| Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
|---|---|---|
|
April 27, 2022 |
July 11, 2022 |
August 1, 2022 |
Zendesk is adding a new custom field type that allows you to define custom relationships between tickets, users, and organizations in Zendesk Support.
What's changing?
A new custom field type called Lookup relationship is being added for tickets, users, and organizations. This new custom field type enables admins to build custom relationships between these Support objects that are unique to their business.
Additionally, lookup relationship fields can be used in triggers and views. Admins also have the ability to filter which values can be included in lookup relationship fields.
To learn more, see Using lookup relationship fields.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Each Zendesk customer has unique business needs. Not all of these needs can be met with the native relationships built into Support. Adding new types of custom fields, such as lookup relationship fields, increases the flexibility of Support to meet the unique needs for storing and associating different types of data about tickets, users, and organizations.
What do I need to do?
Custom lookup relationship fields are being rolled out to all accounts automatically. Before using lookup relationship fields, work with your development team to determine whether you are using any custom code or applications to retrieve ticket, user, or organization fields. If not, you can begin using lookup relationship fields immediately.
If you are using custom code to retrieve user, ticket, or organization fields, work with your development team before you begin using lookup relationship fields to ensure that your integrations continue to function as expected. Do the following:
- Identify the way your custom code handles unknown field types. This could be to crash, exclude and ignore, or fallback to a more generic type like the text field type.
- Update your custom code to avoid unexpected behavior. We recommend falling back to a text field type when an unknown field type is encountered. This is usually the least disruptive approach, and it will future-proof your code for any new field types that may be mandatory.
After you start using lookup relationship fields, we recommend updating any custom code you may be using to recognize the lookup relationship field type.
65 Comments
Teri Hines - Given that you want to still retain 2 user records for the same user, you can utilize Lookup fields to build the relationship to second user record.
Create a Lookup field in Tickets called (let's say) Alternate Profile and point to a User type. When a ticket comes up for a user who has 2 profiles, you can add the second profile into this new field. That way, you can associate both the profiles to the ticket.
We are in the process of launching Zendesk. I don't see this feature in our Production or Sandbox. How do we go about getting this added?
This functionality is still in early access so you'll need to sign up here if you're interested: How do I sign up for the Lookup Relationship Fields EAP?
I hope this helps!
Ashwin Raju This is an incredible feature, an Organisation Hierarchy is exactly what my company needs from a B2B perspective. Is it still on-track? How do I get notified once the release is good to go, after early-access?
AFAIK this is still on track but I don't have a date to share of when this will be released. That being said, you'll want to follow our Announcements page where we will be sharing new and upcoming features :)
Cheers!
Will the Lookup fields appear in XML exports? For example: if we link an end-user to multiple organisations and then make an export of our users, will this field be in the XML file?
Hello all.. Given that the next week is a short one in the US, we wanted to give our engineers a well deserved break. Given that we will be a little short staffed, we plan to start our GA roll out from July 11th instead of June 29th. If any of you need access to the Lookup fields in the interim, please fill up the Early access program. And I'd be happy to enable the functionality for you.
Happy July 4th to those who celebrate !!
Will the relationship's target's data be made available as placeholders in the ticket?
For example, if I would like to use a ticket's relationship's email address in a comment to the ticket or in a trigger, could I do something like:
ticket.ticket_field_<field ID number>.email?
Daniël Nieuwendijk - Thanks for the question. This is a request that we've received from customers and a backlog ticket has been made for this scenario. How do you imagine you would be utilizing this placeholder functionality?
Tbh, it's a bit of an edge case, but we could use a relationship field to document other agents that played a role in the current ticket, other than the assignee. Having such a relationship field in place, we would send public comments based on trigger conditions that calls Zendesk's own API where we'd have the relationship field's user id as the author ID.
I asked this in the Creating conditional ticket fields, but thought I'd ask here to see if it gets more visibility. So, I can create a form condition to show a lookup relationship field, but I get this error when I try to save the changes:
Is this an issue that is going to be addressed?
Jason Littrell - Yes! We'll be releasing a fix next week, please look forward to it.
@... - Thank the lord baby Jesus the fix is coming next week. 🙏🏻
It appears that the Lookup field cannot be used as a value in a trigger action, eg if I have organizations with a user lookup field, I cannot create a trigger to assign tickets to the agent in the user look up field, or to email the user in that lookup field. Am I missing a step somewhere?
Hi Sarah Martin! Currently, values in lookup fields can't be used in the way you've described in the given examples. We've gotten similar questions from a couple of customers and this is something we're looking into. If you have any more details about your use case or other feedback related to lookup field trigger actions, please do share as it would be really helpful for me.
Hi @..., We currently use a dropdown field with options of agents to which an organization can be assigned. Then, triggers use this dropdown to enact some trigger actions, which need a specific agent in the trigger action parameter (email user, assign to agent, etc.). We need to update both the drop down list of valid agents, and have triggers for each agent in the dropdown. This creates lots of duplication so the Lookup field is exactly what we need to reduce the number of triggers and maintaining the dropdown. Unfortunately in it's current implementation, it only resolves one of the issues, which is the drop down list, not the list of repeated triggers which still needs updating any time there is a new agent. I hope this helps explain the use case, thank you
I'm currently making a form where users can request new users and I need to ask what organisation the new user should be related to...
It would be nice if this lookup field could be published to and-users somehow, so the requester could choose an organisation from a lookup field that shows the current organisations in Zendesk.
Any idea when this will be available for reporting. I just added it, filled in 20 records and waited for an hour and nothing showed in explorer - this is when I found this article - my 2 cent - label the field like this until it is ready for reporting
Hi Ashwin Raju,
I have been able to create a view where the value of a lookup relationship field is a certain user. Is it possible to set it to allow (current user) as a value?
Hello @Ashwin Raju,
Is it planned/on the roadmap to allow references in Triggers for lookup relationships?
For example: If you want to set up a Trigger to contact the account manager of a user every time a comment is made, you would need to create a trigger for every single account manager there is.
And replace the Trigger every time an account manager leaves/a new one joins.
It would be really useful to use the value of lookup relationship fields in Trigger actions (not just setting them via trigger actions, but also using its value through them)
Brian Rosenkrantz Thanks for the feedback. At this point, Lookup fields is not available for customer facing forms but its definitely something we're looking into.
John DiGregorio Sorry about that! Lookup fields for Explore reporting is something we're discussing but will take longer - I don't currently have an ETA.
Shayan Moussawi This is something we've heard from multiple customers and are looking into for our roadmap. Lookup fields can't currently do this in its current state but it is valuable feedback.
@... Great that it is something you consider.
Another feature that would be useful would be to extend the search capabilities in a lookup field to consider the external ID or other profile data - at the moment for example when searching for an Organization - the Agent has to enter its exact name. It would be helpful if for example email addresses for users and orgnizations, and external IDs would factor into the search from a lookup field (similar to how they do in Zendesk search)
Hi Ahmed Zaid! Can you give an example of how you would be using a [current user] value within views? Lookup fields aren't able to do that at this stage but would like to hear more about your use case.
Hi @...,
Using an organization lookup relationship field to set an agent as an account manager, I can create a personal view to monitor tickets from accounts I am managing. I would like to make it a global view for agents to monitor accounts they are managing. So I hope the condition can be set as follows: 'Account Manager' > is > current user
Is it possible to list all the related Tickets, Users, Organizations?
For example if I linked a Ticket to an Organization - I also want to be able to view all linked Tickets to an Organization - preferably without having to create a separate view for it.
Is this something that is planned or in the works?
Something like Views in Organizations, Users tabs to show all related Tickets, Users and Organizations?
Hi, i'm trying to use the placeholder '{{ticket.ticket_field_option_title_ID}}' refer to a lookup field to email the name of the manager (light agent), but the result is the same value for the placeholder '{{ticket.ticket_field_ID}}'. It display only a number, i think it's the option_title ID of the lookup..
Obviously i replace the 'ID' of the placeholder with the real ID of the lookup field
Any advise?
Riccardo Centomo If I'm not mistaken, a placeholder doesn't work yet for the new lookup field as they haven't built the functionality there yet in the backend.
I'm sure @... or Ashwin Raju can help confirm this for us. :)
In the meanwhile we attempt the confirm from @... or Ashwin Raju a have another point.
In a view, I'm trying to group by or order by the lookup field but it doesn't appear in the list like an custom drop down field.. So this is another thing that don't work yet for the lookup fields?
Well I'd say yes if it's not letting you order via the lookup field in a view. Most likely the functionality has yet to be built.
Please sign in to leave a comment.