As processes change, there may be instances where you will need to reassign agents, update groups according to business processes, or completely set up a new administration within your Zendesk. This article should help you avoid bigger conflicts that may come your way when deleting groups.
You should take the following steps to delete groups cleanly:
Reassigning agents to a new group
Before proceeding in deleting groups, make sure that the soon to be deleted group is not the default group for any agent. If a group is assigned as a default group to a specific agent, you will not be able to delete the group.
To assign an agent to a different default group, see the instructions in Changing the default group.
Reassigning tickets to a new group
Before deleting a group, tickets that are currently assigned to agents in that group should be reassigned to a new group. Admins are able to perform this task, as well as Agents whose roles permit them to reassign tickets to a new group.
For closed tickets, deleting a group causes the Assignee field to show a dash (-) instead of the agent that belonged to the deleted group. However, when viewing a closed ticket via the API, you will still see the original assignee.
To reassign tickets to a new group in bulk
- In the advanced search feature, find all non-closed tickets assigned to the group you will be deleting by using the following search string: status<closed group:"Group Name"
- Bulk select all the tickets retrieved through your search.
- Click the Edit Ticket(s) button at the top right of the screen.
- In the Assignee field, type the name of the new group.
- Click Submit.
Agents can also reassign their own tickets one-by-one (see Manually reassigning a ticket to yourself, another agent, or a group) or update their own tickets in bulk (see Bulk updating tickets). This method is preferable if you need to reassign tickets to more than one group.
Deleting the group
You can now proceed in deleting a group, as described in Managing groups.
7 Comments
If you edit the name of a group, will that change follow through to any Views, Macros, Triggers etc. that group is linked to? Or will I need to go in and update these elements individually?
Hi Shona Coutts,
Last time I did this, yes the change to the group name followed through to the related elements.
Happy Zendesking!
Hi Anton,
I would suggest also adding to this article to review triggers, automations, macros and views that are related to the groups to be deleted. Many times people delete groups and forget about readjusting assignment triggers, for example.
I think this article could be enhanced. It would be great to have a checklist of things you can check. I am essentially working with some duplicate groups that were created at different times, and...
For example, it occurred to me I needed to make sure to:
So I started to look into it and see what else I needed to make sure of. Marcela's comment above is helpful!
Hi Jordan Crawford,
Thank you for your feedback! This is a very good point. I've made a note of your suggestions and will aim to update the article soon. Thank you!
When I delete a Group so tickets cannot be assigned to the Group any more, how do I retain agents access to the closed tickets in the old Group for historical reasons.
Is this not supported in Zendesk today?
Thank you for patiently waiting.
Unfortunately, this is expected behaviour. When you deleted a group, any tickets assigned here will be reassigned to any team members in the group. If this is their default group, you should be able to change their group first. As the deleted group will no longer function anymore.
I'm afraid there's no way to retain agents' access to the deleted group. Deleting groups cannot be undone.
Hope this clarifies. And thank you for your understanding, Joel.
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