The following business rules in Zendesk Support are predefined and can't be reconfigured.
They define the standard behavior in Zendesk Support.
- When a New ticket is assigned to an agent, the ticket status automatically changes to
Open. You'll see the change after you update the ticket.
If you’ve activated ticket statuses: The ticket status automatically change to your default ticket status in the Open category.
- After a ticket's status has been changed from New, it can never be set back to New.
- If an end user comments on a ticket with a status set to Pending, Solved, or On-hold,
the ticket status is changed to Open.
If you've activated ticket statuses, when an end user comments on a ticket with a status in the Pending, Solved, or On-hold status categories, the ticket status is changed to your default ticket status in the Open category.
- A ticket's status can't be set to Solved by an end user or agent without an assignee. If the setting auto assign tickets upon solve is enabled, an agent submits a ticket as Solved, and there is no assignee, the system automatically makes the agent who solved the ticket the assignee.
- If the agent assigned to a ticket is removed from the group the ticket is assigned to, the ticket retains the group assignment and the agent assignment is removed. However, Solved tickets must have an assigned agent. If the assigned agent is removed from a Solved ticket's assigned group, the first team member listed as a group member in Admin Center replaces the previous assignee.
- Ticket type field values aren't editable.
- When you set a priority, you can't reset it back to no priority. You can always change it to a different priority.
- Tickets with a status set to Closed can't be updated in most cases, but they can be deleted. Requesters can create a follow-up request that references a closed ticket, but they can't reopen the closed ticket. Only the tags, subject, and priority fields can be edited on closed tickets. See Modifying closed tickets.
- Tickets that are part of a user or organization merge, including archived and closed tickets, are updated with the receiving user or organization. These changes are shown in the tickets' event logs.
- When a ticket has been assigned to a group, an admin can reset it to no group by creating a trigger or automation setting the group value to null.
- If there's only one group, all tickets are automatically assigned to that group.
- If there is only one agent in a group that can be assigned tickets, all tickets assigned to that group will automatically be assigned to that one agent. Some agents in groups, such as light agents, do not have permission to be assigned tickets.
- If there's only one agent in an account, then all tickets are automatically assigned to that agent and the agent's default group.
- If an agent is only allowed to view tickets within their groups, and then they forward an email to Support, a new ticket is created and automatically assigned to the agent's default group. For information about how your account's default group and an agent's default group affect ticket assignment, see Changing the default group for your account or an agent.
- You can't assign a ticket to an agent without first assigning it to a group.
- If an agent takes or automatically solves a ticket without assigning it to a group in the process, the ticket is assigned to the agent's default group.
- Tickets are automatically closed 28 days after they're set to Solved, regardless of any triggers or automations.
- The requester field is mandatory. By default, Zendesk populates it with the person who created the ticket. If your agents are creating tickets on behalf of end users, and the agent forgets to add a requester, the agent becomes the requester.
- If CCs and followers are enabled and an agent replies to a ticket notification they are no longer the requester or assignee for, they are automatically added as a follower to that ticket.
23 comments
Production.Zen
The "When a ticket's status has been set to Closed, it can never be updated, " rule is causing us a lot of pain. It is impossible to organize old tickets in any way. The Product Management team cannot use Zendesk to find and mark user pain points. And just today we spent half a day investigating an issue that was a recurrence at a client - but the old ticket wasn't added to the organization when it was open, so it didn't pop up.
I understand why reopening the ticket is not possible, and I'm fine with followups. But not being able to add a single tag or field value to a ticket, or link it to another one, or to Jira - that I find incomprehensible.
14
Suhan Li
The Requester field appears when the ticket created, but once the ticket has been submitted, the requester field will disappear. How can I make it appear again since the agent needs to change the requester?
0
Heather Rommel
Hi Suhan Li,
It's not intuitive at first, but it's right here under the title. We use this a lot for phone calls from shared numbers where we can't save the number to a particular user:
-1
Suhan Li
That is very helpful!
1
Olli
Only if this option is set in the Admin > Tickets settings.
1
Olli
@..., @...
With the new agent workspace, the mentioned "change" link won't be there, BUT the requester field will be shown at all times.
0
Ksenia Tsaregorodtseva
When I add an internal note in a ticket that already has the status "Pending" or "Solved", and click just the same status as I don't want the ticket to be reopened, it changes the status to "Open" automatically. I recall that before it was possible to update the ticket and the applied status was not changed to "Open". Has it been changed recently? Is there any way to make the status preserve when you update the ticket with an internal note?
Thank you.
1
Brett Bowser
Hey Ksenia,
Can you double check the events of the ticket to see if there's a trigger that keeps setting the status back to open? You should still be able submit the ticket in the same status it's already in without it re-opening.
Let me know!
0
Scott T
I've read all of these threads pretty thoroughly and I have not found a solid justification for why it is impossible to re-open a ticket. My hunch is that it has something to do with how closed tickets are stored. E.g. archived as read-only in the database, to consume fewer resources.
I understand there are practical concerns to running gigantic databases and to changing low-level code. I would appreciate a candid answer on why people have been asking for this for *years* and there's no movement. I like a lot of things about Zendesk, but this is a dealbreaker for me.
Thanks.
1
Jonathan March
Scott, speaking as a 9-year ZD user (overall a very satisfied one!) I think I recall seeing a comment to this effect from ZD staff a number of years ago. And it seems like a more than reasonable explanation to me.
Consistent with this -- I went to look for a several-year-old ticket yesterday, and was struck by how much longer it took to open than for more recent tickets. Seemed like it was being retrieved from somewhere different.
1
Scott T
@Jonathan March
Thanks. If archiving to preserve resources is the reason, it should still be possible to have tickets stay writable for a cost. If a customer wants to pay a premium to keep all tickets in that state, it should be their perogative to do so, even if it's not a wise way to spend money.
A more cost effective option might be to temporarily pull large blocks of archived tickets back into an active state for housekeeping purposes.
Most of the reasons I have seen for needing edit tickets are a result of (A) implementing organizational ideas that were not thought of at launch and (B) lack of verification stage to correct problems in tickets before they get locked down, and (C) using tickets as a knowledge base and realizing that they contain incorrect solutions.
C is easy. Stop using tickets as a knowledge base.
B is mostly on the heads of management at the client site but perhaps Zendesk should work a bit harder to hammer the importance of ensuring agents consistenly follow certain rigid rules.
A, however, is normal and understandable; especially in organizations that use the Agile methodology.
The current option to correct these problems is to move to a different ticketing system. That's not good for anybody except Zendesk's competition. I work in process improvement and would honestly like to be able to recommend Zendesk. I like so much about the product, but this is a critical issue.
2
Jonathan March
Seems like a fair analysis of the reasons.
As everywhere, there are so many more reasonable and technically doable enhancements than can actually be implemented -- and triaging them is always painful.
1
Victor Sá
I'm having the exact same problem as Production.Zen. I have a admin account and I can't update a field value of a Closed ticket that is extremely important for us to set an analisis. Really find this incomprehensible too.
0
Nicole Saunders
The official feature request to change the functionality to allow editing of closed tickets can be found in the community here:
Feature Request - Ability to edit closed tickets
The product manager recently updated the thread and indicated that it's under evaluation for the roadmap in 2022. I encourage you to add your comments and up vote the request, and that is where the product manager will continue to provide updates.
1
Nikki
I can't find this answer anywhere!
For a Task, when you have a due date set, what is the default behavior / functionality of that field if you do not create an automation to accompany it? Would it send a reminder email when due? If it were On-Hold, would it switch to Open? Would there be some visual indicator on the List View?
1
Dave Dyson
Aside from what happens in Automations, the task Due Date can be used as a criteria in Views: see "Hours since..." here: Creating views to manage ticket workflow
1
Megan Kalman
I can't figure out the logic as to why we would want tickets to automatically be set to Open when they are assigned to agents. "Open" indicates that someone is working on the request. We have groups where there is only 1 agent active in that group. We have 8 US territories. Each territory has an assigned sales assistant. That sales assistant is the only agent who works the tickets that come into their territory group. That doesn't mean that the minute the email comes into the group and is assigned to that agent, it's being worked on. It's skewing our metrics for average time to complete.
2
Tamara Pascual
Hi,
Is there any option to forbid the end user to change the status for Solved?
Thanks!!
0
Nelcie
As long as the ticket is not yet closed, the reply from the customer will reopen the ticket if they do it using the same thread. It's one of the inborn system ticket rules. You may create a trigger and use a tag as a condition to Close a ticket however, please kindly note that once a ticket is Closed, it cannot be reopened nor edited even by agents.
0
Tamara Pascual
Hi @...,
Thanks for your comment. One more question: If I want to not allow a State change to Solved by the end user (client) in general and not with a trigger, can I do it? We need to apply some changes to the form before the ticket is resolved. I just want the agent to be able to switch to Solved after I've written the solution note, for example. I don't want to change Solved (customer made) to Open to apply changes to the ticket because the customer will receive an email notification with the status change.
0
Nelcie
As of now, there is no native function to prevent the ticket from reopening when an end-user replies to the same ticket. You can prevent this by either manually changing back the status or using business rules like triggers. If you wish to disable end-users' abilities to Solve tickets, I've looked around and found a suggestion by one of our Community members that can be found here. Please kindly note that this is a workaround and not directly provided by Zendesk.
0
Ananya Pandey
When a new ticket is created and it is assigned to a group where all the agents are busy, what will the status of ticket be New or Open?
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Hi Ananya,
When a ticket is only assigned to a group in the initial creation and not to a specific agent, the status should be set as New. However, as stated in this article, whenever a ticket is assigned to an agent, the status of the ticket will be automatically updated to Open.
I hope that answers your question. Thank you!
0