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
Dave Dyson
If you're talking about the results you see when searching in Support (Searching Zendesk Support data), then although you can search for certain custom field values, it's not possible to add a column to the results page that would display custom field values. For that, assuming you're wanting to search for tickets, you're better off using a View: Creating views to manage ticket workflow
0
Rolf Hayes
Thanks Dave
Yes, creating a view is one way of managing a ticket. However this feels like a long way round if we are just searching for tickets with a particular word or phrase. We have a large number of organisations and being able to see which organisation a ticket falls under in the search view would be very useful. Maybe there are others who would like different fields displayed in the search view.
0
Jon I Sanchez Martinez
I'm writing a java client library. In search API, I've realised that pagination is not working, thus limitation of time and data crops up.
0
Dave Dyson
Rolf Hayes Understandable -- can you upvote and add your use case to this product feedback thread? Customize search results columns
Jon I Sanchez Martinez Sorry to hear that! For visibility to our developer support team, would you mind creating a post with additional information about the API call you're making and the results you're seeing here: Zendesk APIs
Thanks!
0
David Brown
We have a multi-lingual user base, both as agents and end-users. The languages used are namely English and French. I would like to know if it possible for the query to translate to assist the agents in finding tickets. For example, an English speaking agent runs a query on a given word and the search is performed simultaneously in English and its French translation. Vice-versa as well, search a French word and it returns results for said word in both French and its English translation.
0
Peter Hochstrasser
David Brown
Seems like an interesting idea, however, today, you can't do that.
The problem is that translations are a bit of black magic, especially if specialized business language is to be auto-translated.
You might be able to implement something like this using the API and a service like deepl.com, but even then, your mileage may vary more than EV's ranges in winter and summer.
1
Andrew
Hi,
Is it possible to use the search API to return everyone who doesn't have the primary email setup with a specific email domain?
Wildcards don't work at the start of the email so it seems like this is being blocked for some reason. I'm looking to check for non-corporate emails and correct for them.
I am unable to use organizations and I think the org stays the same anyway if you switch prime/second emails.
Thanks!
-Andrew
0
mccabe.tonna
@Andrew
can you give an example of what you're looking to achieve?
0
Andrew
Sure mccabe.tonna
If your an active worker(user field in our system) your email domain should be our company one. We want to create a simple Audit/QA integration that pulls everyone who is active and does not have a primary email with the work domain in it. The integration would then loop through there identities and set the primary one to the work email if it finds one. I'm looking to do that filtering via the API instead of pulling every worker in the system.
0
mccabe.tonna
@Andrew
If their primary email is verified; you can search your user functions.
this looks promising via API https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/ticketing/users/user_identities/#make-identity-primary although I've never done this before.
![](/hc/user_images/7k79RgN-zHOVb9M8lYmpZg.png)
0
Andrew
Hi mccabe.tonna,
Yep that's what we are doing. I'm coming from the Developer docs page so we can't use the front end. Like you suggested we are using the verify / make primary APIs without issue.
The problem is the domain email search. I'm just trying to verify there isn't a better way to do this. We are doing a http get to something like the URL below.
"https://{domain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/users/search.json?query=type:user role:end-user Status:active -email:*@mycompany.com"
So users that meet the criteria and do not have a company email domain(-).
As far as I can tell, this is not supported so we have to pull tens of thousands of accounts a day, check the email field for each vs just adding a search to the API call.
0
mspriya darsh
Hi All,
Is there a way to look for tickets from various organisations?
I tried using the usual syntax, but couldn't get the relevant set of results.
Query:
type:ticket organization:'xxx' organization:'yyy' priority:high priority:urgent status:'pending'
Intent is to retrieve urgent and high priority pending tickets from org xxx and org yyy altogether in one query, instead of 2 separate queries for each org, having the same condition.
Thanks
0
Nathan Purcell
Why does "brand" not support using the brand ID when searching for tickets? When filtering groups, we can use both the string name or the int ID.
0
Dane
I understand the practicality of this feature, however, searching by brand ID is not supported. I'd recommend creating a Community post separately for that with your use case to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature.
@mspriya,
I have tried the search keywords below and I was able to pull up the tickets I need.
0
Nathan Purcell
Dane My use case is having a consistent and logical API.
Community post requests aren't picked up, replied to or actioned so I won't be doing that.
0
Peter Hochstrasser
Hi Nathan Purcell
The Community Post way is sadly the only way that non-errors are picked up by the most customer focused support service package development team.
It may be that this post contains slight bits of sarcastic language.
Yours truly
Peter
0
Nathan Purcell
It absolutely does!
0
Mariano Terzolo
Hi everyone,
I can’t find a way to search for Instagram direct channel tickets. I don´t see Instagram in the list of valid ticket's sources for the “via” keyword. I’ve tried search strings like the following with no success:
via: instagram_direct
Am I missing something?
Thanks.
0
Mariano Terzolo
Hi again,
Just found out that the correct name for the instagram source is:
via:instagram_dm
Cheers!
0
Charlie Wettlaufer
How does one search for an organization that includes a specific domain name?
I tried `query=type:organization domain_names:example.com` and received 0 results from the API, however I know there are orgnanizxations with the domain I'm searching for.
0
Dave Dyson
I think this should work if you enclose
example.com
in double quotes. Take a look for "exact matches" in the article above. Hope that helps!0
Hannah Ehrlich
Hello!
I am looking to search for tickets that are in NO group, however, "name:null" or "name:"null"" don't seem to get any results. Is there a way I can pull up all tickets in null group/no group?
Thanks!
Hannah
0
Beto
Hello Hanna, thank you for your question!
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Zendesk is currently not capable of making a search for Group:"null" as the current search function requires a value for lookup and "null" would not really be a value.
I have found an alternative solution, that can work exactly as you need it to, but it might take some time depending on how many groups you have.
You can create a search query that filters out all tickets that are assigned to a group. You can do this like this:
You use the "-" symbol before "group" and specify the group name. This will provide a search for all tickets that are NOT assigned to that group. If you make the query with all your Groups, then you will be able to see all tickets not assigned to a specific group :)
I hope this was helpful!
0
Hannah Ehrlich
Hi Beto,
This will work fine, thank you!
Hannah
0
Laurenz
Is there a way to sort tickets by subject?
Example
Sample Subject #12344
Sample subject #12345
Sample subject #12346
0
Dave Dyson
Sorting by Subject is no longer supported: see Announcing changes to views sorting and ordering
0
Steve Lacoss
Hannah Ehrlich, You can create a QC view that will show tickets not assigned to groups.
0
Naomi Watnick
Our UI recently changed and we now have big bold status "buttons" any view. When I do a search and use the filter drop-down, when I add a Status to filter by, the search string adds: custom_status_id:4416756
We also now suddenly have "Status category" as well as "Ticket status" in views. How do I find out more information on these? And if "Status category" is the old "Ticket status", how do I create a search string for it?
Thanks!
0
Dave Dyson
It sounds like you're part of the Custom Ticket Statuses Early Access Program – you can find documentation here: Zendesk Support EAP - Custom Ticket Statuses
0
Naomi Watnick
Thanks @.... I'll reach out to my colleague as I was told it was only supposed to be in our sandbox environment. Also, can you please give me access to the link you provided in the last comment? Thank you.
0