Question
Can I edit a closed ticket to add information?
Answer
Admins can only edit the Tags, Subject, and Priority ticket fields on closed tickets from the Agent Workspace or from the ticket API endpoints when the modify closed tickets setting is enabled. You can only edit tickets in solved status before they are closed through business rules, such as this automation: Close ticket 4 days after status is set to solved.
You can only create follow-up tickets from closed tickets and business rules such as triggers and automations don't act on closed tickets at all. For more information, see the article: About system ticket rules.
You can delete closed tickets. However, from a ticket view or a user profile, you cannot mass delete closed tickets. Instead, use this article: How can I bulk delete closed tickets?
If your account uses the Zendesk Agent Workspace, you can redact closed tickets. For more information, see the articles:
30 comments
Rich Shupe
This is critical to us as a Zendesk customer.
22
Gatis Bertmanis
Yeah, need to enable closed ticket editing, for the most reasonable, to unassign from assignee old tickets.
Second, cases rises when the agent can not see other agent tickets in profile view, because there are more than 24'000 tickets, and then it shows "There are no tickets in this view". And it is caused by this huge amount of tickets, and the system can not proceed with it or takes a lot of time to load all tickets.
Another solution would be, to allow to make a ticket filter in profile ticket view, to shows by default only, for example, last 6 month tickets, not a full load of all tickets.
7
Rich Shupe
Editing tags... there are many reasons.
I can't speak definitively yet, because we're still evaluating the replacement software we'll be moving to, but I'm not sure if many/any others have this limitation. JIRA doesn't, for example, which I mention simply because we use that internally.
13
Justyna Pultowicz
Here also requested: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360034870553-Feature-Request-Ability-to-edit-closed-tickets
I put in another usecase to why this is a feature needed. I can go out of my way to make what I want work, but it feels like there should be an easier way of doing this...
4
Scott T
There are multiple threads related to the inability to edit closed tickets and I've read most, if not all of them. One thing I have not found is the reason why this change hasn't been implemented. Many of the justifications provided by customers are deal-breakers. There are many things I like about Zendesk but, based on this shortcoming alone, I would not recommend it.
My guess is that closed tickets are set to read-only in the database for performance reasons. Is my guess correct or is there something else?
2
Nazir Kabbani
Workaround? create a automation the opens then solves tickets every 20 days so they never stay solved for 28 days until the cut off of your choosing (repeat 20 days automation many times?)
3
Nadeem Taj
i honestly dont know why these simple requests that are so easy to implement are ignored, year after year, after year. Everyone of your customers are saying the same thing.
Simple workaround, use another platform apart from Zendesk. I'm finding it difficult to justify the expense on a "less than adequate" platform.
5
Dawie Otto
It would be super helpful to have this feature.
We add billing references to our tickets and sometimes we can only generate the invoice once the job is completed and signed off by the client.
By then the ticket is already closed and we are unable to add the billing reference.
Leaving the tickets in a Solved status for a longer period is not an option.
1
Danny B.
I used to have this understanding that we would need to update a ticket even if it is close (same use cases as above), but with some realizations, a "close" ticket is a close ticket, you should never touch those, once you opened it again or even just an update to a field, becomes an Auditing nightmare!!!
What are team did is fine tune some process management, update what you need to update i.e. fields, comments, etc, before setting the ticket status to "solve". You can even add your own "internal status" as a custom field. Then configure an automation that if the ticket status is "Solved", and no updates to the ticket for 'x' no. days, then set to close.
Else, you will never have an end state to your ticket lifecycle.
0
Rich Shupe
Thanks for adding your experience, that may help others.
However, for many ZD users this is a needed feature and is common/expected in many competing systems. Even if you can manage to make your ticket perfect before closing (which isn't always the case, is subject to human error, etc.) there are still reasons that older tickets must be changed, some of which have been listed in this thread, I think.
This is mandatory for us and is one of a few reasons that we're looking for another system.
4
Danny B.
Thank Rich Shupe. I totally understand where you are coming from.
Just from an auditing perspective, which we experienced, once you allow anyone to update a "closed ticket", you are opening it to a whole new complexities, regardless what ticketing system you used.
Another option is to create a 'child-like' ticket that is related to a the "closed ticket". You can have a new custom field i.e. "closed linked ticket id" so you'd be able add new information (i.e. tags, internal notes, etc,) and still be able to search, report on these tickets accordingly.
0
Stephen
As mentioned in another thread - the inability to modify information on Closed tickets is becoming very difficult.
In particular, the inability to redact data - we would like to be able to remove certain personal data / attachments from legacy tickets for privacy compliance reasons.
2
Charlie
This is really bad. I recently made some changes to our default ticket form that hide certain fields based on a new boolean ticket field. Because the new ticket field was only recently added, and defaulted to False for all closed tickets, a ton of information was automatically hidden on these old tickets. I tried to update the new boolean field on all of those old tickets via an api script and can't? Do I have to reverse the changes we made to our ticket form to expose those fields?? Really, really bad.
0
Rich Shupe
Yes, there are many upset customers due to this. We're switching systems because of this issue.
Worse, there's never been any justification--that I could find (and that's important for me to say)--for why it works this way or why customer needs are being ignored.
-1
Charlie
It's worth pointing out too that there's problematic inconsistency in the way the logic of this behavior is applied.
Changes made to a ticket form are reflected on closed tickets. As a result, those closed tickets -- from a UI perspective -- do not look like they did when they were closed, if the form has been changed. The ostensible intention to freeze tickets in the exact state they were in when they were closed is therefore not being achieved.
3
Stephen
+1 for Charlie's comment.
It's extremely frustrating when a change is to a Form and it applies to long closed tickets. What is the point of restricting users ability to modify the Closed tickets, when they can inadvertently be changed by a workflow update.
1
Carl Hajal
+1
On our end, if an agent mischaracterized a situation or new info came to light, we would like to be able to add it and change tags.
4
Nathan Purcell
I've just tried to perform a document redaction (using the Zendesk redaction tool) and encountered the same error.
The redaction request came directly from the customer. Zendesk is hindering our customers ability to control their own data, and putting us at risk as a data controller.
Zendesk: you can log changes made after a ticket is closed. Perhaps allowing these changes to be made but recording what has happened is a resolution?
1
Greg Rubin
To add my voice here, as someone needs to do a data cleanup for more accurate reporting, that becomes impossible with Zendesk. Therefore, I am stuck with all of my predecessors mistakes with duplicate fields or incorrect field choices by agents.
1
Ahmed Esmat
The ability to edit closed tickets is extremely needed to be able to alter ticket fields values and tags. Use cases include modifying custom field values when they change, and correcting wrong values. Another use case is switching a custom ticket field type from free text to a drop-down field.
3
George Smith
This is critical to one of my business units and would love to have this ability.
1
Chris Royall
Adding support for this change. As a software provider I do not understand why any software company would simply ignore continual requests for functionality that would not be difficult to implement - unless there is a technical restriction in which case just say so and we can move on.
1
John DiGregorio
Nice - 22 comments and not one response from Zendesk
1
Nicole Saunders
Hi all -
Apologies that this wasn't shared sooner, that definitely should have happened before, but here is the official feature request for the ability to edit closed tickets:
Feature Request: Ability to edit closed tickets
That is the conversation that the product manager will provide updates going forward; I encourage you to up vote, add comments, and subscribe there.
1
Conny Svanberg
Can you please pin your post to be visible at top of the comment list, Nicole?
0
Alexis Granja
+1
0
ZenIT
Also key for our Zendesk instance in MSF, thanks for noting that
0
ASPOCK Admin
+1
We track RCA's of our issues as a seperate ticket & we link it to the field issue. We close the RCA in system once we figure out the root cause but there could be a new case from field which is similar to previoous & agent needs to link the closed RCA to new field issue even if its closed & update few fields on RCA form.
0
Jon Miron
Adding another vote for this! Thanks Team Zendesk.
3
Sam Weekley
This would be very helpful, the Follow-Ups created have bad formatting and hard to follow. Much easier to edit an existing ticket.
1