| Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
|---|---|---|
| April 27, 2022 | End of Q1, 2023 | TBD |
Starting in Q1, 2023, we’ll be rolling out some changes to pagination in views and the sorting behavior on user profile pages. We are doing this to ensure the future performance and scalability of views, and to improve your overall user experience. This announcement explains what we’re removing and changing, what to expect, and what to do before it happens.
This announcement includes these sections:
- Why is Zendesk making these changes?
- Cursor-based pagination for views
- Changes to sorting user profile pages
Why is Zendesk making these changes?
As explained in our earlier announcement about changes to views sorting and ordering, there are some major infrastructure changes happening in the backend for Views. This is going to make the performance of views more consistent and less reliant on the scale and complexity of the view. Larger active ticket volumes will have less effect on the performance of views. This will also start to open up feedback improvements to the views interface that were previously blocked due to the technical limitations.
Cursor-based pagination for views
Zendesk is supporting a new pagination model called cursor-based pagination (CBP), and as part of this broader shift, we’ll be switching to cursor-based pagination in views as well. It allows for much faster response times than offset-based pagination at any page depth and improves the overall performance and loading time of the views.
This means that we are removing the ability to skip pages in a view. You will no longer see numbers as part of the page controls such as these:
Instead, each view will include page controls for First, Next, Previous, and Last.
What you need to do
We recommend that you create views with multiple, specific parameters to produce more narrowed views that surface more relevant information. For example, if you have a view where you typically skip to page 5 of 10 in order to see tickets assigned to a certain person or group, you can create a new view with an additional parameter for the assignee.
If you want to see the last page in a view, you can do a reserve-sort using one of the columns in the view. For example, clicking on the Requester column will sort tickets based on requester names, putting them in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order. There will not be an explicit option for jumping to the last page.
Changes to sorting user profile pages
We will be removing the ability to sort tickets on user profile pages by Subject, Requester, and Group (see Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support). For example, if you click these column headings, nothing will happen. You will still be able to sort by other columns.
What you need to do
Make sure you understand that you will not be able to sort by certain columns on user profile pages in the future. Aside from that, no action is needed.
108 Comments
Is there any changes coming to the amount of Views visible to agents? E.g. more than 12?
This is very inconvenient when we need to count or sort tickets in high volume views to approximate volume of certain ticket types.
Couple points with removing these functions:
This is terrible. This will make life much harder with no gain. Good way to push your users away.
This sounds like it could have a significant detrimental impact on how our teams work, in the email communicating this change you suggest that you also expect this when saying:
'To help minimise the impact of these pagination and sorting changes to your workflow, Zendesk is introducing filter controls on views pages by the end of Q2 2022. This on-demand filtering will offer a quicker, easier, and improved user experience, and can accommodate use cases in which you may need to skip pages'.
I understand that the first change is laying foundations for future improvements but could you not wait and introduce both changes at the same time given you know the first change will cause pain?
These changes make absolutely no sense for users with high ticket volumes. My team regularly skips to specific pages when viewing lists of tickets and sorting by subject line is an absolute necessity, so I don't understand how you can remove them in the name of "progress."
We often sort views when we have a large number of tickets to check for duplicates, so this would make this task a lot more difficult.
Why are you removing sorting options? The subject sort is very helpful in sorting tickets. The hyperlink you have for viewing a person's profile sends to a page that doesn't exist.
Also, the new paging system ends up with people having to click blindly and no longer have visibility on volumes.
I fail to see how this is in any way going to be an improvement to our user experience (as suggested in the email announcement). This set of updates is concerning, makes no sense for handling high ticket volumes, and will ruin perfectly efficient workflows that many of your users already have set up.
For example, not being able to skip by page number removes a function that my team uses every day to get to particular Issue codes. Having to make views for each issue code that we regularly jump to wouldn't be a big deal... if the sidebar would allow us to set more than 12 to be visible.
You say in the email announcement that these changes will improve overall user experience. All I see are proposed changes that make working with Zendesk Support more difficult.
I do hope that you'll take the (at least on this article) near universal negative feedback from your users that these changes are concerning and don't improve user processes, and retract these changes or drastically improve them from what's been stated here.
Y'all WHAT? We typically have a hundred or more pages of tickets... you're telling me I either have to make dozens of different views (that I can only find by going out of the support system into admin center just to be brought back to support), or I will have to add dozens of clicks to my workflows when I'm looking through our main inbox? This is actually kind of insane, and I'm interested to know who is asking for this performance optimization.
This combined with losing the ability to sort by subject... these changes aren't just inconveniences that many of us can adapt to. They're deep inefficiencies that are going to add hours and hours of manual work and possibly a staffing cost as a result. I was truly hoping Admin Center was going to be the worst of it, but it was only the beginning.
PLEASE rethink the pagination changes. Pleeeease I am begging you!
Editing to add: we have processes that require our specialists to know who is on which page so there's no overlapping work.
In addition, how can I calculate how many tickets I have in my inbox if there's over 1k and I don't know how many pages there are? Will Zendesk be surfacing the actual number of tickets in a view over 1k, or will this remain at 1k, 1.5k, 2k, etc? If the latter, what are your suggestions for easily and quickly calculating the number of tickets in a view over 1k? Previously I could simply do "page number x 30."
Very concerned over the below updates coming.
We (like most other customers) have views currently set up for our Teams which use these features, removing these features will have a huge impact on the performance of us and our customers. these latest updates do not make any sense.
These updates need to be retracted before the suggested date of implementation 28 July 2022.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but there's some conflicting information regarding the change to pagination.
"Instead, each view will include page controls for First, Next, Previous, and Last."
then further down in the "What you need to do" area:
"There will not be an explicit option for jumping to the last page."
Not having First and Last options to jump to would be hugely detrimental when handling large ticket volumes, and reverse sorting by a certain column may not be sufficient.
Also, will the change to cursor-based pagination also bring about the option to easily change how many tickets are displayed on a page? E.g. 100 instead of the standard 30?
Lydon McGrane
I agree this update is extremely concerning and doesn't improve logging tickets.
It actually makes working with Zendesk Support much more difficult.
Time to look elsewhere maybe?
If the intention is to improve functionality, what is your suggestion to identify duplicates? Currently we sort by requester in order to identify duplicate tickets and this change makes that impossible. Looking forward to your response as I'm very concerned about the impact here.
As a user of the software I read this as "we are removing some functionality because we are having problems with maintaining acceptable performance levels."
It seems like many changes are being made to improve performance but at the expense of the user experience. Removing simple and basic functionality such as sorting seems like a way to cover up some bad design decisions in the past.
Was this idea every presented to community before the decision for the changes are being made?
Why would you remove the ability to sort by Subject, Requester, and Group. This is a feature that we use daily and is extremely helpful to our workflow?
We feel as tho we are now paying to lose functionality.
Is there a way to see this change in our sandbox before it's in production?
Agree with above comments. Not having the ability to select the page we want to go is a huge deal from the customer side. While it may help with performance on the back end, the design is a huge negative on the user experience end. With large ticket volumes no one has time to click page by page till they get to the page they want to see. Additionally I also like the above suggestions of increasing the number of tickets per page as 30 is not a lot on one page.
We are of the same opinion as everyone else. This poorly thought-out change makes it obvious that you do not have any clear understanding of how your customers use your product. For example, we recently had a campaign that flooded our inbox with more than 3,000 tickets over the course of about 30 minutes. Without the current ability to jump by page number, we would have no way to sort these incoming emails while simultaneously working through the unrelated tickets. We also rely heavily on our Group and Subject sort in user profiles. While this change may make it easier from your end, it is evident that your customers do not want this. We pay a lot of money for a product that is being “optimized” seemingly without customer input and is systematically losing the features that made us choose it in the first place.
Having the number of Views increased would be infinitely helpful in itself, especially for companies that have one support team rotating between all channels of contact, but not at the expense of features that most of us depend on to streamline our workflow. The promise of “speed” is a poor trade for the degradation of productivity this will cause our support staff. What use is speed if we are spending time clicking Next for 50+ pages?
This plan should be shelved until there is a functional solution that does not remove key features and tools. If you are not able to achieve that baseline, this “optimization” should be abandoned.
Just to echo the concerns of other customers dealing with high ticket volumes. This will impact our workflow for triaging which we do several times a day.
I understand the goal is to improve functionality, but improving functionality by reducing features isn't what I would consider an improvement.
Sorting by columns, jumping to pages, these are all essential features. Very often we use the jumping to pages just to determine criteria for a new view. Removing that ability hinders this effort.
Just over a month ago you were saying sort by requester will not be being removed? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408826088730/comments/4487861997594
Why? Who at Zendesk keeps deciding to remove incredibly useful functionality without comparable alternatives? First you got rid of Google Docs Importer without a good alternative, now this? Getting rid of the page number selection is going to add a lot of work for users with large ticket volumes. The narrow view option you present is also a non starter as we are limited to 12 views in the side bar and I am already at that limit. The Admin center updates were annoying, but at least all the functionality is there. That is not the case for this change. First, Last, Next and Previous buttons is not an upgrade over a Page Number selection. It is a serious step back from a usability stand point. I really hope you reconsider this change.
Ditto to the above. A whole lot of "we're removing" and not a lot of "we're adding" abilities.
I already have lots of view and do not want to create more "narrowly focused" views.
I see no benefits to your customers, only to your programmers.
This is very bad news and will make our agents work much more difficult. I see no good reasons to remove functionalities.
This is a terrible idea.
I really do not see how "performance improvements" are taking a priority over a basic feature set that is used by many.
We personally have absolutely no problem with the performance, and while I understand it makes sense to switch to "cursor based pagination" from a technical level, in the end your product is still there to serve the customer...and by introducing this change you are really doing the opposite and removing really standard features, that are part of many workflows.
You can already see the overwhelming response by the community is negative. So please take this as an opportunity to rethink these changes.
Is there any way we can make you abandon this change until you remove the limit of 12 views ?
Removing the limit of 12 views was supposed to happen in H1 and now it's postponed to H2 2022 and who can tell us that it won't be postponed in 2023 ?
This is really not a nice move and as you can see none of your customer is happy with it.
So please postpone this change until your make improvement in the view management which is currently outdated vs your competitors !!
I can think of 0 reason why removing the ability to sort by requester would be beneficial for your users. You can see based on the comments here that this is a terrible product decision.
Bob Sherer
Heads up about this announcement from last month: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408826088730-Announcing-changes-to-views-sorting-and-ordering
What you're seeing some callouts on is this point in particular:
We are also losing the ability to sort by subject in ticket views, not just user profiles. The rollout for that change is set to complete in the next week or so according to the linked article.
I need to echo everyone else and agree that this change needs to be delayed and re-thought before you roll it out. We are a high ticket volume support structure, with large amounts of tickets per agent. Removing ways to sort through this ticket load is going top make things much harder for us.
I fail to see 1 advantage to this, besides the reported increase in speed... but was any of the ZD community asked about the trade off? Is it worth it? My vote would be no.
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