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Formatting text with Markdown



image avatar

Lisa Kelly

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Jul 29, 2024


123

74

74 comments

Not being able to copy-paste correct Markdown snippets is a major issue. We have defined many custom snippets that are not working correctly anymore due to this bug.

No one needs this live preview functionality when writing proper Markdown-formatted text - it just makes everything so much harder to edit. In the past, there was a dedicated preview window that rendered the Markdown while you could type the actual text in raw format. This is the only way to use Markdown properly and is an established scheme on many websites hosting technical text (e.g. GitHub, Stackoverflow).

PLEASE enable a simple raw text editor that does not try to be smart by messing with your text/code during editing.

5


Agreed Matthias Miltenberger! Another bonehead move on ZD's part. We already struggle with this silly feature in Jira. MD is such a powerful tool and both these companies are ruining in a failed attempt to make it more user-friendly.

1


Matthias Miltenberger and Nick Vincent-Maloney are both correct. We have very technical support staff that need to respond with very precise formatting. Every single one of them despises the new edit box in ZenDesk. I routinely get requests to move to a new support system because the act of responding to tickets is so frustrating.

Can we have an option to get a plain text box for use with Markdown? We'd even live without Markdown preview if all the automatic formating options were disabled.

0


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Cesar Perez

Zendesk Luminary

Can you pass this via the Ticket API? If so, that would be the syntax for bold? I tried **TEST** and it did not work. Do I need to escape the **? Thanks.

0


hey Cesar Perez

Could you try with 3x * on either side? 

***Test***

Best,

Amie

0


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Cesar Perez

Zendesk Luminary

Hi Amie Brennan - Tried it with the *** before and after, but it did not work. I sent it on the JSON as 'comment': {'body': body}, where the body is a variable holding the string. Thanks!

0


Hey @...,

Sorry to quote you on this, but as per your comment here, API should be able to use HTML formatting. I'm trying to create tickets like:

"ticket": {
"comment": {
  "body": "<strong>Test</strong>"
}
"requester": {
"email": "user@example.com"
"name": "Example User"
}
}

I'm trying to use an agent's email address + API token to authenticate. Is it possible to use any kind of formatting in this setup?

Just like Cesar Perez mentions, Markdown doesn't seem to be working either. Is there any way to pass text formatting when creating/updating tickets via API?

0


0


Oh, I'm so sorry. I totally missed that. html_body works great! Thank you so much!

0


In Zendesk it is possible to add background color to text in a way of highlighting parts. how can be this done with markdown instead of using the formatting-menu?


<span style="color:red">cardinals</span>


doesnt work

0


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Brett Bowser

Zendesk Community Manager

Hey Otto, 
 
It looks like you can only edit the text color and not the text background at this time. More information in this article: Announcing support for color text in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
 
Let us know if you have any other questions!
 

0


Thanks a lot, Brett.

I am slowly getting familiar with Zendesk and got already a new question:

How can I paste in my markdown-formatted text? Currently, this doesn't work:

When I paste text, for example `**bold** text`, it does exactly that: paste in the text with the markdown-formatting (the **) and does not apply bold formatting to the text. Is there a solution to this?

0


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Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hello All,

Thanks for your feedback on the current markdown support in Agent Workspace.

The below use cases are on our radar:

1. Provide an option to disable the real-time conversion of markdown syntax. 

2. Convert the markdown syntax when pasted into the composer.

We're currently working on the second use case and will be sure to update you when released. It should be available on Agent Workspace in a couple of days. Thanks!

 

1


We use dynamic content in our macros to support customers who speak other languages, but when we send dynamic content that contains markdown through live chat or messenger, the markdown is not supported. Agents have to manually remove the markdown before using the macro. Can you suggest a way that we can keep our macros formatted without sending raw markdown to customers on live chat? 

1


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Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hello All,

We worked on an enhancement for markdown support and would love your feedback here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4799753297818-Need-feedback-on-the-release-of-a-Markdown-enhancement-in-Agent-Workspace

Thank you!

 

0


Are there anyway to have users open the link in new tab?

[link](URL){:target="_blank"}

something like this perhaps?

0


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Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Yu Sakaguchi

 

At the moment it is not supported. The only Markdown syntax that we support at the moment is the ones listed in this article & in this documentation. Zendesk's Markdown function is more for formatting purposes. The {:target="_blank"} is more of an action. 

0



I can't do this in messaging section

0


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Gabriel Manlapig

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Ariya,

As of the moment, Rich Text or Markdown Formatting is still available on Agent Workspace, but not on Messaging channel. However, if you switch to Email or Internal note channel, then you can definitely use Rich Text and Markdown Formatting there. In addition, side conversations support RTF as well.

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. I hope this answer your question!
 

0


If you copy text with Markdown commands from a plain text editor, the content is automatically formatted as soon as you paste it. If you don't want the content to be automatically formatted, use Cmd+Shift+V to paste.

We have often the case, that we copy content from documentation, configuration files or log files in the comment editor in Support. This content often contains text like abc_xyz_iii, which becomes to abcxyziii by the automatically formatting. If this is not noticed by the agent, wrong information are provided to the customer.

If I copying text from a plain text editor (e.g. with Ctrl+V) I expect, that only the text is copied "as is" to the editor and not additional formatting is done. If the content should be formatted, this should be possible by pressing an additional key, not vice versa. Especially if we use the "Rich content" formatting instead of the "Markdown" formatting for comments. I don't know any tool which handles it in the way, which it is done in Zendesk.

It is also confusing, that any othet editor works differently. We don't notice the behavior in the editor for side conversations. Also in the end user editor in Guide or writing an article or community post, the copied content is not formatted.

 

0


Hello I'm testing out either typing Markdown directly into the RTE in Guide, as well as copying/pasting markdown from another source (have tried from MacDown as well as macOS Notepad).  Unfortunately none of them seem to be rendering properly in the ZD help center.

I've read and followed the instructions on this page but am still not having any success.  Is there something that is required in terms of editor settings, etc. that I have neglected to do?

Thanks.

0


Is there an escape character to prevent further interpretation?

I suspect that some other magic is being applied rather than markdown.

In my particular example I pasted some code into a code block using control-shift-V. It rendered fine in my agent web page. When I submitted my reply a word delimited by doubled braces was removed. That was {{project}} which I will spell out as OPEN_BRACE OPEN_BRACE project CLOSE_BRACE CLOSE_BRACE in case it gets mangled here too.

0


Within the CSAT automation email that goes out post-ticket solve, how would add 2 separate hyperlinks to our LMS? From reading, it's unclear as to whether HTML is supported in the CSAT automation email.

0


Matthias MiltenbergerNick Vincent-Maloney, Rob Mensching I feel your
pain, *deeply*.

For technical people these changes seem to make everything worse. I
opened a support case in relation to the behavior of pasting markdown
that includes code blocks. The response (after nearly a month) was to
amend the documentation to indicate that "If you paste Markdown text
with code blocks or nested lists, the format is not automatically
carried over into the ticket composer."
<https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408846544922#topic_ldp_nd5_25b>

It's not just formatting not automatically carried over, in my testing
it mangles it injecting paragraph tags. As far as I can tell the *only*
way to insert a code block is to *manually* type the backticks. This
multiplies the number of actions required to post a response by 5 times
the number of code blocks in the response!

- Select text to paste before any code block ( I would have had to
  select all so this one is a freebie)
- Manually insert code block
- Switch to other editor, select content within code block and copy
- Move back inside the newly inserted code block and paste
- Move back to the other editor, select content following the code block
  until the next code block and copy
- Paste after the inserted code block

This is a huge impact and introduces significant room for human error
for a simple copy and paste operation. It's /common/ that our responses
have at least two code blocks in a single response, so that's 10 extra
actions! It's not uncommon to have as many as 6 depending on the depth
of the question.

I guess the comment API
(<https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/ticketing/tickets/ticket_comments/#bodies%C2%A0>)
has support for HTML body plausibly I could leverage org-babel to
facilitate exporting content to html and posting via the API which might
be a better workflow for me personally, but it leaves anyone using
markdown in other systems to painstakingly go through their documents
carefully copy and pasting sections at a time.

I really fail to understand for whom this magical paste hijacking
improved things for. Mom and Pop pizza shop could just use the rich text
editor. Technical folk wanting markdown could use that and press a
button to preview (or introduce a live preview pane). Who is that middle
person that wanted to use /some/ markdown and avoid a button?

1


nick anderson, if I could upvote your comment more, I would. It is unclear how the current design is the best of all available.

0


Hey!

When will it be supported to use link as follow: 

[Link display text](http://www.sampleurl.com)

I want to use links in comments created by zapier but it currently doesn't allow me.

0


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Amisha Sharma

Zendesk Product Manager

Hello Stefan Roevros - We have released a fix for this. Rendering links and images should work now. Please let me know if otherwise. Thanks!

0


I simply want to paste an internal note with the following text:
provisioning_tools/upgrade_scripts/testusers.csv

from my clipboard, from Microsoft Notepad [or github path copy], but, if using ctrl-v or ctrl-shift-v it changes to
provisioningtools/upgradescripts/testusers.csv

This is extremely frustrating. I cannot paste it as a quote, code span, code block or anything else - it will not paste how it is in my clipboard... 

2


Hey Dave Fear

Weird. I just ran a test and it worked fine for me in my test account. Here's a screenshot of the submitted text you provided.

I just copied and pasted from my mac keyboard to copy it from your comment here into my ticket and submitted it. 

Am I missing anything here? 

0


Amie Brennan ; thanks for the test, but yes you're missing the "from my clipboard, from Microsoft Notepad" bit.
The issue lies when it comes from text being plantext. It's OK when in RTF (i.e. what happens when you copy from this page)

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