Side conversations are spaces in a ticket where agents can have a side conversation with a specific group of people, or discuss a specific area of concern or course of action. You can use them to organize information about a ticket.
- Advantages of using side conversations
- Recommendations about side conversations
- About side conversation channels
- Rich text editing in the side conversation composer
- Creating side conversations
- Viewing and replying to side conversations
- Closing and reopening side conversations
- Adding ticket comments to a side conversation
Advantages of using side conversations
Problems often consist of multiple parts, and solving them often consists of conversations with different people. It gets confusing for everyone involved when all of the questions and answers are mixed together in one place without any kind of organization.
For example, let’s say you need to discuss something with your Legal team, but don’t need or want other people involved.
- Find, organize, and manage information about a specific part of an issue
- Have a conversation with the right people
- Find specific questions, answers, and replies. Ensure conversations happen outside of the main conversation with the requester
- Have multiple standalone conversations that are separate from each other
- Get outside help without pulling others into the main ticket directly
Recommendations about side conversations
- The assignee should create and manage side conversations in the tickets they're responsible for. This allows administrators to create triggers based on the assignee role, and enables easier handoff between agents.
- Set up triggers to take advantage of the side conversation event conditions to fully integrate them into your workflows and to keep agents on top of the activity within them. See Setting up trigger conditions for side conversations.
- Create trigger conditions for side conversations to make sure that assignees know when a side conversation is created, closed, replied to, and reopened. Without them, the agent assigned to the ticket (ideally, this person is also the creator of the side conversation) may have a hard time knowing what’s going on with a particular issue.
- Remember that the creator of the side conversation doesn't automatically receive email replies to side conversations. That’s not the default behavior. Also sending side conversations to your own support address is not supported and will result in those side conversations ending up in the Suspended tickets view.
About side conversation channels
When you create a side conversation, you can choose to have the side conversation in one of these channels:
-
Email—Creates an email-based side conversation as described in this article.
-
Slack (if enabled)—Creates a Slack-based side conversation (see Using Slack in side conversations).
-
Ticket (if enabled)—Creates a side conversation child ticket (see Using side conversation child tickets).
Rich text editing in the side conversation composer
The side conversation composer is a rich text editor that includes a toolbar with options for editing and formatting your text. Rich text editors are sometimes called WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) editors.
The formatting options in the composer vary a little depending on the side conversation channel involved (Email, Slack, or Ticket). For example, these are the formatting options for email:
The composer for Email and Ticket side conversation includes a full array of formatting options because email supports full HTML display. The composer for Slack side conversations includes fewer formatting options because Slack uses a subset of Markdown for formatting. With Slack side conversations, you can also use Markdown-style shortcuts while typing in the composer, and they will be converted to rich text. For example, if you type bold, bold is applied to the text in composer.
This table lists the editing options that are available with different side conversation channels.
| Formatting option | Email & Ticket side conversations | Slack side conversations |
| Bold | Available | Available |
| Italic | Available | Available |
| Bullet list, Numbered list | Available | Available |
| Quote | Available | Available |
| Code span | Available | Available |
| Code block | Available | Available |
| Heading | Available | --- |
| Outdent, Indent | Available | --- |
| Link | Available | --- |
Note the following limitations with the composer:
- The composer doesn’t support inline images. You can, however, add images as attachments.
- If you paste complex rich text into the composer, you will likely lose some formatting.
- Rich text and Markdown formatting is not supported in email signatures that appear in side conversations.
Creating side conversations
If enabled, agents and light agents can create side conversations.
You can create side conversations on open or closed tickets. When someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket, triggers won’t be run on it even if they have side conversation conditions, but a follow-up ticket is automatically created (see Understanding follow-up tickets for side conversations).
Any time someone creates a side conversation, a notification appears in the Zendesk Support interface for 60 seconds. Email-based side conversations can be sent to up to 100 recipients, with a maximum of 48 of those recipients being non-agents.
Side conversations must be enabled by an administrator.
To create an email-based side conversation
- From the upper-left portion of a ticket, click the plus sign (+) next to Side Conversations and then choose Email.
For information about using side conversation channels other than Email, see Using side conversation child tickets and Using Slack in side conversations).
- Enter the recipients, a subject, your message, and add attachments. You have these options:
- For agents (and light agents) that are already in the system, type their name. When you see the person you are looking for, click their name. Address autocomplete for agents and light agents include a badge to show they are agents.
- For everyone else, enter their email address. You only have to type or paste the full email address once. The next time you initiate a side conversion with that person, the address will autocomplete. Users you add by email automatically become end users in your account, if they aren't there already.
- An email address highlighted in red has incorrect formatting and needs to be corrected.
- When you add attachments, you can select a file from your computer or include one or more attachments that already exist in the ticket. Click the attachment icon (
) and select From computer or From ticket.
Tip: Instead of downloading ticket attachments to your computer to include them in a side conversation, you can add attachments directly from the ticket.
- For agents (and light agents) that are already in the system, type their name. When you see the person you are looking for, click their name. Address autocomplete for agents and light agents include a badge to show they are agents.
- Click the Send button.
All of the recipients on the side conversation receive an email notification with your message. This doesn’t automatically include the assignee of the ticket or the creator of the side conversation. See Recommendations about side conversations.
Viewing and replying to side conversations
Recipients of a side conversation can reply through email, just as they would to any other email. Side conversations retain the original formatting of incoming emails. The assignee on the ticket can also reply to a side conversation through the ticket from the Zendesk Support interface. Regardless of how a response was sent, it appears in the ticket for the assignee.
The people on a side conversation can be inside or outside of your organization.
You can create side conversations on open or closed tickets. If someone replies to a side conversation on a closed ticket, triggers won’t be run on it even if they have side conversation conditions.
To view and reply to a side conversation
- From the bottom portion of the ticket, click the View side conversation button for the side conversation you are interested in.
- Click the Side Conversations bar to see a list of side conversations. Click the one you are interested in.
- Scroll up to review earlier replies in the side conversation, if needed.
The conversation opens to the first unread reply for the agent viewing conversation. The most recent replies appear at the bottom of the side conversation.
- Update the list of recipients (if needed), add your reply and attachments, and then click Send.
Each message has its own set of recipients, which can be edited at reply time.
When you add attachments, you can select a file from your computer or include one or more attachments that already exist in the ticket. Click the attachment icon (
) and select From computer or From ticket.If you changed your mind and don’t want to send the message, click the delete icon (
). The delete icon () does not delete the entire thread. Once you start a thread, you cannot delete it.
All of the recipients on the side conversation receive an email notification with your message. The message being replied to is included as quoted content on outgoing emails.
This notification doesn’t automatically include the assignee of the ticket or the creator of the side conversation. See Recommendations about side conversations.
If you have an email signature set up, it is automatically inserted into the message. If you have personalized replies enabled, these settings are also included in your message. Conversations are sent from the support address associated with the ticket, and if configured, include the address name.
Closing and reopening side conversations
Closing a side conversation changes the status of the side conversation to Done. Closing and reopening side conversations does not result in any additional email messages to people on the side conversation. It’s also important to note that closing a side conversation does not prevent people from adding new replies.
Status information associated with a side conversation is meant only to help the agent. It is not for the benefit of the end user or other people on the side conversation. That's why closing a side conversation doesn't prevent people from adding new replies. They may have additional questions or comments later, even after the side conversation has been closed.
It is up to the agent to decide whether a reply to a closed side conversation requires reopening the side conversation.
You can create side conversations on open or closed tickets. If someone replies to a side conversation on a closed ticket, triggers won’t be run on it even if they have side conversation conditions.
Any time someone closes or reopens a side conversation, a notification appears in the Zendesk Support interface for 60 seconds.
To close and reopen a side conversation
- Open the side conversation (see Viewing and replying to side conversationsViewing and replying to side conversations).
- Click the Mark done button.
The side conversation status changes to Done.
If you want to reopen the side conversation, repeat step 1 and then click the Reopen button. The side conversation reopens and no longer includes the green Done label at the top of the side conversation.
Adding ticket comments to a side conversation
- Using Slack. See Using Slack in side conversations
- By creating a child ticket. See Using side conversation child tickets
To forward a ticket comment
- On a ticket, locate the comment you want to include, then select Forward via email from the dropdown menu.
A side conversation appears with the ticket title and comment already included, ready for you to add introductory text and include a forwarding address. You can start a side conversation from any comment in the ticket.
To include multiple comments
- Start a side conversation. You can start the conversation from an individual ticket comment or from the upper-left portion of the ticket.
- Click the comments icon (
) at the bottom of the message.
A page appears with a list of ticket comments to include.
- Select the comments you want to include. You can select each comment separately, or select Ticket comments to include all comments.
- Click Add.
Creating macros that generate side conversations
When the side conversation feature is enabled, macro actions are added that allow you to create side converstions in a ticket. There's a macro action for each side conversation channel option you have: Side conversation via email, Side conversation via Slack, Side conversation via child ticket.
Email-based side conversations can be sent to one or more email addresses. When you create a side conversation macro for Slack, you chose a Slack channel to send the message to. For child ticket side conversations, you select a group to assign to the macro-generated side conversation child ticket.
62 Comments
Hi @...
Have a look here:
https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/ticket_comments#make-comment-private
It is possible to make a comment private after saving it both using the API (see above) and in the UI, in the events (Ereignisse) view, where you see something akin to this:
Looks like this can be done by setting a ticket's priority when reply from side-ticket is received.
Hi,
I have been facing issues with Side conversations.
The behaviour is very erratic. A lot of times, these side conversations are not delivered. I have checked all the settings and confirmed with the team about any allowlist/blocklist or rules set that might cause this. But there isn't any.
Side conversations to other teams are not delivered which is why the team has to reach out to them using emails and other channels. I am sure you understand that this dilutes the very purpose of Side Conversations.
Can you help me understand:
Thanks.
Hi Shweta,
Because your issue may require some deeper troubleshooting, I think the best thing for you to do is contact out support team via chat from within your agent/admin interface (Option 1 here): Contacting Zendesk Customer Support
Hopefully they'll be able to help you figure out what's going on here.
Hi,
Is that possible to create email-based side conversations and add agents + end user as recipients?
Or there's a clear border like:
- email side conversation: ONLY end user
- ticket side conversation (child ticket): ONLY agents
Because we had such a ticket and the email sent to all recipients (including agents) once the side conversation created, however, only end user was shown in "To:" of the delivered email and agents even though received the email, they couldn't see their name in "to:" section and were filtered. So once the end user replied, agents didn't receive any email and basically removed from the email loop and rest of the communications in side conversation.
BR
Ethan
We've had a recent issue where slack channels are not showing up when an agent clicks into side conversations. Previously, all the channels would show in a drop down but now agents have to manually type the channel to even see it. Was there a recent update that could have caused this?
Hi Charlie,
This seems to be related to Migrating the legacy Slack for Zendesk integration to the new Slack integration. Further, I saw that one of our Customer Support is already helping you regarding this incident
In the situation that all my colleagues have access to zendesk (as light agents) why should I use side conversations instead of internal notes?
Hi @...
Short answer: You shouldn't, IF your colleagues get notified properly.
Big difference is that the Side Conversation arrives as a TO not a CC mail.
Depending on your organizational rules, this may make a difference in the way it is handled by the receivers.
We use Side Conversations to incorporate third parties or seemingly unrelated internal entities in tickets, or when we know that the light agents will just discard all of their hundreds of CC notifications instead of scrutinizing them.
Hope this clarifies things.
Thanks. By setting triggers where condition comment = private I should be able to set some proper notifications.
If i assign a ticket directly to an agent and subsequently I make a internal note, then it arrives also as a TO mail (due to trigger set). Or will it arrive as a CC when I allocate it to a group of agents?
You cannot assign a ticket to a light agent, thus, you have no means to send a TO notification to a light agent.
I guess that's a matter whether you use CCs & Followers or not. With us, (no CC's & Followers), Light Agents can only get a CC notification, except if you send them a Side Conversation.
That's correct, thanks. This makes side conversations a better solution.
What is also possible is to assign the ticket to a group of light agents. You can make groups of light agents as long as there is one real agent part of the group.
Clever! TAT for this tip.
Hello,
We'd like to put in a feature request to have Side Conversations enabled on the Mobile Application. We have many agents that are using the mobile application to maintain their tickets.
Please let me know if there is another chat for this request and we'll add to it.
Thanks
Here you go! Mobile App Side Conversations
Hi Zendesk.
We have an issue since last week.
Before, in a side conversations when we use to select a comment to include it in a side conversation the text was keeping his look whether it was HTML or Markdown.
Now, the comments transferred are get their look with all the markdown or HTML stuff (stars **, tags <a> ,(( )) etc..) mostly a lot of stars like and no line break at all:
*FaceBook**** | ****Blog**** | ****Catalogue**
Can you do something?
This doesn't happen when we use "transfer by email".
Best regards,
Raphaël
A patch has been deployed on Monday to correct this issue.
I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused by this issue.
We have numerous users working in groups who work shifts so may need to reply to side conversations on each other's behalf, however, when we reply to a side conversation using a different agent it adds in the original agent
e.g. Agent A starts a side conversation to a supplier and the email is sent from our platform email address. The reply comes in when Agent A is offline due to their day off so Agent B picks it up to respond.
When they click into the side conversation box to reply, Agent A's account email address is added as a recipient (agenta@companyname.com) and is then sent to the supplier in the "to" field of the email, meaning that they now have the personal email address of that agent moving forwards. I can see how this can be useful in some circumstances, but for us, we don't want to publish the personal email address. Is there a way that we can stop this from happening?
We have the same concern as Kai.
In addition, for a Side Conversation child ticket, we have a similar situation. Agent A creates the Side Conv child ticket. While Agent A is off work (shift-wise or vacation-wise), Agent B wants to follow-up on the ticket / be able to respond to the assignee on the child ticket. However, only Agent A as the requester on the child ticket can update the parent ticket Side Conv that created the ticket.
Kai Bentley hmm, we'll take a look. Would you essentially want the previously involved agents to not be part of the email at all, or are you thinking something more along the lines of BCCing them so they still get an email (only on that message since they wouldn't be in subsequent email replies)?
Jamie Noell we have a couple ideas on this... one would be to synchronize the requester of the child ticket with the assignee of the parent, which would let the current assignee participate, but not the previous agent(s).
Or, we could add any agent that has ever been the assignee of the parent as followers of the children so any of them would be able to participate in the future. Which approach do you think would be preferable to you?
Hello,
In email side conversation, would it be possible to have an automatic link to the ticket in the signature of the email?
Slack side conversations include a link to the case and the case number, wondering if that is possible for email side conversations.
Additionally, would it be possible to use placeholders (ex: {{ticket.id}}) in email side conversations? or that's only possible with macros?
Carl Hajal currently that's only possible with macros, though we are going to do some investigation into supporting placeholders in general in the general text itself. Out of curiosity, why would you rather do this manually than with a macro? Thanks!
Toby Sterrett
I think out of those options B (BCCing them instead of adding them as a CC) would be fine for us - the agent who is offline doesn't always need to see the response as long as it's being picked up by someone else, but they may wish to be kept informed.
Our key concern is that we don't end up publishing the work email address of that agent to the recipient of the side conversation as a CC because it runs the risk of people trying to contact that agent directly, which takes it out of Zendesk and could cause issues.
I appreciate that agents can remove this manually, but it's making sure they remember to do it and it's also a reduction to efficiency.
Kai Bentley thanks for the feedback!
Toby Sterrett, thank you for the suggestions - I am not sure these will work, but I am hoping you can prove me wrong. :) My comments are in italics.
1) synchronize the requester of the child ticket with the assignee of the parent, which would let the current assignee participate, but not the previous agent(s)
Our child tickets are typically created for a different team, so Group A assignee creates child ticket for Group B. We would have to ask Group B assignee through a different system outside of Zendesk or through a new Side conversation email on the parent ticket to the Group B assignee on the child ticket. However, we are trying to keep our team working within Zendesk. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to ask Group B in a separate system, like Outlook or Teams, to please change the requester especially if the requester is just out for the day.
2) we could add any agent that has ever been the assignee of the parent as followers of the children so any of them would be able to participate in the future
The issue is not the original assignee. Our challenge is that Group A assignee is out of office, so another Group A colleague needs to follow-up on the child ticket. However, no one else in Group A can add a reply to the child ticket. Yes, we could ask for the Group B assignee on the child ticket to add the Group A back-up colleague to the ticket, but again, it seems like we are having to go outside of Zendesk to make this ask.
Preference: it would be preferable that if the assignee on the parent ticket changes, that assignee can write replies on Side Conv child tickets (via the parent ticket) created by the previous assignee in that group.
On side-conversation emails, how can i set it up on views, so that you can see at a glance which tickets have had a reply to the email but it hasn't been viewed since ticket last opened?
A bit like an email client which shows new responses received in bold until the email has been opened - except in the view
Jamie Noell that's essentially what I meant – anyone who is assigned to the parent ticket will also be added as a follower on any child tickets to ensure they can interact with it even if they don't belong to the group it's in. Sorry if that was unclear. But, good to hear that approach would be your preference.
Ian Marston at this time there's no way to show side conversation content directly in a view. However, you could do some clever trigger/macro things to make it possible to tag a ticket when a side conversation has unread messages from someone who is not the assignee of the ticket. Something along the lines of two triggers like:
The above trigger will add an "unread-side-conversation" tag when a side conversation receives a reply from anyone besides the ticket assignee.
Then, the following trigger will remove that tag when the assignee closes or replies to a side conversation:
Then you can set up a view that filters down to tickets assigned to the current user that have the "unread-side-conversation" tag.
The downsides to this approach:
Hopefully this gives you some ideas for now. We have some thinking going into a much more robust approach for the future.
Hello, some of our agents have a problem. If they open a new side conversion window and write a lot of text - if they then switch to another Zendesk tab to check something without submit the new side conversion, the complete draft is lost.
Hi Maik, thanks for writing in. May we know if the agent has tried clicking the plus + sign again after visiting other tabs and selecting the side convo channel where they write their draft (Ticket or Email) if the draft is still there? We did a test on our test account and the draft message are still there after visiting other tabs.
Thank you!
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