![](https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/views_icon.png)
As an agent, your primary responsibility is to solve your customers' support requests. To do that, you work with tickets, which can arrive in various ways such as via the Help Center request form, directly through email, by telephone and text chat, and from social media such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. The options your customers have for requesting support are called channels. Your account owner or the administrator who set up your Zendesk Support determines what channels are included.
Depending on how you manage your ticket workflow, you may manually select and assign tickets to yourself or other agents. Tickets can also be automatically assigned to you and other agents via automations and triggers, which are referred to as business rules (you can read about these workflow management tools in Streamlining your support workflow in the Administrator Guide).
This article covers the following topics:
Related articles:
About the agent dashboard
The agent dashboard displays information about tickets assigned to you
and your groups, including open tickets and ticket satisfaction
statistics. You can view the dashboard by clicking the Home icon
() in the sidebar.
In the main window of the dashboard is a view of tickets requiring your attention and a list of up to the last 100 updates made to your tickets.
The tickets in this list:
- Have the status New or Open.
- Are assigned to you, unassigned in one of your groups, or not assigned at all.
- Are grouped by Priority, and by the latest Requester Updated date (oldest first). If the requester updates the ticket in any way, it is moved to the bottom of the list.
- (Enterprise only) Have the lock (
) icon next to the status for tickets assigned to private groups.
You can click on any of the columns (ID, Subject, Requester, and the like) to sort Ascending or Descending. However you cannot customize the dashboard view.
Viewing tickets
Tickets are organized into views, groups of tickets based on certain criteria. You can preview or open tickets from your view.
Tickets in a view are preceded with a colored icon indicating each ticket's current status.
- New
- Open
- Pending
- On-holdNote: The On-hold ticket status is available only if an admin has activated the On-hold status.
- Solved
![](https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/search_ticket_results_colors_updated.png)
If an admin has activated custom ticket statuses for your Zendesk instance, then you may see additional ticket statuses:
Depending on your permissions, you may see the Deleted tickets view. See Viewing deleted tickets.
Within a ticket, comments use background colors to indicate the type of comment, such as yellow for private comments or blue (temporarily) for comments and other ticket updates added while you're viewing the ticket. The exception is the Zendesk Agent Workspace which doesn't support blue (temporary) colors for comments.
This section provides the steps you'll take to:
- Display a ticket view
- Preview a ticket
- Open a ticket
- Return to a view
- Move to the next ticket in a view
- Submit a ticket and move to the next ticket in a view
To display tickets in a view
- Click the Views icon (
) in the sidebar to open the Views list.
- Click the title of any view in the list to display tickets in that view.
To preview a ticket in a view
- Hover your mouse over a ticket title or a ticket status
icon. The ticket preview appears:Note: Formatting applied to ticket comments does not appear in the preview. Instead, preview text appears unformatted, or as Markdown syntax (if applicable).
To open a ticket
- Locate the ticket in the view list.
- Click the ticket subject.
The ticket opens in the main window.
To return to the current view from a ticket
- Click the Views icon (
) in the sidebar.
- From a ticket, click the Next ticket button in
the upper-right corner of the ticket.The next ticket in the current view opens, even if another agent is currently viewing it. If another agent is viewing the ticket, you will see the agent collision notification.Note: If you click the Next ticket button after clicking Play, the Next ticket button serves the next ticket that is not being viewed by another agent. See Using Play mode for more information.
To automatically go to the next ticket in the view when you submit a ticket
- From a ticket, click the menu to the left of the Submit
button, then select Next ticket in view.
You do not have to select this option each time you submit a ticket. Once selected, the next ticket in the view will always open when you submit a ticket update. You can chose Close Tab if you prefer to open the current view after you submit a ticket.
Expanding and collapsing your views list
You can expand and collapse your list of views by clicking the arrow at the top of the views list. When collapsed, the views list will auto-show when you mouse over it, and auto-hide when you mouse away from it.
When the arrow is pointing towards your Views, the list is locked. When the arrow is pointing towards your tickets, the views list will auto-show and auto-hide.
By default, your views lists are expanded.
- Click the arrow at the top of the views list.
Your list of views collapses.
To expand the views list and lock it
- Mouse over the collapsed views list to auto-show the list.
- Click the arrow at the top of the views list to lock it
in place.
The views list is locked in the expanded position.
Tracking your recently viewed tickets
You can see the last five tickets that you viewed by hovering over the +add tab in the top toolbar.
Avoiding agent collision
In views, an eye icon appears next to tickets that are being viewed by another agent. You can also hover over the ticket to see details:
In tickets, collision details appear in the upper left corner:
You can tell how each agent is interacting with the ticket from the formatting of their picture or by hovering over it with your mouse.
- Agents with dimmed pictures have the ticket open, but have navigated away from it.
- Agents with regular pictures are viewing the ticket but not actively editing any fields.
- Agents outlined in blue are editing the ticket
In addition to other agents viewing or editing the ticket, you can also tell if a ticket has been updated.
- If a ticket you have open has been updated, you’ll see a
Ticket updated message at the top of the
ticket.
- Click Show more to see which agent made the
update.
- Click the close box (x) to remove the message.
Avoiding agent collision when adding ticket tags
To avoid collision issues, when two agents update ticket tags at the same time in a ticket, the updates are merged and all tags are included, regardless of who saved the ticket first.
Avoiding agent collision when using auto assist
When auto assist is activated on an account, auto assist can provide one suggestion for a given ticket that is visible to all agents currently on the ticket. For example, if one agent approves an auto assist suggestion, other agents will see that suggestion sent in the ticket conversation and auto assist will go into a “waiting for a reply state.”
Using Play mode
The Play button guides you through the available tickets in a view automatically. Press the Play button or icon to open the first ticket in the view. After addressing the ticket, click Submit to update it and automatically move to the next available ticket.
The next available ticket is the next ticket in the view according to the view's sort order (see Using views to manage ticket workflow) that you haven't already skipped and that no other agent is currently viewing. Views are also refreshed every five minutes, so you might see a ticket that wasn't part of the view when you started Play mode.
Enterprise and Enterprise Plus customers have an additional option, Guided mode, which automatically launches Play mode when an agent opens a view. If your administrator has enabled Guided mode, some of the procedures described in this section may not apply. For details, see Setting up Guided mode.
See also Troubleshooting agent collision in Play mode.
To open a view in Play mode
- Click the Views icon (
) in the sidebar and select a view.
- Click the Play button in the upper right hand to
open the first ticket. Depending on your settings,
you might be able to skip this step.
- The first available ticket in the view opens.
- Click Submit. The next available ticket opens automatically.
- By default, the next available ticket opens when you
click Submit. To stay on the ticket after submitting
changes, click the menu from the left of the Submit
button and select Stay on ticket.
Change this option back to Next available ticket before submitting your final updates so you can move to the next available ticket.
- Click Skip to move to the next ticket without making any changes to the current one.
- If you are in Guided mode and your administrator has
configured your role, you might also be required to
enter a reason for skipping the ticket. Enter a
reason in the window that appears and click
Skip again.
55 comments
Abhishek Harshwal
How do I move open ticket to view ticket that I created?
1
Shayne Traqueña
Hi Abhishesk Harshwal!
It depends on the condition that your Views has. Can you share its conditions so we can work on moving the tickets to the View.
For now, you can try to add Status is Open to the View's condition.
Thanks!
2
Magdalena Wolowiec
Play mode gets turned off after we refresh the page - can it be prevented? Skipping tickets, to get to the point where you finished, takes ages.
1
Cheeny Aban
Hi Magdalena,
Thank you for posting a comment on our Community. Yes, the play mode needs to restart if you refresh the page. As of the moment, there is no native way to route the agent back to the ticket that they are previously looking at. I've marked this conversation as product feedback for review, which means that your input will be aggregated as a part of our Voice of the Customer program that provides customer feedback to our product development teams.
All the best
1
Ariadna Di Fabrizio
To keep a ticket open after you submit it
Change this option to Close tab before submitting your final updates so you can move to the next available ticket.
1
Edmond Dang
Are we able to customize the dashboard here? We want to be able to edit and add columns similar to how we would do this when we go into "Admin Settings" --> "Views". Essentially we want our SLA (next breach) to be showing in that dashboard.
0
Josh
Thank you for messaging us. If you are referring to the UI/Dashboard of Zendesk itself, it's sad to say that it cannot be edited/changed. What I can only suggest is using the Views to edit it to see SLA's per ticket.
0
CJ Johnson
Hey, what does the "closed eye" icon mean?![](/hc/user_images/CJi60q3H00ly82nHIsvMig.png)
2
Dave Dyson
I'm hearing this is something added by the Lovely Views Plus app, although I'm not seeing any documentation as to what it means.
0
Mimi Le
Hey!
When using Play, some of our team members are noticing that they are landing on the same tickets even when it's been submitted as Open to their personal queue. We're under the impression that if you "take it" and "submit as Open", this should remove the ticket from a general queue and no one should be landing on that ticket. Do you know what could be causing the overlap in this?
2
Ash Turner
At the very bottom of this article, the posting makes reference to "If you are in Guided mode and your administrator has configured your role, you might also be required to enter a reason for skipping the ticket." How would an administrator configure a role to display Guided Mode & activate the Why are you skipping this ticket prompt? Thanks!
0
Dekbi
There are multiple ways to send a message to a user who does not currently have a profile within Zendesk.
0
Lee Ryall
How do I add "on hold" as an option within my tickets, as I only have "new, open, pending and solved"?
0
Lee Ryall
Also, is there a way of "flagging" as you would in Outlook so that it then becomes a priority?
0
Izabella Hammar
Hi,
Lee Ryall Admin Center > Ticket Field > Status > "Enable On-hold status"
It is a setting at the bottom of the page, > Save!
Regarding the other question, do you mean to the customer or flagged in Zendesk?
In Zendesk you can change priority of the ticket.
1
Lee Ryall
Hi Izabella,
Thank you for answering the first question, that's great!
Regards the second point, ideally I want my agents to be able to just flag an individual ticket for specific attention so that it is visible as a priority.
0
Izabella Hammar
Hi,
Then I recommend you to use the default Priority feature in Zendesk.
And I also recommend creating a view for tickets that has a higher priority, that will make it easy for the agents to start with those tickets in the morning, which
actually is creating a good effective workflow.
1
Lee Ryall
Thanks again Izabella.
Where in the Admin Centre would I find the Priority feature?
0
Brett Bowser
Izabella Hammar thanks for sharing your recommendations :)
Lee Ryall There should be a standard Priority field that was created with your account. You can find this under Admin Center>Object and Rules>Fields. If you don't see it then it's possibly in the Inactive tab which then you can re-activate. If you still don't see that field, then I'd recommend creating a custom drop-down field with your priority levels as the drop-down values.
0
Izabella Hammar
@Brett, If he create a custom field for priority it won’t work with any SLA and reporting will be a lot more complicated so I would not recommend it. For priority I highly recommend using the Zendesk native field
@Lee as Brett mentioned, check if the field is active. And also check that the priority field is added to your form. (Admin center> ticket forms)
If the field is activated and added to the form, it should appear on your tickets.
0
Lee Ryall
Hi,
I can see the default priority within "fields" and it's active but not showing in the tickets.
There is nothing in the "forms" section so how do I go about adding it in?
0
Lee Ryall
Ignore my last comment as I have used one of the guides to resolve this
0
Lee Ryall
Sorry one further question - how do edit or add more columns to the home ticket dashboard?
0
Izabella Hammar
Hi
Lee Ryall That is the default dashboard from Zendesk. I always recommend working from the views, and not the default dashboard. You can customize all views to have the work 100% after your own workflow and your specific needs, so that is better. I usually workshop around what views should be visible to what team, etc, and how should they be configured. You really want to have a system that is working effectively for you, and not just default that might not be the most optimal way of working.
1
Lee Ryall
I thought that might be the case Izabella, thank you for all your support on this.
0
Izabella Hammar
Lee Ryall No problem, Good Luck 😃
0
Brett Bowser
Izabella Hammar excellent point and thanks for correcting me there! Glad you both were able to get this resolved :)
0
Shayan Moussawi
Brett Bowser On Zendesk Relate 22 there was an announcement for a new Agent Home dashboard that would feature incoming Emails from side conversations and Tickets.
Do you have any information as to when we can expect this feature or whether it is still on the timeline?
1
Latasha Carter
How do I get a work ticket
0
Aaron Miller
Hey all, is it possible to get the "Others on this ticket" to only show up if they're part of your group? We have other departments glancing at support tickets occasionally and this often will cause a ticket to sit because support thinks one of us is working on it.
2