Question
I created custom ticket fields that I want to ensure agents select before they update the ticket status. Can I set ticket fields as required for agents before they can move to a different ticket status?
Answer
Yes, you can select Required to solve a ticket in the settings of each ticket field. Other than this, you can also require agents to set specific ticket fields before they can move between the New, Pending, Open, or On-hold status categories.
Conditional ticket fields allow you to set specific ticket fields as required for all statuses based on whether or not another field is selected or has a specific value.
If you don't have access to conditional ticket fields, or you need to set a top-level field as required for a status other than Solved, create a trigger or an automation that can check if the field is blank and send a notification to the assignee to request them to complete the field.
To automatically notify the assignee to complete the field
- Create a trigger
- Under Meet ALL of the following conditions add the below conditions:
- Object > Ticket > Select a ticket field | Is | -
- Object > Ticket > Status category | Changed to | Select a status. For example, open, pending, or on-hold.
- Under Actions, add:
-
Other > Notify by > User email | Object > Ticket > (assignee)
-
Other > Notify by > User email | Object > Ticket > (assignee)
- Click Create trigger.
13 comments
John Garry
we'd also like this functionality. agree with others here that Zendesk already accomplishes this for setting status to resolved, so the logic is already there...
3
Sydney Neubauer
Is there any word on adding the functionality for mandatory fields on other statuses? Our team is growing and the need for this is becoming more critical for our reporting needs
4
Brendan Crowley
+ 1 for this request. Any update here?
3
Mads Nielsen
You can use Zendesk' own Ticket Field Manager
to make a ticket field mandatory.
1
Sydney Neubauer
The Ticket Field Manager makes the field mandatory on any status update which doesn't work for our teams. We encourage Agents to "Take" the tickets they work on however, they will now need to set the fields as well as "taking it" which is premature to our workflow. We may not know the correct field until later in the ticket. We need it particularly for pending (on some fields) and on-hold. Not for Open or New tickets.
2
Aleena Khan
I agree, it is really frustrating to not be able to require it within the platform when you're actually in the ticket. How can agents check hundreds of emails to remind a day?
5
Lizyer Maxim
Any update on this? required fields are created for a reason. agents or any user should not be able to change the status if the required field is blank
0
Dave Dyson
I don't have a status change to share, but for the best visibility to our product team, please post your use case to our
Feedback - Ticketing System (Support) community forum topic, using this template to formate your feedback. Then anyone else can upvote and add their own comments there. Thanks!
-1
Cheyenne
We're in a similar situation: when the ticket is put on Pending, I'd like to make our field 'pending on who' mandatory. The Conditional ticket field option doesn't offer this option, as I have to select options that make no sense in this situation. How can I make a field mandatory only in case of change to a Pending status?
0
Christine
There's no native way to achieve this, but as a workaround, you can create a Trigger to notify the assignee that they must set a value on the field when setting a ticket status to Pending. See Can I require a field to be set before moving to a status other than solved?
0
Cheyenne
Hi @..., thanks for your swift reply. What kind of notification would I be able to set? I only know about the option to notify agents per email, which wouldn't be a proper solution to this issue.
However, I just found out that we're able to use custom ticket statusses since a few weeks, in this case we've created a few Pending statusses that already solve the problem :)
0
Arianne Batiles
Hi Cheyenne,
That's great to hear! You can create a trigger that adds an internal note to remind your agents and keeps the ticket Open when the field is left blank or a value is not present.
0
Mackenzie Ribbink
We would also like to see this functionality - to be able to require a field when it's set to pending status without needing to create a trigger. We've been told we shouldn't use triggers to create internal notes and our agents don't frequently work from their email so those notifications would likely be missed. The logic already exists to make fields required to solve as well as to make conditional fields required for any status, but I need top-level fields to be required for any status.
Our specific use case is that we record subscription type (required for solve) but over 7.5% of tickets in the last year had that field blank because it's not required to put the status at pending, and the ticket automatically solves after we don't hear back after some time.
0