Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets >
Fields.The On-hold status is optional and only available if you activate it for the Support ticket interface. On-hold is an internal ticket status for tickets that require input or resolution from a third party. On-hold status is visible to agents only, not end users. For end users, tickets that are set to On-hold are always displayed as Open.
On-hold gives you another level so that you can more accurately track who currently has responsibility for a ticket. For example, imagine that your company produces a product that includes components from partners and other suppliers. If you have tickets that require their input, and for which the assigned agent can do nothing but wait, setting the ticket to On-hold provides a way for distinguishing between tickets that are the responsibility of agents and those that are waiting for a third party.
If you track your agents' performance, using the On-hold status allows you to filter out all On-hold tickets from performance tracking. You can also use the On-hold status to create a workflow for tickets that require input or a resolution from a third party. On Support Professional and Enterprise you have an additional reporting metric called On-hold time in hours.
Activating and deactivating the On-hold status
Admins can add the On-hold status to the Support ticket interface. The On-hold status is deactivated by default.
To activate or deactivate the On-hold status
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets >
Fields.
- Beside the Status field, click the options menu, then select
Edit.Note: If custom ticket statuses were activated without the On-hold status having been activated previously, the Status field doesn't appear in the list. See Activating the On-hold status category for custom ticket statuses.
- Under Field Values, select Enable On-hold status.
If you are disabling this option, deselect Enable On-hold status.
- Click Update field.
The On-hold status is added to the list of ticket statuses between Pending and Solved. On-hold status is visible to agents only, not end users. For end users, tickets that are set to On-hold are always displayed as Open in the Help Center customer portal.
Community Tip! Check out this tip to see how to set reminders for On-hold tickets.
Activating the On-hold status category for custom ticket statuses
If you've activated custom ticket statuses without the On-hold status having been activated previously, you can activate it from the Ticket statuses page.
To activate or deactivate the On-hold status category
- In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select
Tickets > Ticket statuses.
- Click the Options menu(
), then select Status category
settings.
- Select Activate On-hold ticket status category.
If you are deactivating this option, deselect Activate On-hold ticket status category.
- Click Save.
Using the On-hold status in views and SLAs
You create new views, or edit existing views, to track tickets that are On-hold. You can select On-hold as the value of the Status condition and also use the Hours since on hold condition.
The On-hold status is added to the Status condition between Pending and Solved. This means that the condition statement Status less than On-hold will return tickets that are Pending, Open, or New and Status greater than On-hold will return tickets that are set to Solved or Closed.
The Hours since on hold condition allows you to specify the hours that have passed since the ticket's status was set to On-hold.
Using the On-hold status in your reports
On Support Professional and Enterprise, you can use the On-hold status in a number of different ways using Explore:
- The metric On-hold tickets in the Tickets dataset displays the number of tickets that are currently on-hold.
- The metric On-hold time displays the total time (in minutes or hours) that a ticket was in the on-hold status.
- The metric On-hold time - Business hours displays the total time (in minutes or hours) that a ticket was in the on-hold status taking into account any business hour you've configured.
On-hold time is also included as a value in the Ticket status attribute. You can use the Ticket status attribute to break down a metric by each status. On the Zendesk Support pre-built Explore dashboard, Ticket status is used in a number of the reports on the Unsolved tickets tab.
When you add the On-hold status, it will also affect the Requester wait time in hours and Current backlog metrics. The metrics will include the On-hold state in their calculations.
Note: The Agent wait time in hours metric is not affected by the On-hold status. This metric is still defined as the cumulative time a ticket has been in a Pending state (awaiting a response from the requester).
How the On-hold status works with ticket sharing
The On-hold status only affects ticket sharing agreements that use Make public & private comments; sync status. Because On-hold is an optional status in Zendesk Support, these ticket sharing agreements treat On-hold as Open.
For example, if a shared ticket is set to On-hold by the sending account, the ticket is displayed as Open in the receiving account. This occurs even if the receiving account has the On-hold status activated. All other statuses will sync normally.
18 Comments
Trying to understand if I'm using "on-hold" and "pending" correctly.
When my user writes in and I send back a question, is that ticket status supposed to be "pending" (ie pending user response)?
Hi @.... Yes. The way I see it is:
I hope this helps.
Wow! this little feature has been in play for 7 years now and I'm not sure it's resolved. It seems there is a standard use case that everyone that has a development group wants, but you taking 7 years to understand it/develop it/issue the feature. As an agent I want to set an open ticket to "on-hold" status so that the end customer understand that the ticket is either in the Development team as a bug or a pending feature request (in other words, it's not needing any further input from the customer). We'd like this feature as we run a report of all open issues > 7 days with no input from agent. At the moment that includes all the usual suspects that are in R&D or are with Offer management as feature requests to be assessed. 'urry up with this one please. BTW it's a great product and you should be very proud. Still... we need this!
Hi Mike,
Can you help me understand what's not working for you with the existing On-Hold ticket status? It seems like it would work for you needs – agents can set the status to On-Hold when they assign tickets to your development team, and then you can filter those tickets out of your "open issues > 7 days with no input from agent" reports. If a customer responds to an On-Hold ticket (not that they need to, but customers will sometimes ask for a status update), Zendesk will automatically change the status from On-Hold to Open so that the assignee knows the customer wants a response.
What's missing here for you? Thanks!
Sure, and thanks for the reply. It's true the agent can set the ticket that is now being looked at by R&D, but when we review the defects weekly we want to see only "Open" and > 7 days old with no updates that are not "on-hold". It seems tickets with "on-hold" status are treated as "Open" and so we get the "Open" and "on-hold" defects. We don't want to see the "on-hold" ones. We are going to try something on Thursday and I'll update the community then. Thanks for the reply.
Hi there,
FYI the link in this heading no longer works:
"Community Tip! Check out this tip to see how Andrew sets reminders for On-hold tickets."
I tried to search for this manually but can't seem to find the corresponding article, does one still exist? We're looking at enabling On-hold status, and would like to understand the reminders setup but assuming this will be done with either automations or triggers.
Thank you,
Joel
Hi Joel,
Thanks for mentioning this. We had an error that deleted a number of posts this week. We're working on restoring them, so standby, and we should have this back up and available for you again soon.
Hi Team,
Just a suggestion on the status ordering.
Currently, in our view we have New>Open>Pending>On Hold>Solved. It will be great if we move On Hold after Open, so it should be Open>On Hold>Pending. It is normally we got lots of tickets pending for client's reply but serval on internal investigation. And mostly the On Hold tickets required agents proactively follow-up action. If the order is going after pending tickets, it's no way for the agent to easily check the ticket on the first page. The first page of the current view will be flooded with pending tickets most of the time
Welcome to the community! As it happens, our product team is conducting user research on custom ticket statuses, and I think your use case would be helpful information for them. There's a link to a feedback form in Gaurav's official comment here – would you mind clicking through and filling out the form? Customize Status Field Values
Thanks!
I'm noticing in testing that setting ticket status to On-hold is not stopping SLA timers. I am using first reply time and next reply time SLAs. To stop SLA timers from running when a ticket may be on-hold for a prolonged period of time, is the best course of action to create a trigger to add a tag when on-hold is set, have the SLA policy check for presence of tag to apply or not apply policy, and a cleanup tag to remove the tag once status is set to anything other than on-hold? Maybe there is a simpler way, but this is what I am thinking.
I've validated my own solution to disable SLA timers when using On-hold status. Steps to achieve this are:
Solution to force ticket status to On-hold even with end-user update (this is also using triggers mentioned in my prior post):
set trigger - Meet All Conditions: ticket is updated, role is end-user, comment is present, tags contain "on-hold"; actions: status is on-hold, add tags "on-hold"
My prior cleanup trigger for status is not on-hold removes the tag "on-hold" so I add it back, this is why I am testing for presence of the tag and then re-adding it because the default Zendesk behavior is for an end-user reply to set the ticket status to Open. This has a fast bump to open and right back to on-hold. It was interesting to find that in testing my set trigger that this solution would not work if my all conditions met had status as on-hold, with everything else being the same an end-user response would flip the ticket status back to open. If however I did not check for ticket status and instead checked for presence of tag "on-hold" the trigger would flip the incoming end-user response back to on-hold. It's weird, but it works.
Thanks for sharing your solution – there's some information on how the On-Hold status interacts with SLAs here: Can I pause the SLA timer or reset it under certain conditions?
This link is still not working, I saw it mentioned above in 2021. Thanks
Community Tip! Check out this tip to see how Andrew sets reminders for On-hold tickets.
Hi Kelly R, thank you for pointing this out! I've updated the link.
Our team is testing out the Agent Workspaces in a sandbox mode right now, and it seems like these instructions don't quite match up for this new view. Is On-hold now a custom ticket status, or are the instructions different for enabling the On-hold status different in Agent Workspaces?
Hi Jordan Bogart! Do you have custom ticket statuses activated? If so, you can activate and deactivate the On-hold status from the Ticket statuses page in Admin center. Please see Activating the on-hold status category for custom ticket statuses for instructions.
Hi Colleen, thanks for the links! I was able to find what I needed there, and successfully add the "On hold" status to our sandbox.
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