Creating macros for repetitive ticket responses and actions

Fastpath: Admin Center > Workspaces > Agent tools > Macros

You can simply and effectively streamline your workflow by creating macros for support requests that can be solved with a single, standard response or action. This saves agents the time and effort of manually responding to multiple customers with the same issue.

This article contains the following topics:

• About macros
• Creating personal macros for tickets (agents)
• Creating personal or shared macros for tickets (administrators)
• Adding formatting and inline images to macro comments
• Adding attachments to macro comments
• Adding an alternate plain text version of a rich content macro comment
• Using placeholders in macros

Related articles:

• Using macros to update tickets
• Organizing and managing your macros
• Using macros to start side conversations

About macros

A macro is a prepared response or action that an agent can manually apply when they are creating or updating tickets. Macros contain actions that can update ticket properties.

Unlike triggers and automations, macros only contain actions, not conditions. Conditions aren't used because nothing is automatically evaluating tickets to determine if a macro should be applied. Agents evaluate tickets and apply macros manually as needed.

Macros can perform tasks. For example

• Add comment text
• Update ticket fields
• Add or remove ticket tags
• Add followers
• Change the assignee
• Set the ticket subject
• Add attachments to ticket comments
• Start side conversations

There are two types of macros: personal macros (created by an agent or administrator for their own use) and shared macros (created by an administrator for multiple users).

Creating personal macros for tickets (agents)

Although only administrators can create the macros that are shared by all Zendesk Support agents, agents can create personal macros for their own use. A personal macro can only be used by the creator but is visible to admins in Admin Center.

You can create macros from scratch, as described here, or you can create macros based on existing tickets.

The following video gives you an overview of how to use macros to respond to tickets faster:

Use quick responses with macros [1:40]

To create a personal macro for tickets

1. In Admin Center, click Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Macros.
2. Click the All shared macros drop-down menu and select Personal macros.
3. Click the Add macro button.
4. Enter the macro name, and add actions for your macro as described in Building macro action statements.
5. Click Create.

Your personal macros are added to the list of available macros.

Creating personal or shared macros (admins)

A macro is a prepared response or action that an agent can apply to a ticket. Macros contain actions that can update ticket properties.

Admins, and agents in custom roles with permission, can create shared macros to be used by all agents or groups of agents. The maximum number of shared macros per account is 5,000. Admins and all agents can create personal macros for their own use.

A personal macro can only be used or modified by the creator but is visible to and can be cloned by admins. For example, if an agent creates a personal macro that could be useful to other team members, then an admin may want to clone it and recreate it as a shared macro.

Admins can create shared macros, and can modify all shared macros, regardless of who created them.

You can create macros from scratch, as described here, or you can create macros based on existing tickets.

Tip: Fine Tuning: Learn how to improve your agents' productivity in Sylviana Ho's Fine Tuning: Agent Productivity.

To create a personal or shared macro for tickets

1. In Admin Center, click Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Macros.
2. Click Add macro.
3. Enter a Macro name.
4. (Optional) Enter a macro Description.
5. Select who can use the macro from Available for:
   • All agents, all agents
   • Agents in group, specified groups

     (Suite Growth and up or Support Professional and up only)

   • Me only, the macro creator

   

6. Click Add action, then select an action and complete the additional field.

   See Building macro action statements.

   If you choose the Comment/description macro action, and you have rich text formatting enabled, you can add formatting and inline images and you can add attachments to your macro comments. For the Comment/description macro action, you can add formatting, images, and attachments.

7. Click Add action again to add another action.
8. Click Create.

   The macro is created.

Adding formatting and inline images to macro comments

You can add styling, formatting, and inline images to the Comment/description macro action.

To add formatting to your comment

1. In the macro, under the comment box, click the T at the bottom of the field.

   

   This opens the rich text editor interface.

   

2. Select the formatting you want to apply to the text.

   Toolbar button	Formatting	Keyboard shortcuts
   	Increase/decrease heading style	Increase: Ctrl + + ⌘ + + (Mac) Decrease: Ctrl + - ⌘ + - (Mac)
   	Bold	Ctrl + B ⌘ + B (Mac)
   	Italicize	Ctrl + I ⌘ + I (Mac)
   	Change the text color. Currently, not available in the Macros editor.	Agent Workspace only.
   	Bulleted list	Ctrl Shift + 8 ⌘ + Shift + 8(Mac)
   	Numbered list	Ctrl + Shift + 7 ⌘ + Shift + 7 (Mac)
   	Decrease paragraph indentation	Ctrl + [ ⌘ + [ (Mac)
   	Increase paragraph indentation	Ctrl + ] ⌘ + ] (Mac)
   	Block quote	Ctrl + Shift + 9 ⌘ + Shift + 9 (Mac)
   	Code block	Ctrl + Shift + 6 ⌘ + Shift + 6 (Mac)
   	Code span	Ctrl + Shift + 5 ⌘ + Shift + 5 (Mac)
   	Hyperlink	Ctrl + K ⌘ + K (Mac)
   	Horizontal line	Ctrl + Shift + L ⌘ + Shift + L (Mac)

If you created a macro with the Comment/description action before the addition of rich text formatting, you can update your macro by clicking the Use rich content link. This copies your existing comment action, loads in the rich content editor, and places your comment back into the editor. You can then apply formatting and images or attachments as needed.

Now you can add a plain text version of your rich content macro comment, if you want. The plain text version will be intelligently applied in channels that don't support rich text formatting.

To add inline images to your comment

• Drag and drop an image from your computer into the comment window, or paste a copied image into the window by right-clicking and selecting Paste or by pressing Ctrl or ⌘ + V.

Adding attachments to macro comments

Comments in your macros can also contain up to five file attachments.

The maximum file size for a single linked attachment is 50 MB. For more information, see Attachment size limitations.

To attach one or more files to a comment

1. Click the paperclip icon in the at the bottom of the field.

   

2. Browse to the file you want to attach.
3. Select the file, and click Choose.

   The file is added to the ticket.

Note: If you use macros to bulk update tickets, attachments will not be included in the comments.

Adding an alternate plain text version of a rich content macro comment

If you added styling, formatting, or inline images to the Comment/description macro action, you can add an alternate plain text version, if you want.

The plain text version will be intelligently applied in channels that don't support rich text formatting. These include the Zendesk mobile app, Zendesk SMS, messaging channels in the Zendesk Agent Workspace and in the standard agent interface, and any app installed from the Zendesk Marketplace.

To add a plain text version of your rich content macro comment

1. In the macro, under the rich content version of the comment, select Include plain text fallback.

   

2. In the pre-populated version that appears, make any modifications needed to create the plain text version of the macro comment.

   

Using placeholders in macros

The macros you create for tickets can include placeholders to help personalize your ticket responses. When you use placeholders for Problem tickets, be aware of the following:

• When you apply a macro with placeholders to a Problem ticket, the placeholder is rendered when the macro is applied, not when the ticket is submitted. This can produce some unexpected results. For example, if you send an email response to Problem ticket using a macro that contains the {{ticket.requester.name}} placeholder, the ticket’s requester name is sent to all linked tickets, not just the ticket associated with the requester.
• To prevent this from happening, add an escape character (\) in front of the placeholder. For example, \ {{ticket.requester.name}}. In this case, the placeholder is not rendered until the ticket is submitted, which will show the correct name to each user who submitted a ticket linked to the problem.