Full text searches return results from all the data in Zendesk Support. To search exclusively for ticket data, you can use ticket property keywords.
status:open
In the example above, status
is the keyword and
open
is the value. This search returns all the
tickets with status set to open. This of course directly maps to the ticket
fields and their values.
status:open group:"Level 2"
This returns all the open tickets that are assigned to the Level 2 support group.
This article covers the following topics:
For a quick reference to all searchable data, see Zendesk Support search reference.
Ticket property keywords
The ticket property keywords and their values that you can use in your searches are described in the following table. Not all of the ticket data is searchable. Administrators and agents can search for tickets using these keywords.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
Ticket ID | There isn't a property keyword for the ticket ID. Instead, you simply
search for the ticket by its ID number in the following format:233 |
created |
The date, or date and time, the ticket was created. Enter date in
yyy-mm-dd format. created:2011-05-01 Search within a date or time range. Enter times using ISO 8601 syntax. For example, to search for a ticket created between 10:30 a.m. and 12 p.m. (UTC) on August 1, 2014: created>2014-08-01T10:30:00Z created<2014-08-01T12:00:00Z For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
updated |
The date of the most recent ticket update. updated>2011-05-15 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
solved |
The date the ticket was set to solved. solved<2011-06-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
due_date |
The due date of tickets. due_date:2011-06-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
assignee |
The assigned agent or other entity. You can specify "none", "me",
user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone
number (see the phone user
property for help searching by phone number).assignee:"Susan Warren" |
submitter |
The ticket submitter. This may be different than the requester if the
ticket was submitted by an agent on behalf of the requester. You can
specify "none", "me", user name (full name or partial), email address,
user ID, or phone number (see the phone user
property for help searching by phone number). See Searching ticket user roles. submitter:me |
requester |
The ticket requester. You can specify "none", "me", user name (full
name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone number (see the phone user
property for help searching by phone number).requester:amy@mondocam.com |
subject |
The text in the ticket's subject. subject:"upgrade account" |
description |
The text in the ticket's description and comments.description:defective |
custom_status_id |
If custom ticket statuses are
activated, search for a specific system or custom ticket
status. Specify the status by its numeric ID, which you can find on the
Ticket statuses page when editing a ticket status.
|
status |
Possible values: new, open, pending, hold, solved, closed. status<closed |
ticket_type |
Possible values: question, incident, problem, task. ticket_type:problem |
priority |
Possible values: low, normal, high, urgent.
priority>low |
group |
Specify the name or ID of a group. Returns tickets assigned to agents
who are members of the group. Examples:group:"Level 2" group:20663166 |
organization |
Specify the name or ID of an organization. Returns tickets by
requesters who are members of the organization. Examples:organization:customers organization:22989442 You can also specify "none" to return tickets by requesters who are not members of any organization. organization:none |
tags |
Specify tags that have been added to the ticket or "none."tags:premium To find tickets that include either of two tags, use: tags:important tags:urgent To find tickets that include both tags: tags:"important urgent" |
via |
The ticket's source, for example:
via:phone For a full list of sources, see Via types reference in the Zendesk developer documentation. |
commenter |
People who have added comments to tickets. You can specify "none",
"me", user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone
number (see the phone user
property for help searching by phone number).commenter:"Mike" |
cc |
People who have been CC'd on tickets. You can specify "none", "me",
user name (full name or partial), email address, user ID, or phone
number (see the phone user
property for help searching by phone number).cc:amanda@mondocam.com |
fieldvalue |
Search for a specific value in any custom ticket fields by using the
fieldvalue keyword. For example:fieldvalue:12345 This returns all the tickets that have a custom field with the value "12345." For drop-down custom fields, search for tags associated with the field value you want to find. For checkbox custom fields, you can search for tickets with the field checked or unchecked. For example: custom_field_<Field ID>:checked |
custom_field_{id} |
Search for a value of a specific custom ticket field. Specify the
field by its numeric ID, which you can get from the URL of the Ticket
Fields page in the admin interface or with the Ticket Fields API. The syntax
is custom_field_<custom field ID>:<value> . Example:
You can search for values ranging from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. |
brand |
Search for a specific brand on a ticket using the brand name or the
brand ID. A brand with two or more words requires quotation marks. For
example:brand:Nordstrom Or
brand: "Banana Republic" Or brand:<ID number> |
has_attachment |
Search for all tickets with or without attachments using
true or false . To search for tickets with attachments:
To search for all tickets without attachments:
|
form |
Search for all tickets created with a particular ticket form. If the name of the ticket form includes multiple words, use quotation marks. For example:
If the name of the ticket form is a single word, you don't have to use the quotation marks. For example:
|
recipient |
Search for all tickets created with a particular recipient. This
only works for Zendesk support addresses (the ultimate destination)
of emails forwarded from external
addresses.
|
comment |
Search for text within a ticket's
comment.
To search for an exact match within the comments of a ticket, use double quotes.
Note: Only
the first 500 comments in a ticket are
searched.
|
All of the ticket property keywords can be used in search statements alone, in combination
with other ticket property keywords, or with the type
keyword (see Using
the type keyword).
Searching ticket user roles
Users have various roles on tickets (requester, assignee, etc). These user roles can be searched by the user's ID, their name (partial or full), or their email address, as in these examples:
requester:52789480 submitter:amy assignee:"amy moore" requester:amy@mondocam.com
Notice that none of these searches required the ID, or name, or email to be explicitly declared. Each of these keywords accepts all of these user identifiers.
Searching custom ticket fields
You can search for a specific value in custom ticket fields by using the
fieldvalue
keyword. For example:
fieldvalue:12345
This returns all the tickets that have a custom field with the value "12345."
If your custom field assigns a tag to the ticket, you can also search for custom ticket fields using the tags that you assigned to the custom field. For example, if you created a drop-down list, you can search for the tags assigned to each list box item.
To search for specific drop-down list selections, you use the
tags
keyword.
tags:product_question
This applies to the custom field types that can be assigned tags: the drop-down list and the checkbox. The checkbox custom field can include a tag to indicate that the user has clicked the checkbox.
All of the other custom fields types except the lookup relationship field
(text, multi-line text, numeric, decimal, regular expression) can be
searched by the text or number values submitted by ticket
requesters. For example, if you added a numeric custom field to the
support request form to collect demographic information such as age,
you can search for the numbers that the requesters entered in the
form (type:ticket "18"
).
Searching by the lookup relationship field is not supported.
Additionally, you can search only a specified custom ticket field using its ID (found on the Ticket fields page in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Fields). For example:
Syntax | Example |
---|---|
|
Returns a list of tickets where the custom ticket field with ID 1413 includes the phrase"new". |
|
Returns a list of tickets where the custom ticket field with ID 1413 is blank. |
|
Returns a list of tickets where the custom ticket field with ID 1413 is used, and not blank. |
Searching for ticket attachments
You can use the following keywords when searching for ticket attachments.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
has_attachment |
You use this keyword to search for tickets that either do or not contain file
attachments. There are two valid values for this keyword: true
and false .
|
attachment_name |
You can also search for a file attachment by name.
|
Searching for tickets with a specific ticket form
You can search for a ticket form and get results for all tickets where that ticket form is applied. For example, the following search returns all tickets that use the Change Request ticket form:
form:"Change Request"
Searching for tickets by telephone number
To locate a user's tickets based on their phone number, you can use a search statement like this:
requester:+14154187506 status:new
This works with all of the ticket user roles: submitter
,
requester
, and assignee
.
Searching for yourself
The me
keyword value allows you to search user properties in tickets where
the value is your own user account (as the currently logged in user).
assignee:me
requester:me
submitter:me
assignee:me
For information about searching for user profile data, see Searching users.
Ordering and sorting ticket search results
Search results can be ordered and sorted using the order_by
and
sort
keywords.
status:new order_by:updated_at sort:asc
Here are the valid sorting and ordering keyword and value pairs that you can use:
sort:asc
sort:desc
order_by:priority
order_by:status
order_by:ticket_type
order_by:updated_at
order_by:created_at
All of the order_by
and sort
keyword/values pairs can be
used when searching ticket data.
51 comments
Erik Greenwood
Thank you Dwight, I will check out the search syntax
0
Maurice Horan
Is there a way to search for tickets that have no type i.e. that aren't tickets, incidents, problems, tasks etc?
I have a number of tickets in my queue that don't have any type and I need to quantify them.
0
Cheeny Aban
Is there something common with those tickets? If yes, I suggest that you create an Explore report and use that common information like tag, email, and or created date, as a filter to show those tickets on your report.
0
Antal Clavel
Is there a way where I can search in the contents of a PDF attachment in tickets?
(eg. I am looking for an order" which is referred to in the PDF but not in the accompanying email text.)
0
CJ Johnson
I just cannot make any part of custom fields search actually work. I have one that has literally thousands of tickets with values.

I couldn't get it to work for any specific value, so I tried the star method, and even that says no matches. Has there been an update to this feature? Can we no longer search by custom field values?
0
Dave Dyson
Your screenshot (thanks for including that) makes it look like there's a blank space between "custom_field_" and the field ID number. Can you try removing that blank space and see if that helps?
0
CJ Johnson
@... I can confirm there's no space. Also, this same search works great via the API without issue.
0
Dave Dyson
custom_field_1500011198782:*
returns both tickets that have a value for that field. Prepending a minus ahead of that returns every ticket except those two, and I can also search specifically for the values in that field and it all is working fine for me. Are you still seeing issues with this?I'll add that when searching for specific values for drop-down fields, I had to use the tag instead of the string value, but otherwise it worked fine for that field as well.
If you're still unable to get results in the Support agent interface's search function, let me know and I'll create a ticket on your behalf.
0
Tim Burgess
Hi!
I'm facing an issue with the search page resetting the sort order when opening a saved search link.
* I write a search string including an order_by:X and sort:desc clause, and I wish to be able to send the results of this search to colleagues (to pin at the top of a slack channel for my team)
* I select "copy link", and indeed I get a link containing the full search string including the order_by clauses.
* However, when I _use_ that link e.g. in a new tab, or by sending to a colleague, when the page opens the sort order and order_by terms are gone.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Tim
0
Dwight Bussman
HeyO Tim Burgess - This is a known issue that's currently under investigation by our search team. Please keep an eye on our release notes for announcements when a fix for this is released.
0
Collin C
Is there a keyword for searching only the initial comment of a ticket? In all other contexts this is called the "description," but in search this seems to include any subsequent comments on the ticket as well. I think this is misleading.
0
Dane
Unfortunately, once a keyword has been entered, it will search for all the ticket comments on the ticket and there's no option to restrict it just on the ticket description.
0
Sol Jalaludin
I have integrated Salesforce, and a ticket created from Salesforce and synced to Zendesk as the origin as "Via system". What is system?
I'd like to use this as a trigger condition but couldn't find "system" in the channel drop down list.
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Please see this helpful article to help determine how tickets are created and from what channels:
How was that ticket created?
"If a ticket is created from a web application that is connected to Zendesk, such as a custom app, you will see Via System notated under the ticket subject line."
A custom field would be necessary if you want to identify these tickets created from Salesforce in a trigger in Support. Or, also add the condition mentioning about the subject text - it depends on what you want exactly and your own setup.
I hope that helps!
0
Eckhard Doll
I am currently trying to find all tickets that include an attachment.
has_attachments:true gives odd results. 83 tickets are found which is far too few but 1455 side conversations are listed. Are there any details on what exactly counts as an attachment and how this search works?
0
Dwight Bussman
HeyO Eckhard Doll
I've seen other examples of this and the most comment reason is that it's possible to embed inline images using HTML which function as attachments, but aren't technically directly "attached" to the ticket in a standard sense. This is tricky to detect from an API perspective: where do we draw the line in terms of an inline image being counted as an attachment.
If you have examples that aren't returned by the has_attachments:true that you'd like us to look into, please contact our support team to do so, but the short version is that tickets will only be indexed for search as having attachments when those are formally attached directly within the ticket itself (i.e. not just referenced in the html_body of a comment).
0
Jeff
Noticed recently that if you attempt to use your Search Zendesk Support box and you add multiple tags, you will not show results for those tags anymore and your search criteria will only apply to one (1) tag entered.
0
Dwight Bussman
HeyO Jeff,
I'm not certain the part of our product to which you're referring, and would encourage you to contact support if you're seeing behavior that seems unexpected.
If this is referring to the Search Filters:
These appear to return results for either tag, making this search akin to
where any ticket with either of those tags should be included in the results.
0
Ingrid
Is there a filter to limit number of results? I'm using Advanced Search, and for a specific search I e.g. only want max 10K results on closed tickets created between certain dates.
0
Mike DR
I did double check the article and searched additional resources on our end, as of now, it isn't possible to limit the tickets being searched. I do understand this is a neat feature to have, what I would love to do with your partnership is attack this from both fronts; on my side, I'll flag a couple of articles for revisions as there are places we can call this out that could expressly mention it so others don't experience the frustrations you've experienced, and on your end if you could submit product feedback as outlined here to communicate use case, headaches caused, etc. so our product team can take it into future roadmap + release consideration I would be greatly appreciative.
0
Cas.D
When searching for multiple values of the same custom field, one can add the following to the
query
parameter of the/search
endpoint:custom_field_1234:some_value custom_field_1234:some_other_value
This will search for instances where the custom field with ID
1234
contains “some_value” or “some_other_value” - this works as expected.When searching the same field for blank/NULL values, one can include the following to the
query
parameter:-custom_field_1234:*
And, this will correctly return all instances where the field with ID
1234
has blank/NULL values.There is an issue, however, when combining the two. Example: I need to find all instances where the values is either “some_value” or is blank:
custom_field_1234:some_value -custom_field_1234:*
This will result in only the blank values.
Is there another way to accommodate this use case?
0