If needed, you can merge one or more tickets into another ticket. You might do this if you receive two support requests about the same issue from the same end-user, for example.
It's also possible to merge a group of tickets into a single ticket. See Bulk merging tickets.
Ticket merging rules:
- The tickets must be less than Solved. You can merge an unsolved ticket into a Solved
ticket. Doing this will not reopen the Solved ticket.
If an admin has activated custom ticket statuses, then the tickets must have a status that belongs to a status category that is less than Solved.
- The tickets can't be shared with another Zendesk Support instance via Ticket sharing. If you unshare a ticket, it can be merged.
- If you have ticket CCs enabled:
- You can merge two tickets with different requesters. The requester of the ticket you close with
the merge is added as a CC to the new ticket.
Note: A message appears when you merge tickets with different requesters. Make sure that you're not unintentionally sharing sensitive information when merging tickets across requesters before you continue.
- If anyone was CC'd on an original ticket, they are also added as a CC on the merged ticket.
- You can merge two tickets with different requesters. The requester of the ticket you close with
the merge is added as a CC to the new ticket.
- If you don't have ticket CCs enabled, you can only merge two tickets if they are from the same requester.
- The most recent public comment from the ticket being closed with the merge appears in the merge window. You can choose to remove or edit the comment. Otherwise, the most recent public comment is included in the new ticket's comment with a link to the closed ticket. You can review previous comments in the closed ticket. No other comments appear directly in the new ticket.
- Ticket fields, including Tags, Type, Priority, and Status, aren't carried over from the ticket being closed with the merge. Only fields that are filled out in the new ticket are saved.
- Merges are permanent and can't be undone.
- The ticket that's closed with the merge has the tag closed_by_merge added.
- You can use this Explore report to exclude tags with the closed_by_merge tag. However, you can't produce reports based on the fields of the ticket that was closed by the merge. For more details, see What Explore reporting options are available for merged tickets?
- Merged tickets lose any HTML formatting.
To merge one ticket into another ticket
- Open the ticket that you want to merge into another ticket.
- Click the Ticket options menu in the upper right, then select Merge
into another ticket.
- You can enter a ticket number, select one of the ticket requester's
open tickets, or select one of your recently viewed tickets.
If you’re attempting to merge a ticket into a ticket with a different organization, brand, or requester, a message appears.
- Make sure that you aren’t unintentionally sharing sensitive information
by merging the tickets, then click Continue Merge.
- When you select a ticket to merge into, you'll be prompted to confirm
the merge. Note: There is a known issue where Markdown might inappropriately render in merged ticket comments, even if Markdown is not enabled.
- Decide if you want the requester to see the merge comments.
You can edit the merge comments that are added to each ticket and choose whether you want the requester can see the comments.
To hide merge comments from requesters, deselect Requester can see this comment for both merge comments. Admins can also set the default privacy for all ticket comments to make merge comments deselected by default.
If you remove all text from the comment box, the most-recent comment from the merged ticket will appear as the updated ticket comment.
- Select Confirm and Merge.
Be sure that you merge the correct tickets. Ticket merges are final; you cannot undo or revert a ticket merge.
The ticket that was merged into another ticket is closed.
87 comments
Susana Alejandra Ceron
Hi,
Is there a way to stop users from merging if the tickets are from different channels?
0
Juraj Jarmek
Hello Alejandra,
We cannot restrict whether tickets are coming from two different channels.
We can only restrict the merging capability for specific agents roles, as outlined in the article.
Hope that helps!
0
Nikki Goodson
I believe I already know the answer, but I will ask anyway!
Let's say I merge Ticket 1 into Ticket 2.
Ticket 1 becomes closed.
Customer has emails from both Ticket 1 & Ticket 2 in their sent folder. If they reply again to their original Ticket 1 email, then does it become a follow-up ticket as usual? Or does ZD recognize that the ticket has been merged, and instead put the new message into Ticket 2?
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hey Nikki! I've done some testing and can confirm that the replies made from a closed from merged ticket will be updated into the open ticket (Ticket 2) :)
0
Nikki Goodson
That's fantastic, and not the answer I expected, but definitely what I hoped!
Thanks for testing.
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
You're welcome! We're happy to help :)
0
Jan Post
How can I auto merge tickets where the subject contains an external ticket number, but the other part of the subject is different.
0
Tudor-George Pascu
Thank you for reaching out! I'm George from the Advocacy Team and I will be pleased to help you with this :)
Unfortunately, It is not possible to automatically merge tickets from with the same subject. You can merge tickets manually but not through business rules.
For more information, see Merging tickets.
Even though you can't do this natively, I have found an app in our marketplace that may help you auto-merging tickets. However I must say that this app is not free, and it only has a trial of forty days. I am linking you this app and I hope this will be useful for you.
Since this function is currently not available in Zendesk and I have no details on the future introduction of such a function, I will recommend you leaving as a feedback so our dedicated team will review it and consider attaching it in future updates . This is to improve our product and also allows this update to be included in future versions of Zendesk
I hope this answers your question and I apologize that there is not much left to do in this case. I will set this ticket to "solved" for the time being. However, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
-1
Au Finh
@... thanks for suggesting our app! I just wanted to clarify that the free trial is 14-days but can always be extended if necessary. Also, matching tickets with regular expressions is something that we are considering. Barring any technical limitations, we hope to deliver this feature by the end of the year.
0
Tudor-George Pascu
Thank you for your answer!
The only way to merge tickets is manually from within the agent interface. Triggers/automations are unable to automatically merge tickets at this time. In this community post you can find also other people looking for this query: Automatic merging tickets
The third party app (Auto Merge)that I have recommended you and that is available in Marketplace will allow you to automatically merge tickets from the same requester based on matching fields. This is developed by Playlist if you want to ask for a trial extension, I would recommend you contact the app developer directly for any concerns about the app.
I hope this answers your question and I apologize that there is not much left to do in this case. I will set this ticket to "solved" for the time being. However, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind Regards,
-1
Au Finh
@... I am the developer at Playlist :)
0
Tudor-George Pascu
Thank you for your answer!
However, in this case I am sorry to say that here from Zendesk there is nothing we can do from our side.
If you would like to still want to look for a solution through this (however a paid solution) as a corporate customer, I can offer you our professional services that can help you after an expertise on how to set this functionality in your account. "https://www.zendesk.com/customer-experience/professional-services/"
I am sorry there isn't to much left for me in this case to do related your query.
Kind regards,
0
Au Finh
Jan Post FYI regex matching is now available for Auto Merge. You can now extract specific parts of the subject (e.g. user ID) and use it for matching.
0
Rebecca Katz
Is there a way to set rules for the merging? i.e. only merge tickets from the same user or same organization etc. ?
The ability for any agent to merge any combination of tickets sounds a bit risky to me
0
Au Finh
Rebecca Katz Agreed. All user input is prone to error. That's why some of our Auto Merge customers remove ticket merging permissions from agents and just leverage the app to automatically merge tickets from the same requester. You can configure different merge rules for different scenarios.
0
Josh
Thank you for your question. Currently there are no rules that can be set for merging but only if it can be enabled for agents or not (applicable for Enterprise Plan). However, we understand your user-case as it can be risky and prone to agent error.
What I can suggest is posting this to our Product Feedback topic in the community so that our product managers can see this.
Best,
0
Orlando Candelaria
Does the sequence of merging affect what can be seen? Should you merge the least recent into the most recent? Are the ticket display and events chronological whatever sequence you merge the tickets? What about mass merge?
0
Hervin
The sequence of merging does not particularly affect what can be seen in the "merged into" ticket. When you merge a ticket into another, the now-closed ticket will appear as a new comment in the open ticket. That means that the now-closed tickets events and comment timestamps are not factored in at all when looking at the events/comments of the open ticket.
For the purpose of readability, it would be a generally good idea to merge tickets in a way that makes sense for those reading the open ticket. Also, when you merge tickets in bulk in Support, the several tickets are added to the new ticket in one single internal note. Ex. "Requests #76, #81, #88 were closed and merged into this request."
I hope this helps!
0
Federico Angarita Benavides
Hello,
Is there a way to control that the tickets closed by a merge have the form fields filled out?
1
Au Finh
Federico Angarita Benavides To my knowledge this is not possible natively in Zendesk. You can enforce required fields for the purpose of reporting through our Ticket Merge app. For more details, see Required fields for merging.
1
Leif Cederblom
I have a parallel question Federico's... I see the option to use the Ticket Merge app, which looks awesome (Thanks Au Finh!) but if we're on a professional account, how do I disable the default merge option?
Our agents are merging tickets without required fields being completed, which is not ideal.
Thanks!
1
Jeff C
Hi Leif,
Unfortunately there is not an option to disable merge available on the Professional plan.
There is a feature on Enterprise plans called Custom Roles which allows you to assign Roles to your Agents and restrict them from merging tickets.
1
JI
Is there an automation option to set resolution to [X] when a ticket is merged, so that my ticket resolutions are not [Blank] ? (Affecting my telemetry and dashboards)
Thanks!
2
Dane
Any field changes should be done before you merge a ticket. Automations or any updates will no longer work on a closed ticket.
0
JI
I don't feel that my question is answered.
I'm asking whether there is a way to automatically set the resolution field when the merge is done, without having to update each of the tickets individually.
Doing this manually is not pheasible or practical, given the quantity and frequency of ticket merges.
For context, this happens when a recipient is the email address of a customers helpdesk systems (meaning that responses from these create new tickets each time), or when multiple notifications are received (eg Azure monitoring) for the same trigger.
0
Dane
Once the merge is done, the ticket where the merge was initiated will be closed and can no longer be modified. That is an expected behavior of closed tickets. The only active ticket will be the one that that the other tickets merged into. If your reporting is being affected by those tickets, you can exclude them by using the tags closed_by_merge.
1
John Engelhart
Hello,
I want to restrict merging to within the same brand only. Is this an option?
Use-case: We are a multi-brand organization. Customer A submits a separate request to each brand from the same email with the same text. The agent sees these requests and merges the tickets across brands.
Our goal is to prevent agents from having the ability to merge across brands. If this is not a global setting, please consider adding this feature. Thanks!
1
Dave Dyson
I'm afraid there isn't a way to restrict ticket merging this way. For better visibility to our product team, would you mind posting your use case to our Feedback - Ticketing System (Support) topic, using this template to format you feedback? Thanks!
0
Jupete Manitas
Thanks for writing in, and apologies for the delayed response here. The CSAT survey of agent 1 will remain as agent 1's CSAT if agent 2 will not change the assignee of the reopened ticket with CSAT when merging the tickets. The CSAT will be credited to the last assignee when the ticket becomes solved or closed. I hope it clarifies!
Thank you!
0
Kyle Clark
I'm surprised there are not comments about the annoying bug in the "Merge ticket" window. The name and date of the Last Commenter is not populated in the lower comment box. This makes the comment appear to have been made by the Agent that merges the tickets. This makes many of our Agents not use the merge feature.
For example in the merge window below. The requester is Sara Briscoe and the merged ticket comment date is November 30, 2011. Let's say that I'm the Agent merging these and the comment in ticket #578 is "blah, blah, blah" (I can't see the comment).
When merged, the new comment in ticket #696 will read like this.
43 minutes ago
The workaround is to manually copy/paste the requester's name and time stamp into the comment window. But even if I train Agent's on this I'm guessing that 5% of them (maybe) would do this.
Any thoughts?
3