Creating side conversations

What's my plan?

Suite

Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Support with

Collaboration add-on

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.

This article primarily focuses on how to create email side conversations. However, keep in mind that, you may be able to create side conversations from other non-email side conversation channels (Slack or Ticket) or macros. This depends on what features your administrator has enabled and configured. For information about using side conversation channels other than Email, see Using side conversation child tickets and Using Slack in side conversations).

Note: Side conversations are not supported on the Zendesk Support mobile app. You cannot create, view, or reply to side conversations using the mobile app. However, you can still use the email client on your mobile device to receive and reply to side conversation notifications.

This article includes these topics:

• Creating email side conversations
• Adding ticket comments to a side conversation

Related articles:

• Side conversation resources
• Create side conversations using macros

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.

Side conversations are created from the context panel.

Unlike other email notifications in Zendesk, email side conversations don't use your email templates.

To create an email side conversation

1. In a ticket, open the context panel and click the Side conversations () icon, then click the plus sign (+).
2. 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.

   

3. 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.

4. Click Send.

All of the recipients on the side conversation receive an email notification with your message. The email side conversation is sent from the support address. See About support addresses used to send side conversations.

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.

Adding ticket comments to side conversations has the following limitations:

• 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

1. Start a side conversation. You can start the conversation from an individual ticket comment or from the context panel.
2. Click the comments icon ( ) at the bottom of the message.

   

   A page appears with a list of ticket comments to include.

3. Select the comments you want to include. You can select each comment separately, or select Ticket comments to include all comments.

   

4. 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.