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Creating pre-filled ticket forms



image avatar

Nova Dawn

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Feb 11, 2025


14

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122 comments

Yes, everything needs to be lowercase, among other restrictions.  I haven't re-read the main article to see if they've updated it, but I wrote up a summary of things that weren't made clear in a comment above...

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408839114522/comments/4850417035162

0


Is there a possibility to parse the external (user) id with the form? In the system fields I see e-mail and organization ID, but I only have the external user id available. I would like to use it to match the new ticket to its creator.

0


image avatar

Remi

Zendesk Customer Care

Good day Jimmy van der Have,

Thank you for your post, hope you are doing well!

Unfortunately, as written here : System ticket fields
The external_id isn't a system ticket field.

Only the fields listed in this doc can be used as "system" field to pre-fill ticket fields.

However, you can still create a dedicated custom field and pass your external_id to the ticket via the usage of the ticket field ID as below : 

  • &tf_[fieldID}={value}

     

From our perspective, the external_id isn't a "native" Zendesk user identifier in Support to tie a ticket to a user but is meant for external systems as outlined here : User's attributes.

Hope this clarifies it! Have a great rest of your day.

Best regards,

0


Hello Colleagues,

Is this possible with Zendesk: to make pre-filled fields with information gray text to set an example for the Customer, what information do we expect from him? Moreover, if the Customer did not enter anything (for non required fields) , the field would be empty. And if he clicks this field, then he does not need to delete this text, but instead, it is enough just to start entering his description.

Example: https://www.tp-link.com/en/support/contact-technical-support/#E-mail-Support

<textarea cols="20" rows="10" name="description" maxlength="1600" placeholder="Example:Hello. I have low speed via WiFi connection."></textarea>

0


Alexey Finkin

I'm not sure and would need to test, but you may be able to use the redirect script approach here - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886627866 . In short, the script replaces a string in the URL with another string.

My hypothesis is that since this method preserves autofill parameters, you could have your redirect script use autofills. IE. if the form ID is #321123321 , have something like this:

var oldIds = ["321123321"];
  var newIds = ["321123321&tf_subject=Hello. I have low speed via WiFi connection"];

Since we're talking about replacing a form ID instead of an article ID (as described in the article, you would need to update the FOR statement to use 'https://YOURSUBDOMAIN.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id='

This wouldn't solve the change in the text color, but might handle inserting the text when they select a form.

0


Request #11547331 "hello. question explained in the..." was closed and merged into this request. Last comment in request #11547331:

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(12:14:02 PM) Web User alexey.finkin@brightpattern.com__zendesk…: Hello. I have checked the article about pre-filled ticket forms
Is this possible with Zendesk: to make pre-filled fields with information gray text to set an example for the Customer, what information do we expect from him? Moreover, if the Customer did not enter anything (for non required fields) , the field would be empty. And if he clicks this field, then he does not need to delete this text, but instead, it is enough just to start entering his description.

Example: https://www.tp-link.com/en/support/contact-technical-support/#E-mail-Support

(12:14:06 PM) Z Bot: These resources might help:
(12:14:06 PM) Z Bot: Can I make a custom checkbox field required in Zendesk Sell? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413000131226-Can-I-make-a-custom-checkbox-field-required-in-Zendesk-Sell-?auth_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjoxMDU1NzY1NywidXNlcl9pZCI6bnVsbCwidGlja2V0X2lkIjpudWxsLCJkZWZsZWN0aW9uX2lkIjo1NzQyMTE4NjExNzM4LCJhcnRpY2xlcyI6WzQ0MTMwMDAxMzEyMjYsNDQwODg4MTcyOTQzNCw0NDA5NzI5NzM3MTE0XSwidG9rZW4iOm51bGwsImV4cCI6MTY4NzYyNjg0NX0.Fm9lDkhxQdw5w7ou5gN53iDxprNzs_e8hAQ5l3Ewe2s&amp;utm_source=Answerbot
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Can I report on the ticket description field? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409729737114-Can-I-report-on-the-ticket-description-field-?auth_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjoxMDU1NzY1NywidXNlcl9pZCI6bnVsbCwidGlja2V0X2lkIjpudWxsLCJkZWZsZWN0aW9uX2lkIjo1NzQyMTE4NjExNzM4LCJhcnRpY2xlcyI6WzQ0MTMwMDAxMzEyMjYsNDQwODg4MTcyOTQzNCw0NDA5NzI5NzM3MTE0XSwidG9rZW4iOm51bGwsImV4cCI6MTY4NzYyNjg0NX0.Fm9lDkhxQdw5w7ou5gN53iDxprNzs_e8hAQ5l3Ewe2s&amp;utm_source=Answerbot
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(12:14:33 PM) Web User alexey.finkin@brightpattern.com__zendesk…: Is this possible with Zendesk: to make pre-filled fields with information gray text to set an example for the Customer, what information do we expect from him? Moreover, if the Customer did not enter anything (for non required fields) , the field would be empty. And if he clicks this field, then he does not need to delete this text, but instead, it is enough just to start entering his description.

Example: https://www.tp-link.com/en/support/contact-technical-support/#E-mail-Support

(12:14:36 PM) Z Bot: These resources might help:
(12:14:37 PM) Z Bot: Why do I receive tickets with "No content" in the subject or description? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843103642-Why-do-I-receive-tickets-with-No-content-in-the-subject-or-description-?auth_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjoxMDU1NzY1NywidXNlcl9pZCI6bnVsbCwidGlja2V0X2lkIjpudWxsLCJkZWZsZWN0aW9uX2lkIjo1NzQyMTA0Nzg4NTA2LCJhcnRpY2xlcyI6WzQ0MDg4NDMxMDM2NDIsNDQxMDYxMTM5MjE1NCw0NDEzMDAwMTMxMjI2XSwidG9rZW4iOm51bGwsImV4cCI6MTY4NzYyNjg3Nn0.YoRLsLZx2olCzSW9z7ZeLNj9QaAJYtOEawrj5sY8jHY&amp;utm_source=Answerbot
Why does my customer's name appear incomplete in Support? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410611392154-Why-does-my-customer-s-name-appear-incomplete-in-Support-?auth_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjoxMDU1NzY1NywidXNlcl9pZCI6bnVsbCwidGlja2V0X2lkIjpudWxsLCJkZWZsZWN0aW9uX2lkIjo1NzQyMTA0Nzg4NTA2LCJhcnRpY2xlcyI6WzQ0MDg4NDMxMDM2NDIsNDQxMDYxMTM5MjE1NCw0NDEzMDAwMTMxMjI2XSwidG9rZW4iOm51bGwsImV4cCI6MTY4NzYyNjg3Nn0.YoRLsLZx2olCzSW9z7ZeLNj9QaAJYtOEawrj5sY8jHY&amp;utm_source=Answerbot
Can I make a custom checkbox field required in Zendesk Sell? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413000131226-Can-I-make-a-custom-checkbox-field-required-in-Zendesk-Sell-?auth_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjoxMDU1NzY1NywidXNlcl9pZCI6bnVsbCwidGlja2V0X2lkIjpudWxsLCJkZWZsZWN0aW9uX2lkIjo1NzQyMTA0Nzg4NTA2LCJhcnRpY2xlcyI6WzQ0MDg4NDMxMDM2NDIsNDQxMDYxMTM5MjE1NCw0NDEzMDAwMTMxMjI2XSwidG9rZW4iOm51bGwsImV4cCI6MTY4NzYyNjg3Nn0.YoRLsLZx2olCzSW9z7ZeLNj9QaAJYtOEawrj5sY8jHY&amp;utm_source=Answerbot
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0


Hi! I am fascinated by this idea. I was wondering if we had some variables saved in Google Tag Manager, if we would be able to use this to populate certain text fields using the values of those variables?

0


Alexey Finkin

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408839114522/comments/5742116358682

We have implemented this by adding placeholder in script.js

 

var url_params = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
  if (url_params.has('hints') && url_params.hints !== 'false' && url_params.hints !== '0') {
    $('#new_request #request_description').height('350px');
    $('#new_request #request_description').attr(
      'placeholder',
      `[Good example]`
      );
   $('#new_request #request_subject').attr(
   'placeholder',
   `[Good example]`
    );
  }

0


0


Hello, is it possible to add a tag to a ticket ? Not an existing field, but just a tag. 

0


image avatar

Neil

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Chris,
 
You can create a replica of your GTM variables as a custom ticket field Zendesk and use to format mentioned in the article for pre-filling. 
If you're looking to automate it, I don't think that will be within the ball park. 
 
Hi Stephanie,
 
Please see here for details on adding tags to a ticket.

0


Thank you Neil, if I do this, I need to activate the custom ticket field in the form, right? So, customers would see this field. 

Is there any way to have a field on the agent interface for a particular form. But hide it on the customer side? 

0


image avatar

Noly Maron Unson

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Stéphanie,

Custom fields have 3 different permissions,

  • Agents can edit: Only agents can view and edit the field. It appears in tickets.
  • Customers can edit: Agents and end users can view and edit the field. It appears in tickets and in the support request form in the help center.
  • Customers can view: Agents can view and edit the field. End users can only view the field. It appears in tickets and on end users' requests, but isn't included in the support request form in the help center.

If you set the ticket field permission to "Agents can edit" then it will not be visible when the end user is submitting a request using the Form but will still be visible to the agents within the ticket in Support.

See: Adding custom fields to your tickets and support request form

Hope this helps.

0


Hi Noly Maron Unson

thank you very much for your answer. 

I tried this. The field is indeed not visible when the end user is submitting a request using the Form.

But, it is visible when the end user displays the request. 

Is there any way to have a custom field visible for the agent, but completely hidden for the end user?

thank you,  

0


Stéphanie Cettou

Are you encountering this issue with end users that are also (light) agents?

Otherwise, you might consider updating the javascript in the theme to only show certain fields based on the user's organization or some other criteria.

0


In lieu of our end users being able to edit their submitted requests, (see  https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409222755866-Allow-end-users-to-update-fields-after-ticket-is-created), my idea was to generate a URL in the email body of a notification sent to the submitter when received. 

I thought I could use the placeholders to create a URL that would open our form, and pre-populate the form with the information from their original ticket, including the ticket.title and ticket.description. This works great, unless the subject and/or description is more than one word, as the generated URL is not encoded and the link breaks at the first space. 

Anyone have ideas of how to encode that URL going out in the email notification?  

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Terry Honn - we ran into the same issue and resolved it by using underscores. it doesn't look as good when you've got those in the subject/description/etc , but it gets the job done.

Also, you can encode using HTML in your notification trigger - are you including the links as plain text or as hyperlinks? if you're using HTML hyperlinks, i believe that will work with spaces.

0


mfg, thanks for the response!  I may have not been clear in my ask, or I may not be understanding what you're suggesting.

We have a trigger that, upon receipt of an email ticket, is sending an acknowledgement email to the requester. Since they can't just go look at their new ticket and make changes, I want the ack email to have a clickable URL that the end user can click on, taking them to the web form and pre-fill the form with the same information that came from their original ticket and allowing them to update the other fields on the form and submit a new ticket. 

The email body in the ack trigger looks like this:

Your request has been received and is being reviewed by our support staff. 

To add additional comments or view status, click here http://{{ticket.url}}.

If this is a critical production outage that needs immediate attention, please click the URL below, complete any applicable fields, and submit:

https://ourzendeskinstance.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=8835950902029&tf_subject={{ticket.title}}&tf_17717893359885=normal_urgent&tf_description={{ticket.latest_comment}}

Thank you.

({{ticket.id}})


Of course the URL link is breaking on the first space encountered in the ticket subject.

 

Where were you suggesting to use underscores?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

 

0


Looks like underscores wouldn't work based on your use case, since you can't know whether the original title/description will have underscores (doubtful if the end user is entering it), and there's no native way to replace the spaces with underscores.

However, I think that using html would be able to handle that and bundle it in the hyperlink, but you'll need to test:

<a href="https://ourzendeskinstance.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=8835950902029&tf_subject={{ticket.title}}&tf_17717893359885=normal_urgent&tf_description={{ticket.latest_comment}}">Pre-filled Link</a>

I haven't used placeholders in our links and redirects, but spaces have worked fine - though you'll want a plain text version fallback. If they use a plain text, copy and paste though it should work as long as they get the whole thing.

Side note - Since this will create a second ticket about the same issue, for the sake of agent experience, you may want to include the originating ticket ID or other problem/incident info in the pre-fill so agents can dedupe easily.

Terry Honn

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Thank you, mfg!  It never occurred to me to try wrapping the generated URL in HTML, but that definitely did the trick. 

Yes, I hate that we have to generate another ticket for this purpose, but I'm going to tag the original and then dedupe manually for the time being. 

Thanks again VERY much for your solution!

0


Hey Terry Honn,

I do a fair few of these and similar for my work flows between agents in ZD and other staff who are more email bound. I am the agent/admin but some of my team arent required to have ZD agent access. So I set links in their "bread and butter" email workflows (and triggers in mine) that allow them to two-touch a confirmation of completion that updates my tracked ticket.

There is a link in the email saying "Click this link once all tasks are processed"

They click (1 touch) this link, it opens an email that they can just send (2 touch). It renders all the correct ticket data when I use the macro to send it, so when they use the link, the correct info populates. It also uses the reply by email #ticket number to use their response to bump update the original ticket in my enviro so it brings the confirmation back inline with my agent side conversation experience. I can then see the works are done, I close the ticket using a macro to log anything else our org needs to see for posterity, and I can track all the historic works concisely by views and filters.

It offers linebreaks, spaces, the usual. In this case I use a mailto: function, but I also use pre-filled links attached to staffs mobile phones as MDM pushed webclips or linkpages (or browser favourites) to pre-fill IT or Maintenance request forms for specific tasks that we see repeating regularly from Explore reports. That way the user only has to fill out their location and the agent gets a predictable ticket type that they can filter or view manage to attend to specific types of tickets. 

If you want to talk about any specifics in your enviro, please reach out - I am happy to help.

0


I've gotten the first two ticket fields to fill out but can't get our "Reason for Contacting" field to be selected as "Feedback". Would anyone be able to tell me what I am doing wrong? This is the version I have right now. 

https://support.angel.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=6775369482647&tf_subject=Guild Feedback&tf_6775303483031={{dc.feedback}}

0


Naomi Greenall

I'm unsure why you've got the placeholder reference in there - since it's a new ticket there can't be a value. Also, in case it's helpful, you can pass the tag as the value (eg. &tf_123456789=automated_reply_message_change).
 

0


Leon Lin

I think the '?' marks in the text are being parsed by the browser as separate URL query parameters. I'm not sure how to fix that, ie. if it can be encoded so the special characters don't interfere.

Is your use case above one where you're providing text in the description with the expectation the end user will finish filling it out?

If so, I would recommend embedding that text in your theme and "pre-filling" via javascript on the page rather than encoding in the URL. Something like this fix for disabling the subject/description fields - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882841498?page=2

In your case, you wouldn't hide the description field, but you would still use this piece of the snippet with 'test description' being the text you provided above:

  1. $('#request_description').val('test description'); // Autofill description

Also, since this description prefill only includes on form and not the other, here's another method that selects based on form - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836487450-Help-center-JavaScript-cookbook   

I'm not too knowledgeable with javascript, but I think it would look something like this (define form variable, evaluate variable present, prefill description if true):

var ticketForm = location.search.split('ticket_form_id=')[1];
if(ticketForm == 8038396746255) {
  $('section.main-column h1').html('Product Registration');
  $('#request_description').val('There is a new product registration.');
}

0


I have created multiple pre filled out form links and now that we are authenticating with keycloak, even when logged in, the pre population is not functioning for any user in any browser. 

 

Is anyone else having a current issue with pre populated forms functioning? Can I get an assist from one of the product managers? 

0


image avatar

Carl McDowell

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Mason,
 
I've opened a ticket for you and we can help investigate what is happening with your issue. I'll follow up and we can see if we can find out why your pre populated forms are not working.
 
Kind Regards,
Carl

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I feel like I'm doing something wrong as this isn't working for me. Below is the URL I created but it's not populating the Subject and Description field. I'm also looking have this auto populate when they choose this form for them drop down list of forms they can choose from.

https://portal.company.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=2233445566&tf_subject=submission portal credentials&tf_description=request for user credentials

0


image avatar

Ivan Miquiabas

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Noelle Cheng
 
Thanks for reaching out! We would love to dig into this issue further as this needs further investigation. Thus, can you send us a ticket so that one of the Engineers can take a closer look on this? Here are various options on how to send a ticket to us. 
 
 
Cheers! 

0


mfg  @Ivan Miquiabas

How to add auto filled fields based on a field selection, Want to see this in form fields in HC(Submit a request).


For Example,
There are  two fields Team and Area manager, Team field (Team A, Team B…..Team D) and Area Manager field with values (xx,yy,xy,yz)


IF I select Team B I want the field Area manager with value “yy” automatically filled in .
How to do this?

0


Hi team ,

 

Any update on the request raised

 

0


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