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A lookup relationship field is a custom field that you can use to establish relationships between tickets, users, organizations, and custom objects.
You can use the Zendesk API to retrieve lookup relationship data. For example, you can request a list of all tickets related to a specific support manager. To learn more, see Retrieving lookup relationship data with the API in the developer docs.
Understanding lookup relationship fields
A lookup relationship field is a type of custom field that you can add to users, organizations, tickets, and custom objects in Zendesk. After adding a lookup relationship field, team members can use it to establish relationships with other users, organizations, tickets, or custom objects.
You can add a lookup relationship field to ticket forms, user profiles, organization pages, and custom object schemas. When you do, agents can use this field to look up and select from a list of users, organizations, tickets, or custom object records in your Zendesk account.
You can use lookup fields in creative ways that serve your specific business needs. For example, you could create a lookup field called Manager, tie that lookup field to your account's users, and add the field to your ticket form. Your agents could then use this field on a ticket to select a manager from a list of your organization's users.
Topics covered in this section:
Understanding the custom field
A lookup relationship field is a custom field that lets you look up and select from a list of users, organizations, tickets, or custom object records in your Zendesk account. The following example shows a lookup relationship field on a ticket. When a team member clicks the field, an auto-populated list of options is provided as you type in the field. You don't have to define the options yourself, as you do for other dropdown custom fields, although you can filter the available options when defining the field.
After selecting a record in a ticket lookup relationship that points to a custom object, you can preview the record details within the ticket.
After selecting a record in a user, organization, or custom object lookup relationship field, you can view the record details by clicking the field name:
You can add lookup relationship fields to the following pages in the Zendesk interface:
- Tickets or the support request form in your help center
- The user profile page
- The organization page
- Custom objects
These pages represent the possible source object of a relationship. For example, a user displayed in the user profile page can be the source object of a relationship with another user, organization, ticket or custom object. The lookup relationship field lets you select the other object — also known as the related object — in the relationship.
You can make a lookup relationship field conditional so that it only appears to agents under certain circumstances. See Creating conditional ticket fields and Configuring agent access to custom object records.
Understanding the relationships
A lookup relationship can be expressed as follows:
source object → related object
The source object is the Zendesk object that contains the lookup relationship field (among other fields). It can be a user, organization, ticket, or custom object. The related object is the object specified by the lookup relationship field. It can also be a user, organization, ticket, or custom object. Lookup relationships with legacy custom objects are not supported.
A lookup relationship can be any combination of a user, organization, ticket, or custom object with another user, organization, ticket, or custom object.
If you create a relationship between a source ticket and a related user, the ticket record will have a lookup relationship field identifying the user. However, the corresponding user record will not have a field identifying the ticket. Instead of a field, the user record will have a Related tab listing the ticket along with all the other source objects it’s related to.
Each source object can be related to only one related object. However, many source objects can be related to one related object. For example, after adding an organization lookup relationship field to users, you could then establish many relationships between users and one organization. Example:
- User 1 - Org A
- User 2 - Org A
- User 3 - Org A
- ...
You can view the relationships in ticket forms, user profiles, organization pages, and custom object record details.
You can also use the Zendesk API to list the users, organizations, tickets, or custom object records related to a specific related object. For example, you can request a list of all tickets related to a specific support manager. To learn more, see Retrieving lookup relationship data with the API in the developer docs.
Searching records by lookup relationship field values is not supported.
Examples
There are many ways you can use lookup relationship fields to build out complex relationship ecosystems within Zendesk Support. The following are some examples to help you start thinking about ways you can use these custom fields:
-
You're an admin for a trucking company and you want to associate shippers, drivers, and recipients with tickets. You add three filtered lookup relationship fields to tickets: a user field named Drivers, an organization field named Shippers, and another organization field named Recipients.
-
Your company is in the business-to-business (B2B) space and interacts with many other companies. You want to track the relationships these companies have with each other. You decide to use organization lookup relationship fields to create and track these relationships. For example, you might have a field named Partner, a second named Subsidiary, and a third named Competitor.
-
In another business-to-business scenario, each of your account managers works with a key stakeholder at each of your customer companies. You create a user lookup relationship field named Account Manager to establish relationships between the stakeholders and your account managers.
-
You want to designate emergency contacts for members on your team in case a member is not available. You decide to use a user lookup field named Emergency Contact to create these user-to-user relationships. In a more complex use case, you could add additional user fields, for example Backup 1 and Backup 2, to establish a priority of backups for each person.
- You run an IT desk and want users to select the asset about which they are
submitting a ticket within the ticket form. To accomplish this, you define a
ticket lookup relationship field named Related asset that points to a
custom object named Asset. The lookup field is configured to filter
results so that only records pertaining to the user are available for
selection, and it's marked as required on the IT ticket form.Note: Lookup fields in ticket forms are only visible to end users who are signed in.
Adding lookup relationship fields
Tickets, users, and organizations can each have up to ten active lookup relationship fields. Custom objects have plan-based limits on lookup relationships per custom object. The fields are displayed on pages in the Zendesk interface.
You can also create lookup relationship fields with the Zendesk API. See Lookup Relationships in the API reference docs.
If you delete a lookup relationship field, the data in the field isn't preserved. To preserve the data, deactivate the field rather than deleting it.
To create a lookup relationship field
- 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:
- Set the Display name, Field key, and Description as described in the articles linked from step 1.
- Select a related object to list in the lookup relationship field.
This can be a Ticket, User, Organization, or the name of a custom object. For example, if you select User as the related object, the lookup relationship field will display a list of Zendesk users.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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
.
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.
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.
Icon | Source object |
---|---|
![]() |
Custom object |
![]() |
Organization |
![]() |
User |
![]() |
Ticket |
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.
87 comments
Leandro Silva
It would be really useful if it had support to the Zendesk mobile version. Are there any plans to do it?
0
Ashwin Raju
Anne-Flore Caire - That is a good idea. We are looking at adding new records from the related list pretty soon. I will take this to design and consider the options there
Leandro Silva - Will pass on this feedback to the Mobile team on this.
1
Sean Tierney
We would definitely like having the lookup field accessible to user forms. We want to store the list of products that our customers are subscribed to in a custom object. When they submit a support ticket, we'd like them to be able to pick from the list of products that they own, which product they are submitting their ticket for. We don't want them to have to pick from the entire product catalog - just from the list of products that they subscribe to.
1
Shawna James
0
sam potashnick
Is it possible to display values of a lookup field as a multi-level dropdown like we do on regular dropdown? Tried adding (::) in between the names but not working. I have a lookup with a few hundred records and I want to organise it into multi-levels.
1
Paolo
Unfortunately, this is not an existing feature as of the moment. You may follow this page to know the latest updates from Zendesk: What's New in Zendesk.
Best,
Paolo | Technical Support Engineer | Zendesk
0
Ben Lakos
Hi Ashwin Raju
Has there been any progress on dynamic filtering for relationship fields?
I remember being so excited when relationship fields became possible, and then so disappointed when I realised how limited their use in Views and Triggers were (at least in our use cases).
To me, at a pretty fundamental level, if I can eg use the 'Assignee' field in defining Views and Triggers, then I'd expect the same functionality for any other relationship field that also utilises Users. To have only a subset of that functionality makes the whole feature far less useable.
Our specific use case is pretty simple and I would have thought applicable to many others:
The fact that we can't do this makes the feature very limited in usability for us.
0
Ashwin Raju
hi Ben.. We are releasing Dynamic filters in the next couple of weeks that can be used for Lookup field filters
Give me all Contracts where Contract.Organization = Requester Organization.
But what you would want seem to be something you'd want to use in View conditions.. Let me check with the Views team on whether this functionality can be leveraged in views
0
Hannah Lucid
Hello! Any update on Explore reporting for lookup relationship fields?
0
Ashwin Raju
hi Hannah Lucid - You can use the Lookup field value in reporting today. What you dont have currently (which we are working towards) is the ability to report on fields within the lookup field.
Do you mind sharing your use case?
1
Katie Holt
Hello! We have a lookup relationship user field that links tickets to other end users. As expected, these tickets appear under the "Related" tab on the user page - which is great! We also want these Related tickets to appear on the Customer Context Panel. Is this possible? Example: John Smith requested ticket "Help with XYZ" which was solved. Then, Jane Doe submitted a ticket "Help with ABC" that we linked to John Smith via the lookup relationship field. The next time that John Smith submits a ticket, his Customer Context Panel only shows the "Help with XYZ" ticket, not the related ticket "Help with ABC". My agents have to open up John's page and go to the Related tab to see that he was associated with "Help with ABC". How can we have the Related tickets appear in the Customer Context Panel?
0
Ashwin Raju
interesting.. Within the customer context panel, I presume that you are referring to the "Interaction History" section, which you'd like to see this information?
0
Katie Holt
Ashwin Raju precisely. That would be ideal.
0
Milena Rusanova
Hi Team, my understanding of this article was that I should be able to Filter based on the Ticket current requester?
I want to create a ticket lookup relationship field with Related Object=Ticket and narrow down the search option, based on the current ticket requester.
Unfortunately currently I can filter only by Requester Is (current user) / agents.
Is this functionality planned to be available?
0
Steven Aranaga
With my company, we have Custom Objects defined for buildings and floors that our customers have subscribed with us. We have a lookup relationship that goes like Floor → Building → Organization.
I was able to filter buildings lookup in our form to those belonging to the organization of the ticket you are viewing, which is perfect, but I cannot do the same for floor. I want to be able to filter the floor based on the building selected, but that same variable does not appear in the filters (building is (building). Is there any way to do this?
0
Miguel Aguilar
Hi,
When will lookup relationships be available in Help Center? We use user_filters to help the requester choose his manager or system owner for approval of the request for e.g. equipment purchase or application access (all managers have a “Manager” in this field, system owners “SysAdm”).
Displaying a Lookup relationship helps our service desk to dispatch directly, rather than having a list on paper who is responsible of which system or department.
As it is today, good functionality, but unfortunately it doesnt help at all, as most requests are initiated through Help center (which I imagine is same for other Zendesk customers).
Reading back in the thread an ETA was mentioned back in 2022.
0
Shawna James
0
Stephen
Hi,
Just wondering is there update on plans to include Lookup Relationship fields in the bulk-edit interface?
In addition, is there any update on when sorting and filtering in Views using a Lookup Relationship field is planned?
0
Sam
Are lookup relationships available for macros? The Support Placeholders reference indicates that a Lookup Relationship custom field can be pulled with {{ticket.ticket_field_<field ID number>.id}} but when we try using this in a macro, it returns no value even though a record is present in the lookup field.
0
Sam
Hi Thomas! Not sure what we were running into on our end as we had multiple users running into this, but it now appears to be working as expected w/o any further changes. I do appreciate you getting back to us confirming that all three do work, and how they would!
0
Ashwin Raju
hi Stephen - We do have plans for enhancing custom object record list views to introduce features like Saved Lists. I dont have the timeline for that at the moment. CC: Salvador Vazquez
Having said that, in a few weeks time, we will be releasing filtering on the custom object record search API, which would mean that you can enable it with some custom code as well..
0
Joshua Pack
Ashwin Raju I actually have the same issue that Guilherme has (sorry didn't realize there were 5 pages of comments).
My company is doing B2B support. We are using a Organization drop down lookup to identify the customer on a given issue. This is being done because the party that opens the ticket may not be with the actual organization. Our support is handled by our internal employees, 3rd party contractors and the organization itself. Using an organization drop down allows us to correctly identify who the requestor is, and but connect the reported issue to the correct organization.
The challenge is that the lookup does not add the organization tag to the ticket as expected. Our customers would like to see all tickets opened for their facility, but tickets opened by a requestor that is not in that organization doesn't add the necessary tag for a ticket to show up in the Help Center portal.
Is there a way to create a trigger to add the organization tag from the lookup field? It would be wildly helpful for us.
Thank you in advance.
0
Mike DR
Thank you for sharing the answer Thomas!
0
Hannah Lucid
Ashwin Raju - About seven months late to replying, but yes! Katie Holt was referring to the customer context panel. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4591924111770/comments/6873259257242
0
Stephen
Hi Ashwin Raju ,
Do you know if there are any plans to enhance how Lookup Relationship fields interact with Ticket Views?
As mentioned in a previous comment in this thread, Lookup Relationship fields are missing the following functionality:
0
Ole Rosland
Hi, Ashwin Raju
We would greatly appreciate having the same sorting capabilities for lookup fields as we currently have for macros. For example, with a lookup field like Sales::information::((lookup vale)). This would allow for more streamlined organization and easier access to relevant data.
0
Ashwin Raju
Ole Rosland - I would need to research on this capability.. I know Dropdowns use this format to define nesting.. And we are introducing something similar to nesting pretty soon, wherein you can select the Product category field as iPhone and your Product Lookup will show only the Products with Category as iPhone
0