Question
I want to assign the ticket to the first agent to respond. Can I automatically assign a ticket to the first responding agent?
Answer
The Auto-assign to the first email responding agent trigger assigns the ticket to the agent when the agent updates the ticket through email.
If you need to automatically assign a ticket to the first agent that responded from the Support ticket interface, create a separate trigger for that. Follow these steps.
To automatically assign a ticket to the first agent that responds from the ticket interface
- Create a new trigger.
- Add the below conditions under Meet ALL of the following conditions:
- Ticket | Is | Updated
- Assignee | Is | -
- Comment | Is | Present, and requester can see the comment
- Add the below action
- Assignee | (current user)
- Assignee | (current user)
- Select Create.
For more information about triggers, see the article: About triggers and how they work.
8 Comments
Hi All,
I'm glad to see that there is an addon app to auto-assign a ticket to an agent as soon as they open the ticket, however, I believe that this was something that could be done via Zendesk without the need of an app.
Could someone please share if this is possible?
Hey Jathan,
There's no native functionality that will automatically assign the ticket to the agent that opens up the ticket unfortunately. The closest functionality you would get to this is through Guided Mode which I've linked the documentation for you.
I hope this helps!
Ideally I'd like the app (or Zendesk) to be able to set it to auto-assign to the agent when they first reply to a ticket, similar to how this trigger works. The only problem I have with the trigger is when I open a ticket, reply to the user, and then want to assign the ticket to someone else all on the first submit. The trigger still assigns it to me, so I need to go back in and reassign it again.
@...-- That's a great question. I've actually solved this with many triggers by making an exception by putting a label in place (i.e. don't auto-assign) or something like that. You could have it do it just for you, or manually put it there when you assign a ticket, so it doesn't re-assign it back to you. Play around with it, and you'll see what I mean. You'll need to add a check for that label in the Trigger rule to either see if it is or is not there.
Hi Zendesk Support Team,

I am trying to follow this guide but the only actions available to me is 'Email user' (see image below), would this be due to our subscription plan or maybe there's a setting I need to toggle?
I want to mention I followed the instructions on setting up 'Meet ALL conditions' as listed above.
Hi Phillip,
Based on your description, it looks like you're on Essential Plan, which has limited set of conditions and actions. You can check this article for more information - What trigger conditions and actions are available for customers on the Essential plan?
To check which plans include Triggers, you may check these pages:
Creating triggers for automatic ticket updates and notifications
Zendesk Support Plans
Got it. We've got out trigger set up exactly as directed. However, agent A on our team was away on vacation and originally assigned tickets. Agent B checked in on their personal queue while A was away. When agent B offered the requester an emailed update, the trigger automatically reassigned the ticket to them. How can that be? I thought the trigger setup was only set to automatically assign tickets to the agent that offered the first reply? What additional conditions or exceptions need to be added?
The trigger should only fire if the first reply was offered to the agent. I suggest that you contact our advocacy team and provide a sample ticket where your issue occurred so that we can check what happened.
This article will give you the instructions on how you can have a conversation with one of our advocates: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843597850-Contacting-Zendesk-Customer-Support#:~:text=conversations%20with%20Zendesk-,Option%201%3A%20Contacting%20Customer%20Support%20from%20within%20a%20Zendesk%20product,-Ask%20for%20Zendesk
Regards,
Dion
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