This article contains tables listing and describing data property keywords and values that can be used, along with common search operators, to narrow your search results. There are also sections describing more advanced search methods and formatting.
This article is aimed at administrators and support managers with full access to the data in Zendesk Support. If you're an agent, start with Searching the data in Zendesk Support and refer back to this reference article if you want to perform more advanced searches.
This article includes the following topics on advanced search methods:
This article includes the following reference tables:
- Search operators
- Ticket property keywords
- User property keywords
- Organization property keywords
- Group property keywords
- Satisfaction rating searchable values
Search terms and terminology
Search terms
Search terms are user-defined words, phrases, or values. Examples:
- 3245227
- Greenbriar
- serial number
- "Jane Doe"
Search terms are case-insensitive. For example, "App" and "app" return the same results.
A single-word search term returns a result if it appears in the data as follows:
- a single word
- a single word in a longer phrase
- the prefix of a longer word
The search term will not return a result if it appears in the data as follows:
- in the middle of a word
- at the end of a word
For example, the search term "top" would match "top", "top tier", "Top Ten Trucking", "Tip-Top Mops", "Big Top Entertainment", and "Dessert Toppings, Inc". It would not match "Desktop Solutions" or "One-Stop Publishing".
Please upgrade my account
Property keywords
You can narrow your results by combining property keywords with search terms and operators. Example:
status<solved
A property keyword is the name of a property in a ticket, a user, an organization, or a group. Examples:
- assignee
- created
- name
See the following property keyword references for all the properties and details about each:
Example property searches:
Search | Property keyword | Returns |
---|---|---|
priority>normal | priority | Tickets with a priority of high or urgent |
subject:2fa | subject | Tickets with the search term 2fa in the subject |
email:jdoe@example.com | The user with the email jdoe@example.com |
Some properties have predefined values. For example, the ticket
status property has the following predefined values: new,
open, pending, hold, solved, closed. You can only search by
these values. Example search: status:open
.
See the property keyword references for details about each
property.
Other properties accept user-defined search terms. Example:
subject:2fa
. See Search terms. The same
matching rules apply for property searches with the
exception of prefix matching. Results are not returned if
the search term appears as the prefix of a longer word. For
example, the search term "tier" would return results for
"tier 1" and "tier 2" but not "tiered".
You can search for multiple values of a single property by including the property keyword multiple times in a query. Example:
tags:silver tags:bronze
Search uses OR logic for matching in this case. The previous example returns results that contain either the tag "silver" or the tag "bronze".
Example search
The following search expression looks for anything with the tag "vip" that was created before May 1, 2019:
tags:vip created<2019-05-01
- tags is a property keyword indicating you're searching only within a specific data property, in this case a tag.
- : is the "equal to" operator indicating the tag property value needs to be equal to the subsequent search term. Note that there's no space before or after the :.
- vip is the search term.
- created is a property keyword indicating you're searching the created data property for items created relative to a certain date.
- < is the "less than" operator indicating you're searching for records created before a certain date.
- 2015-05-01 is a search term indicating the date you want to use.
Searching for properties that contain no data
none
as the search term, along with the
group, tags, via, organization,
or assignee keywords, as in this
example:assignee:none
This returns all unassigned tickets.
Searching by date and time
Date property keywords - created, updated, solved, and due date) can be combined with search operators to return data from a specific date, before a certain date, and after a certain date. To search dates in any locale, use the format YYYY-MM-DD. You can also use locale-specific formats such as MM/DD/YYYY in the United States.
created<2011-05-01
due_date>2010-01-10
solved:2010-01-10
You can also use the <= or >= operators to indicate less-than-or-equal-to and greater-than-or-equal-to respectively.
Searching with combined dates and times
created>2015-09-01T12:00:00-08:00 updated<2015-09-01T12:00:00Z
The first example above searches for anything created after September 1, 2015 at 12:00 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time).
The second example above searches for anything updated before September 1, 2015 at 12:00 p.m. (UTC).
Searching within a date/time range
created>2014-08-01 created<2014-08-05
You can also include specific times in your search range. The following example searches for anything created between August 1, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. (UTC) and August 4, 2014 at midnight (UTC):
created>2014-08-01T23:59:00Z created<2014-08-04T23:59:59Z
Searching with relative times
You can search for a time relative to the present time, using the time units hours, minutes, days, weeks, months, or years. The following search returns anything created in the last four hours:
created>4hours
Sorting search results
order_by:field
-
sort:asc
orsort:desc
created
commented
priority
status
ticket_type
Using the order_by
and sort
keywords is
equivalent to using the API parameters sort_by
and
sort_order
.
Using the 'type' keyword
For API searches, one of the tools you have available for narrowing your
search results is the type
keyword. It is
used to explicitly declare that you want to search for one of the
following types:
- ticket
- user
- organization
- group
Using the type
keyword means that you are explicitly
searching on the type you specify. For example, you can search for
all the users that belong to the customer's organization using this
search statement:
type:user organization:customers
If you instead searched for organization:customers
you
would also get all the tickets that have requesters who belong to
this organization. This is because searches that do not explicitly
specify type return results for all types, including tickets (and
organization is a ticket property).
Using type:user
, your search returns all users that
belong to the Customers organization. So, you're narrowing your
search to the user type and excluding tickets.
While organizations and groups are properties of the user object, they have their own properties that can be searched as well. The following query allows you search only for organization tags, excluding tags of the same name that may be used in other elements of your Zendesk Support instance such as tickets and forum topics.
type:organization tags:premium
Using the 'user' keyword
To search for a user's profile data, you have the following two options.
user
keyword:user:amyOr, using the
type:user
keyword:type:user amy
For more information about the user
keyword and how it's
different from the type:user
keyword, see the
section about The user and type
keywords in Searching users, groups, and
organizations.
Search FAQ
-
How soon can new data be searched?
When you add new data to Zendesk Support, it typically takes about a minute before it's indexed and can be searched.
-
How does punctuation affect search?
Punctuation characters are generally not included in searches.
-
Are there limitations to wildcard searches?
You can only do wildcard searches when combined with property keywords (
subject:photo*
). -
Who can search what?
Administrators can search all the data in Zendesk Support. Agents can search the data that they've been granted access to. End-users can do full text searches of the knowledge base.
-
What languages are supported?
There is language-specific support for searching in the following languages:- English
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Portuguese
- Spanish
The support includes dictionary-based tokenization for Japanese, because words are not separated by spaces in that language. For the other languages, the language-specific support is primarily stemming. This means that different forms of the same word can be matched. For instance, both singular and plural forms of a word will typically match. Additionally, if you use the plural form in quotation marks (for example, "cats"), the search will still return results for both "cat" and "cats".
Search operators
You can use the following search operators to build your search statements.
Operator | Description |
---|---|
: | The colon indicates that the given field should equal the specified
value.status:open |
< | Less than. status<closed |
> | Greater than. priority>normal |
<= | Less than or equal to. status<=pending |
>= | Greater than or equal to. priority>=normal |
" " | Double quotes. In a simple keyword search, this is referred to as a
phrase search and returns the exact words in the exact order; however,
punctuation characters are not
included."Please upgrade my account"
Note: In
the Japanese version of Support, this feature does not work as
expected. A simple keyword search that includes double quotes
returns results, but the results are not the exact words in the
exact order.
In a search including data properties, use double quotes to perform an inclusive AND search, returning results that include all properties in the search. tags:"superman is_awesome" |
- | Minus sign. Excludes items containing a word (or property value) from
the search results. For example, the following statement searches for
any tickets with the status 'pending', but excludes any tickets
containing the tag 'invoice' from the search results:
status:pending -tags:invoice |
* | The wildcard operator is useful when you want to search various forms
of a word. For example, searching for photo* returns
results that would include photography, photographer, photograph and any
other words that began with 'photo'. However, because of the
performance issues involved with doing wildcard searches,
unqualified wildcard searches are not currently supported. In other
words, you need to use a property keyword to make your search
specific to the data you're trying to locate.
subject:photo* |
Ticket property keywords
You can search on the following ticket properties.
For more information about ticket search, see Searching tickets.
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:
|
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.
|
User property keywords
Here's the list of user properties that can be searched.
For more information about searching users, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
name |
The user's partial or full name.
name:"alex anderson" |
role |
The user's designated role.role:admin |
email |
Specify the user's email address, or specify none to search for users
without an email address.
email:alex@mondocam.com email:"none" Using
double quotes to search for an email address does not return an
exact match like other keyword searches. For example, if you search
the following the results may return any user whose email starts
with "dwight":
Tip: Wildcards do not work for email address searches.
For example, the following search returns no
results:
email:dwight* |
group |
The user's group name. This only applies to admin and agent users.
group:"Level 2" |
organization |
Specify the user's organization name or ID, or specify
none to search for users without an organization.
If the user belongs to more than one organization, searching on any of
those organizations will return their
profile.organization:mondocam |
created |
The date the user was added to your Zendesk.
created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
notes |
All text in the notes field in the user's profile.
notes:"manager" |
details |
All text in the details field in the user's profile.
details:"madison, wi" |
external_id |
Specify the user's external ID, if used, or
specifynone to search for users without an external
ID. external_id:0098884412 |
phone |
Specify the user's phone number, or specify none to
search for users without a phone number.
phone:+555-111-2222 When searching by phone number, you
must include a plus sign (+) before the number. When searching by
phone number using the API, you must include %2B (the URL-encoded
version of +) before the number (for example,
|
tags |
Specify tags on the user's profile, or specify none
to search for users without tags.
tags:premium tags:wholesaleFor more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations. |
customfield |
Custom user fields.plan_type:platinumFor more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields. |
is_verified |
Indicates whether any of a user's identities have been verified.
Any user created via ticket sharing is automatically verified. |
is_suspended |
Indicates whether the user has been suspended.
|
Search for users based on a WhatsApp phone number. For more information see Searching for tickets by WhatsApp number. |
Organization property keywords
Here's the list of organization properties that can be searched. For more information, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
name |
The organization's partial or full name.name:mondocam |
created |
The date the organization was added. created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
notes |
All text in the notes field in the user's profile. notes:EMEA |
details |
All text in the details field in the organization's profile.details:london |
tags |
Specify
tags
that have been added to the
organization,
or specify none to search for organizations without
tags. tags:premium For more information about tagging users and organizations, see Adding tags to users and organizations. |
customfield |
Custom organization fields.plan_type:platinumFor more information, see Searching custom user and organization fields. |
external_id |
The external ID of the organization or specify none to search
for users without an external ID.external_id:00112345 |
Group property keywords
Here's the list of group properties that can be searched. For more information, see Searching for users, groups, and organizations.
Keyword | Description |
---|---|
name |
The group's name.name:"level 2" |
created |
The date the group was added. created<2011-05-01 For more information on using date and time in your search, see Searching by date and time. |
Satisfaction rating searchable values
You can use the satisfaction
keyword with rating values
to search your customer satisfaction ratings. For more information
on customer satisfaction, see Using customer satisfaction
rating.
Value | Description |
---|---|
bad |
Tickets that have been rated 'bad'.
|
badwithcomment |
Tickets that have been rated 'bad' that
also include a comment from the ticket
requester.
|
good |
Tickets that have been rated 'good'.
|
goodwithcomment |
Tickets that have been rated 'good' that
also include a comment from the ticket
requester.
|
offered |
When you request a customer satisfaction
rating, the ticket satisfaction rating status is
set to 'offered'. The following notification is
added to the ticket: Customer satisfaction
feedback was offered. This means that you've asked
for but not yet received a response to the rating
request.
|
119 comments
Ian Pylvainen
Hi, is there a way to search for tickets that have specific users as followers? I used to be able use "cc:username" for this, but it doesn't appear to work correctly for follower tickets.
14
Beau P.
Hello Ian,
Presently there isn't a search operator for followers, so you cannot construct search statements to return follower information.
Your options in this regard are detailed here, and include viewing an agent's followed tickets directly within their profile, or having agents create macros to apply a follower tag and then building views to see those tagged tickets: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033389554-How-can-I-view-tickets-I-follow-
Let us know if you have any additional questions presently!
Beau | Customer Advocate | support@zendesk.com
Ask our Zendesk Community
-1
Matt 🕵️
about 90% of our business comes through Twitter DMs. Is there a way to search for the Twitter Handle in Zendesk (ie... @twitterhandle)? This would be a huge help for our team!
Thanks in advance, Matt
1
Kharlo Reboja
Hello Matt,
Thanks for reaching out. At this time, searching by Twitter handle is currently not supported and is out of the Twitter integrations native functionalities.
Best,
Kharlo | Customer Advocate
support@zendesk.com
0
Sorin Alupoaie
@... we've been working on a Zendesk search app lately and we're planning to add support for Twitter handlers soon.
The app is available on Zendesk's apps marketplace and you can give it a free try here.
1
Matt 🕵️
@...
I was taking a look at your Zendesk Search App recently, and I was really hopeful to find Twitter handle searching. If this is implemented can you please tag me and let me know? This would be a huge help for our team's efficiency!
Thank you @... & @... for the replies and insight 💯
Matt
0
Sorin Alupoaie
@... the twitter handle searching is implemented now.
Signup here to give it a try.
0
Matt 🕵️
@...
Thanks for the head's up! I just sent an email to you, and we can chat further over there.
Talk to you soon!
Matt
0
Maria Ruiz
How to search for a long list of tickets id's (I tried with ID#:1234; ID#:2345; ID#:5678) and (1234; 2345; 5678) and (#1234; #2345; #5678) no results with any of the above
thanks!
0
Jason Schaeffer
Hi Maria,
On Zendesk UI You can't search or a view to display multiple tickets by the IDs, But zendesk has REST API to achieve this, where you can just pass the ticket ids to get the result like below
https://subdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/show_many.json?ids={}
Hope that helps!
Jason Schaeffer | Customer Advocate |
0
John
Is there any way to search for Organizations where shared_tickets = true? I'm trying
without any luck.
We're trying to ensure that there are no shared organizations, programmatically, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this in Zendesk.
0
Sabra
Hey @...! shared_tickets is not an organization property that can be searched at this time. However, this information is available in exports of organization data. See Exporting data to a JSON, CSV, or XML file for more information on exports.
If you would like to see shared_tickets as a searchable property in the future, I would encourage you to leave feedback in our Feedback on Support community page!
0
Yaniv Dayan
How can I search for no data on a custom field single text line?
For example, I have a custom field named Company Name, and I wish to get all tickets that have no company name?
I've tried searching for
custom_field_360015212345:none ==> gives zero results.
-custom_field_360015212345:Microsoft ==> gives all results but Microsoft, and I can't sort it by the custom field.
0
Ronald Suplido Jr
Hello Yaniv,
I tried to replicate this using the "null" value but to no avail also. I got a confirmation from our team that the search parameter involving empty custom fields won't work as the current search function requires a value for lookup.
0
Yaniv Dayan
Hi @...
Thanks for your reply. I actually got an answer from @... on this page: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203663206-Searching-tickets?page=3#comments
And it actually works!
2
Ronald Suplido Jr
Good catchI Thanks for pointing this out. I overlooked regex as a possible workaround in your case. Cheers!
0
CJ Johnson
This is linked to from the Search API docs, but none of this syntax actually seems to be valid in a API call. Is there any instructions available on how to use this with the Search API? https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/ticketing/ticket-management/search/
0
Peter Hochstrasser
@CJ Johnson
Did you URL encode the query string? It‘s not mentioned explicitly, but the examples show it.
0
CJ Johnson
I did, and half of these just don't work. Then again, the same ones don't work even in the actual search box on the site, either. I ended up opening a support ticket as it seems like something is quite broken with this.
0
Julio H
Hi CJ Johnson,
Unfortunately, as this is custom code, we are unable to provide detailed instructions for the syntax, also, depending on the program you are using, this might work or might not work.
I recommend using Postman to verify that the search is valid.
This is an example of searching an ORG with the name: Office's City LA / Main Building / Main Kitchen
https://subdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type%3Aorganization+name%3A%22Office%27%27s%20City%20LA%20/%20Main%20Building%20/%20Main%20Kitchen%22
On Postman, the syntax will be different as you can use:
https://subdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type%3Aorganization+name%3AOffice's City LA / Main Building / Main Kitchen"
If you would like to search all tickets with a custom field, that are not in blank, I will recommend creating an Explore query where you can return all tickets with that field and exclude with a filter the null result.
You can provide the query that is not working for you to test it out.
I hope this help!
Best,
-2
CJ Johnson
Hi Julio,
I think there's some confusion here. This isn't custom code. It's the attributes you're providing in this article.
In your example, it really is the same for both, you just aren't seeing the URL encoding Postman is doing on the backend to convert things like spaces to %20.
I am not able to do this in Explore, because Explore doesn't have the capability to search the description and comments of all tickets for a string, which the search field does.
Finally, if these don't work *in the search box on your site*, surely that cannot be considered "unsupported custom code"?
I did end up opening a ticket about it, and thus far, the agent has agreed that indeed, the examples in this articles that I tried, do not function as written, and it has been escalated now, so hopefully this will get fixed, and things will work as written in this article again soon.
1
Julio H
Hi CJ Johnson,
Thanks for the update!
Glad to hear that you have an open ticket with our Support Team to review this further internally for you, and hopefully understand where the issue is located. They will get back to you with an update shortly.
0
Terry Ehrhard
Is there a way to search on multiple groups or multiple forms? Seems with each field you can only search for one item. Also seems to be the case within Search API. Any help would be appreciated
0
Joshua Bentley
Using "none" in tag searches returns zero results. I have confirmed that there are ~200 that do not have tags.
When I put in the search term "exampledomain.com tags:none" there are no results under "Users" and when clicking on the Filters drop-down I'm told that it's not a valid tag:
This seems to have changed within the last week because I was using this same method successfully until a few days ago.
0
Giuseppe
Hi Terry,
When you use a data property keyword multiple times in a query, there is an OR search across the values you specified. For example:
The above query will return tickets with the ticket from 01 or ticket form 02. If you have 5 tickets with ticket form 01, and 7 tickets with ticket form 02, then the query above will show you all 12 tickets. For more information about this, see Using Zendesk Support advanced search
Hi Joshua,
Tested this in my account and the search query tags:none worked perfectly for me.
Even though I could see the same message that you are seeing:
This is most likely just an interface warning, but bottom line is that the none keyword should still work.
Another way to test this is by using Search API:
https://<your subdomain>.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=tags:none%20type:ticket
If you're not getting any results, it's possible that you have no tickets with 0 tags. You can open up one of your tickets that have no tags and double-check them. Please also note that ticket fields also affect tags, i.e. selecting a value for your ticket fields would add its equivalent tag to your ticket. For more information about this, see Understanding tags and ticket fields
0
CJ Johnson
Is there no way to search on "custom role"?
1
Giuseppe
Hi CJ,
Based on my testing, searching for custom roles also work even by just using the role keyword. If there are spaces in the custom role's name, you can put the name inside a " ". You can also search using the role ID. In my screenshot below, I have a role named New Role and a user with that role:
Using role ID:
2
karan sharma
Hi all , can we add validations in custom fields like there is a price which should be less than 50 in search query
1
Giuseppe
Hi Karan,
You can use search operators when doing an advanced search together with doing a custom field search using the syntax custom_field_<custom field ID>
For example, you can try using the 'less than' operator in your query to get price that are less than 50 which could be something like:
For more information, see these articles:
Searching custom ticket fields
Search operators
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Rolf Hayes
Hello all
Apologies if its been discussed already but I'd like to know how I can add custom ticket fields to the search view.
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