Lucena
Firstly you may want to relook in your reply to Caitlin Whitney on Aug 5th, as per stated in this article on top.
"When an email or Slack side conversation that belongs to a closed or archived ticket receives a reply, a follow-up ticket is automatically created. The new ticket will have the side conversation in it and keep the original assignee and group value."
Which indeed is true, see below, it keeps the original assignee and group value.
So Side conversation follow-up tickets doesn't function entirely the same as normal follow-up tickets.
I too am facing the same issue raised by Caitlin Whitney, For follow-ups to Side Conversations on Closed tickets, Zendesk automatically creates a new ticket for the side conversation and assigns it to the same last group/assignee of the original ticket, regardless of who created the side conversation. I would like to disable this automatic group/assignee behavior during the creation of the Side Conversation Follow-up OR is there any way to control who the follow-up ticket is assigned to?
I have been trying out multiple trigger to catch/ identify such tickets but to no avail, could some please advice me on what are the condition required for it? TQ
Hi @Amy Malka,
I would like to seek some clarification from you, in specific to the matter:
- Workflow for follow-up tickets created for side conversations - when someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket.
You mentioned that:
Just to share that my trigger with Side Conversation + Is + Replied to is firing on the follow-up tickets created by Side Conversation - when someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket.
You also shared that:
But my trigger with Side Conversation + Is + Created is not firing for tickets which are follow-up tickets created by Side Conversation - when someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket.
I really need some help on how to properly identify and manage the follow-up tickets created for side conversations - when someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket. TQ
You are right, it does indeed assign the new ticket to the previous assignee.
I did a test here and with the trigger below I was able to change it to not be assigned to the previous assignee, but it kept the group.
Requirements:
Ticket + is + Created
Channel + Is + Closed Ticket
Update via + Is not + Side conversation
Actions:
Add Tags + Tag_Name (used "itworks" on my test)
Assignee + "-"
Result:
You could run another triggers for routing, notification, etc.
As you are having issues with one of your triggers, I am going to reach out to you, so we can investigate it further.
Best regards,
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