If activated, agents, light agents, and admins can create side conversations on open or closed tickets. When someone replies to a side conversation on a closed or archived ticket, triggers won’t be run on it even if they include side conversation conditions, but a follow-up ticket is automatically created (see Understanding follow-up tickets for side conversations).
Any time someone creates a side conversation, a notification appears in the Zendesk Support interface for 60 seconds.
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Creating email side conversations
If activated, agents and light agents can create email side conversations. Email side conversations can be sent to up to 100 recipients, with a maximum of 48 of those recipients being non-agents. You can add recipients to email side conversations with the To field or you can CC or BCC recipients.
In the Agent Workspace, side conversations are created from the context panel. In the standard agent interface, side conversations are created from Side conversations at the top of the ticket conversation pane.
Unlike other email notifications in Zendesk, email side conversations don't use your email templates.
| Agent Workspace | Standard agent interface |
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To create an email side conversation
- In a ticket, open the context panel and click the Side conversations (
) icon, then click the plus sign (+).If you don’t have the Agent Workspace, in a ticket click the Side Conversations plus sign (+) in the upper-left.
- Select Email.
If you have an email signature set up, it automatically appears in the message. You can remove your signature by clicking the Options menu (
) and selecting Remove
signature. To learn more about signatures, see Adding an agent
signature.
- Enter the recipients, a subject, your message, and add attachments. You must include a subject or else the side conversation email can't be sent.
You have these options:
- For agents (and light agents) that are already in the system, type their
name. When you see the person you are looking for, click their name.
Address autocomplete for agents and light agents include a badge to show
they are agents.
- For everyone else, enter their email address. You only have to type or paste the full email address once. The next time you initiate a side conversion with that person, the address will autocomplete. Users you add by email automatically become end users in your account, if they aren't there already.
- An email address highlighted in red has incorrect formatting and needs to be corrected.
- You can also CC or BCC agents and end users. Click CC on the
right side of the comment header and the CC recipient field and the
option to BCC users appears. See Adding CCs and BCCs in email side
conversations.
Note: BCC recipients are not visible to other recipients on the email, but are visible to anyone who can view the side conversation within Support. - When you add attachments, you can select a file from your computer or
include one or more attachments that already exist in the ticket. Click
the attachment icon (
) and select From computer or From
ticket.
Recipients will receive the attachment itself rather than a linked attachment.
You can add attachments from the 100 most recent ticket comments directly from the ticket, except for tickets created from messaging or social channels. If an attachment can't be added directly from a ticket, then you can download the attachment and add it by selecting From computer.
- For agents (and light agents) that are already in the system, type their
name. When you see the person you are looking for, click their name.
Address autocomplete for agents and light agents include a badge to show
they are agents.
- Click Send.
All of the recipients on the side conversation receive an email notification with your message.
This doesn’t automatically include the assignee of the ticket or the creator of the side conversation. See Recommendations about side conversations.
Adding ticket comments to a side conversation
You can include one or more ticket comments as part of a side conversation. This prevents you from having to copy and paste relevant information. In this example, you'll forward a comment in an email. However, you can also add comments by using Slack or creating child tickets.
- You can't include call recordings when adding ticket comments to a side conversation. Call recordings aren't supported in side conversations.
- You can't add ticket comments to a side conversation from tickets created from messaging or social channels.
To forward a ticket comment
- On a ticket, locate the comment you want to include, then select Forward via
email from the options menu.
A side conversation appears with the ticket title and comment already included, ready for you to add introductory text and include a forwarding address. You can start a side conversation from any comment in the ticket.
To include multiple comments
- Start a side conversation. You can start the conversation from an individual ticket comment or from the main side conversation interface in the ticket.
- Click the comments icon (
) at the bottom of the message.
A page appears with a list of ticket comments to include.
- Select the comments you want to include. You can select each comment separately,
or select Ticket comments to include all comments.
- Click Add.
Creating macros that generate side conversations
When the side conversation feature is enabled, macro actions are added that allow you to create side conversations in a ticket. There's a macro action for each side conversation channel options you have. For example:
- Side conversation via email
- Side conversation via Slack
- Side conversation via child ticket
Email side conversations can be sent to one or more email addresses. When you create a side conversation macro for Slack, you chose a Slack channel to send the message to. For child ticket side conversations, you select a group to assign to the macro-generated side conversation child ticket.
For more information, see Using macros to start side conversations.