A lookup relationship field is a custom field that you can use to establish relationships between tickets, users, organizations, andcustom objects. Additionally, lookup relationship fields can be used to define relationships for custom objects with articles in Zendesk Knowledge and brands.

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Lookup relationship fields let you create connections between tickets, users, organizations, and custom objects. You can use these fields to define relationships, filter options, and view related records. They are useful in triggers and views, allowing you to automate actions based on relationships. Customize fields to fit your needs and use the API for advanced data retrieval.

A lookup relationship field is a custom field that you can use to establish relationships between tickets, users, organizations, and custom objects. Additionally, lookup relationship fields can be used to define relationships for custom objects with articles in Zendesk Knowledge and brands.

This article contains the following topics:
  • Adding lookup relationship fields
  • Viewing lookup relationships
  • Using lookup relationship fields in triggers and views
Related articles:
  • Understanding lookup relationship fields
  • Retrieving lookup relationship data with the API
  • Defining parent-child relationships for custom objects

Adding lookup relationship fields

As with other custom fields, lookup relationship fields are displayed on their object's pages in the Zendesk interface. The number of lookup fields you can create per object depends on your plan:
  • Suite Team and Growth plans can have a maximum of 5 lookup relationship fields per object.
  • Suite Professional plans and above can have a maximum of 10 lookup relationship fields per object.

To create a lookup relationship field

  1. Start by adding a custom field to your users, organizations, tickets, or custom object and select Lookup relationship as the custom field type. For more information, see:
    • Adding custom fields to your tickets and ticket forms
    • Adding custom fields to users
    • Adding custom fields to organizations
    • Defining a custom object's schema with custom fields

    Example:

  2. Set the Display name, Field key, and Description as described in the articles linked from step 1.
  3. Select a related object to list in the lookup relationship field.

    The related object can be a ticket, user, organization, or the name of another custom object. For custom objects, the related object can also be articles or brands. For example, if you select User as the related object, the lookup relationship field will display a list of Zendesk users.

  4. (Optional) Click Add filter to define one or more filters to reduce the number of options that the field can display.
    You can filter objects by any number of tags or custom fields. For more information, see Filtering the field's options.
    Note: Filters aren't supported for custom object lookup relationship fields with articles as the related object.
  5. Click Save.

Filtering the field's options

Your account could have thousands or even millions of ticket, user, organization, and custom object records. In most cases, you'll want a defined subset of records for the options in your lookup relationship fields. For example, you might want to list only users who are account managers.

All lookup relationship fields that target standard objects can filter the records of the related object by tag. For example, to list only users who are account managers, you could add an "account_manager" tag to the user profiles of your account managers and then define the following filter condition for the lookup relationship field: Tags | Contain at least one of the following | account_manager. This isn't possible for lookup fields that target custom objects.

Depending on the object the lookup field is defined on and the object it targets, different filters are available to help admins restrict the records available to be selected within the field.
  • Lookup fields that target tickets have the following additional default filters are available: Status, Type, Priority, Assignee, Requester, Form, Organization, and Channel.
  • Lookup fields that target users have an additional Role filter available.
  • Ticket lookup relationship fields that target other custom objects can dynamically restrict the object records available for selection within the lookup field by using additional filters based on the ticket's current user, assignee, requester, and organization.

Lookup relationship fields also support filtering by other custom fields added to the related object. For example, if you add a Security Clearance custom checkbox field to the user profile, the Security Clearance field will appear as a filter option when you add the lookup relationship field. You could then define the following filter condition for the field: Security Clearance | Is | Checked.

Furthermore, you can filter lookup relationship fields based on whether they match or don't match field values in the source object. For example, if a ticket has a lookup relationship field named Product category that points to a custom object named Product, you could filter the results to return only Product records that have a Category field value that matches the ticket's Product category field. When filtering lookup relationship fields for matching values in one of the source object's fields, the tags (rather than values) are compared for drop-down fields.

When using the match and does not match operators to filter lookup field values, you can only compare values in fields of the same type. For example, two drop-down field values can be compared, but you can't compare a drop-down field's value to a multi-select field's value. Therefore these operators are only available when matching field types exist. Additionally, the lookup fields must have the same target object. For example, you can filter which custom object records are available for selection in a ticket lookup relationship field targeting a custom object by matching the ticket's brand with the custom object record's brand because in both cases, the target object is brands.

When using lookup relationship fields to connect to an object with a currency field, you can filter based on the record's currency value being equal to, greater than, or less than a specified currency and value.

You can modify the filters at any time. This won't affect the values previously selected within lookup relationship fields.

To learn more, see About custom fields and Building trigger condition statements.

Viewing lookup relationships

Establishing relationships between records is important for building out your complex data model. However, it's also important to see and interact with those relationships within Zendesk. Each user profile, organization, and custom object record displays a list of related records. For tickets, any related records are visible as values within the ticket fields.

Clicking on lookup relationship fields opens the related record's details in a new tab in Support.

Note: Archived tickets aren't included in lists of related records.

Viewing records related to users and organizations

Each Zendesk Support profile for a team member, end user, or organization includes a Related tab that lists all related source objects. The information is grouped by the type of source object (Tickets, Organizations, Users, or Custom objects) and the specific lookup field.

In the following example of a team member profile, tickets have a lookup relationship field called Driver. If Annie Porter is selected in the Driver field, that ticket appears under the Related tab on her team member profile. It’s grouped by the type of source object, Tickets, and the name of the lookup field, Driver.

The Related tab doesn’t appear on user profiles in your help center.

Viewing records related to tickets

Within a ticket, lookup relationship fields are displayed like any other fields in the ticket field panel.

For lookup fields pointing to organizations, users, or other tickets, clicking on the field opens the record in a new tab in Support. If the lookup field points to a custom object, you can view the record's details within the context panel without navigating away from the ticket you're working on. See Interacting with related object records in tickets.

Viewing records related to custom objects

Similar to users and organizations, when you view a custom object record's details, you'll see all values for all of the object's fields on the left and then a list of related records grouped by the source object's type on the right.

When viewing the list of related records, the source object's type is indicated by one of the following icons, the source object's name, and then the lookup relationship field's name is in bold and parentheses.
Icon Source object
Custom object
Organization
User
Ticket
Note: Related articles and brands aren't reflected in the related records list. Instead, the related article and brand values are visible only within the record's fields. Related articles in a custom object record function as a hyperlink to the article.

The following example shows the details for record 256 of the Project custom object. In addition to the specific details about project 256, you can also see that this project is related to 3 tickets via a lookup relationship field on the ticket () named Project Code that points to the Project object.

Using lookup relationship fields in triggers and views

You can use lookup relationship fields to help define triggers and views.

When adding a condition to a trigger or view, any lookup relationship fields also appear in the list of options. In the following example, the first condition of a trigger is a user lookup relationship field named Support Manager. The trigger will only fire for tickets associated with the support manager named Jennifer Hanson.

You can also use lookup relationship fields in the actions of your triggers. In the following example, the action sets the value of the organization lookup relationship field named Company Organization to Northwest Region when the trigger fires.

In addition to using the record name specified in lookup fields in trigger conditions and actions, you can also reference the related record's fields within your conditions and actions. For example, if you have a ticket lookup relationship field named Software requested that points to a custom object named Software, you could use the Software requested lookup field to create conditions and actions around the record selected within the lookup field—as in a record is or isn't present, or the record's name is or isn't set to a specific value—or you can reference other fields within the record, such as a Approval required checkbox being selected or not within the record related to the ticket. For more information about using lookup relationship fields that target custom objects in triggers, see Using custom objects in triggers.

You can also use placeholders to retrieve information about the target record in a lookup relationship field. This is true for lookup fields pointing to other tickets, users (requester), and organizations. The ID can then be used in API requests, such as to assign the ticket to the user specified in a lookup field or notify the manager of the user specified in a lookup field that their approval is required.

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