How do I forward tickets to an external user?

Question

I need to forward tickets to a new external email outside of Zendesk. How can I forward tickets to an external mailbox? How do I forward emails from Zendesk to an external third party who is not a user on my Zendesk account?

Answer

There are multiple ways to send a message to a user who does not currently have a profile within Zendesk. The solution you choose will depend on your use case. The tabs below are ordered by increasing complexity.

CCs

Side conversations

PDFs

Change requester

Webhooks

CC the user

This is a simple solution. 

CCing someone will add them to the ticket conversation and is an easy way to notify them about a ticket. Once CC'd, they will be able to see all public comments and replies in the ticket thread. 

To CC someone on a ticket

1. In a ticket, add the email address of the external user to the CC field. For steps on adding CCs to tickets, see the article: Adding CCs.
2. Reply to the requester as normal.
3. The CCed individual receives the updates by email.

Use side conversations 

This is a simple solution. 

Side conversations allow you to email external users from the ticket. This conversation is kept separate from the main ticket thread so any information you want to share from the ticket will need to be manually added to the side conversation. This can be useful if you need to have an extended conversation about a ticket with an external user and need to be able to easily reference it. 

For steps on creating a side conversation, see the article: Creating side conversations.

Create a PDF of the ticket

This is a simple solution. 

This process is more manual but is a good option for the occasional scenario where you need to notify external users about a ticket but want to do so completely outside of Zendesk. 

To create a PDF of a ticket 

1. Open the ticket and click the ticket options menu in the upper right, select Print ticket.
2. Select the option Print to PDF.
3. Your account will create a PDF of the ticket. Attach the PDF to an email to forward the ticket.

Change the requester

This is a simple solution. 

Changing the requester will replace the current requester on the ticket with someone new. The new requester would then receive all the ticket details when you next update the ticket with a comment. Changing the requester of a ticket changes the ownership of that ticket. This means the new requester becomes the ticket owner, and unless the original requester is CC'd in the ticket, they will not receive ticket updates.

To change the requester on the ticket, see the article: Updating ticket requesters.

Set up a webhook

This is a complex solution. 

Developers use webhooks to send HTTP requests to a URL. By using webhooks, you can send ticket information from Zendesk to another system such as Slack or Asana. This option is best if you need to notify external users frequently and at scale. 

Once your developer has created a webhook, they can use a trigger to send ticket information to the webhook using the action Notify webhook