You can configure your Zendesk Support instance to be open, closed, or restricted (see Configuring end-users access and sign in). This article describes how to set up an open Zendesk Support instance, so that any user can see your help center and submit support requests.
This article contains the following sections:
Understanding what an open Zendesk Support instance means
Not requiring registration means that all of your users are unverified (users are not prompted to verify their email addresses), which is fine if you don't need or want your users to visit and use your help center (for example, see Setting up to provide email-only support). Registered users are verified, meaning that they (or you) have verified their email addresses and user accounts have been created.
Even though you don't require users to register, your users still have the option of registering and creating a login to use your help center, unless you modify your help center to hide the Sign Up and Login pages.
If you would like to provide open support, you have two options: registered or unregistered end-users. You can add users or they can add themselves.
Keep in mind that if your settings allow anyone to submit tickets, any visitor to your site can register while submitting a support request. This means they'll be able to access Help center content restricted to signed-in users. For more information, see Configuring how end-users access and sign in to Zendesk Support.
Anybody can submit tickets, no registration required
You can permit any user to submit a ticket without registering. If you don't require registration, users do not receive the welcome email, which prompts them to verify their email address and create a password so that they can sign in to your help center. Instead, they get an email notification that their request has been received:
If you don't want your users to visit your help center, because you provide support via email only for example, you can remove the link to the ticket that is contained in the triggers that are used to send email notifications when tickets are received and updated (see Removing ticket links from your notifications).
If you leave the ticket link in the email notifications, the user has the option of clicking the link to register and create a password so that they can sign in and use your help center and track their existing tickets, submit new support requests, and so on. If a registered end-user submits a ticket without signing in, it will be flagged (see About flagged tickets from registered users who are not signed-in).
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Configuration > End users. - In the Anybody can submit tickets section, select Enabled.
- If you use the Zendesk API to let users submit tickets, make sure Require
authentication for request and uploads APIs is not selected.
See Creating anonymous requests in the developer docs.
- Make sure Ask users to register is not selected.
This option is not visible if you haven't activated your help center yet.
- Click Save tab.
If you want to allow end-users to add attachments to their requests, see Enabling attachments in tickets.
Anybody can submit tickets, registration required
When you require your users to register, the support request workflow changes. Rather than the user's support request immediately becoming a ticket, it is held in limbo until the users (or you) have verified their email address. After verification, the ticket is added to your Zendesk.
The registration workflow is described in Registration.
To allow anybody to submit tickets and require registration
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Configuration > End users.
- Select Anybody can submit tickets
- Select Ask users to register.Note: If you started using Zendesk after August 20, 2013, this option is not available until you activate your help center. See Getting started with the help center.
- Click Save Tab.
If you want to allow end-users to add attachments to their requests, see Enabling attachments in tickets.
29 Comments
Thanks again for your help on this @.... My ticket was FINALLY escalated and the tech immediately realized that I had "allow end users to RESET passwords" disabled. This was part of our former SSO strategy and had never been reenabled.
Just wanted to mention it here in case it helps someone else....it is a vital piece of the "did you email us? get a password" process that doesn't seem to be well documented. I never found it in all of my searches for a solution...but I was not using the terminology of a "reset" because I was trying to just "allow" passwords to be used in the first place...I didn't realize the problem would be connected to the password reset process.
Happy New Year :)
Hi Zendesk -
Can we please have the understanding of how to do the below?
1. A user(our client) does some action in our website. (e.g: filling a form) and we have their email address in our database. Note that user does not send any email to anybody. He/she just clicks on a button or fills a form.
2. Our backend calls Zendesk API
3. Zendesk should create a ticket , in a way that it seems our client has created this ticket (the ticket should be ready to be replied to the email of our client)
Is this possible? Thank you
Hi Alex,
Thanks for writing! It seems you want the submitter or requester from your form to be the ticket requester when a ticket is created in your Zendesk. This is possible and you may want to create a custom form so that the requester will automatically be the email address of the user who submitted a request. You may check this guide - Building a custom ticket form with the Zendesk API . Thank you!
Hiya,
We've currently got this set up as "Anybody can submit tickets, no registration required" and we've noticed recently that tickets submitted via this route don't appear to be receiving the CSAT survey, even though an email is provided. Is this by design, or a configuration error on our end? Thank you!
A CSAT survey will be sent to the customer when the ticket meets all the conditions in the CSAT automation - the default CSAT automation is named Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation). We recommend checking the conditions set in your CSAT automation to make sure CSAT will be offered to your customers.
You can also check this article about Customizing your customer satisfaction survey.
Hi Zendesk ,
can you please explain this...
By allowing anybody to submit a ticket, you're opening Zendesk Support to anyone who wants to ask a question or report a problem.
If you want to restrict who can submit tickets, turn this option off. You will need to add users yourself.
Note that the Web Widget feature cannot be used if this option is turned off.
Why can the web widget NOT be used if I turn this off? This seems very counterproductive; the bot is hugely important to communicate to have it tied to this control. Can you please explain?
Hi Whitney Whitmoore!
Could you send us the link where you are quoting this? That way we can double-check the context of that statement. Because the widget can still load even without filling out a ticket form & the bot can still operate if your users are not signed in to your Help Center (as long as your Help Center is open to the public).
Hi Zendesk,
You mentioned above
"Even though you don't require users to register, your users still have the option of registering and creating a login to use your help center, unless you modify your help center to hide the Sign Up and Login pages."
How can I hide the sign up / login pages ?
Can I ask what you end goal is? How are you wanting your users to get support and interact with your help center?
Thanks!
I want them to view the help center without logging in to Zendesk
I would recommend taking a look at the following article: How can I completely hide the sign up button from my Help Center?
I hope this points you in the right direction!
Even is you disable the setting "anybody to submit a ticket", users are auto-created via SSO.
Example: A user from "Department A" shares a link to "Guide" with a colleague from "Department B" (Not yet in scope for Wave 1).
User in "Department B" is able to access the system after successfully authenticating via SSO. A user profile is auto-created by the platform and the user is able to see content that can be sensitive (e.g. HR) and submit requests.
Hi I tried to set up a ticket form to use, and set it up so that "anyone can set up a ticket".
I used it in a browser we never use for ZD and icognito, and it still routes to our admin login centre
Can you make sure that Require sign-in isn't enabled under your Guide Admin settings? You can find this option under Guide Admin > Settings (gear icon) > Guide Settings.
I hope this helps!
Okay I will try that, but currently we do not want customers to access the help centre or view anything but those tickets.
Is that possible?
There wouldn't be a way to show them the ticket form without having them access your Help Center. If there's any content within your Help Center that you don't want them to have access to, you'll want to restrict those at the article level to Agents and Managers. You can also create user segments to restrict Help Center content as well.
Let me know if you have any other questions :)
I will! So far so good. This is EXACTLY what we have been looking for as a solution to using Woofu forms!
already found out how to remove the sign in, search bar and submit a request fields!
Thanks again Brett!
Is it possible to restrict ticket priority status if they are registered? We have set the requirement for registration. We do not want anonymous users to submit critical issues.
you can restrict the priory status for end users in general.
Go to the Admin Center and open the ticket field "Priority", there you can restrict access for end users.
Here you can find more details on editing the priority field.
Unfortunately, it is natively not possible to only restrict the option "Critical" for end users, you either give customers the option to choose a priority or not.
Hi there, I would like to ask for a clarification regarding the option to allow to submit tickets with required registration. When selecting this option, this would only affect users who are selecting on the "Submit a ticket" option via the help center for example, but it wouldn't affect users who are sending an email to our support email address, correct?
Hi Giuditta Cortinovis the setting Anybody can submit tickets, registration required will affect users who send an email to your support address as well, when they send an email, they will receive a Welcome email asking them to register in your account.
Their ticket will be in your Suspended Tickets view until they register and verify their email address. Thank you :)
Hey there.
I'm trying to add a bit more finesse than the "all or nothing" approach but I struggle and would appreciate your assistance.
While I want for most of the tickets to come from authenticated users -we are using our own authentication system and not Zendesk's-, I have to have a few forms open to anonymous contact (e.g. the obvious "I can't login".., "I don't recognize this charge on my CC").
How does one can achieve that?
Looking forward to reading your answer.
Serge Pincon can you confirm I'm understanding you correctly? You're saying you'd like to have ticket submission available to any person who comes to your help center, but restrict certain forms to only be filled out by logged in users?
The opposite actually: Most of the forms to be restricted to user authenticated through our system; but a handful amount of forms opened to anyone (anonymous contact)
That sounds like exactly what I'm describing. Anyone can submit a ticket. It is open to anyone. However, some forms are restricted to authenticated users, while some are available to anyone. Yes?
This logic / flexibility is what I'm asking indeed.
Thanks, Serge. This is definitely not possible today, but an idea worth exploring for sure. We appreciate it.
We currently use zendesk internally for HR questions and concerns. We use voice, messaging, guide, and support. We currently use OKTA as our SSO and how our employees get into zendesk. One thing I am unable to figure out is when an employee goes through OKTA and they use the chat bot, it creates a new user account for them instead of recognizing that they are already a user in zendesk. How can authenticate a user in chat so it does not automatically create a new account for them? This has caused a problem with multiple accounts for the same person and it is hard to constantly check the user and merge the accounts.
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