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.
Related articles:
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
- In a ticket, open the context panel and click the Side conversations
(
) icon, then click the plus sign (+).
- 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 context panel.
- 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.
26 comments
Maky
Hi!
This link is broken: Recommendations about side conversations.
Maria
1
Maky
Hi again.
I found it but you have to fix it in this article:
Recommendations about side conversations
Maria
0
Nicole Saunders
Thanks for letting us know, Maria. We'll get that fixed ASAP!
0
Aimee Spanier
Thanks, Maria. The link should be fixed now.
0
Adam Brown
Why won't a side coversation email send?
Is there an attachment file size limit to sending the side conversation email? We use this feature often, but one email has not worked recently, and the only thing we can see different to the others is that it has large files. 3 files, with a combined size of ~62MB.. No error message is received. It is being sent to only 2 people, who have both successfully received side conversation emails in the past.
0
Christine
Email and web form attachment limits are as follows:
The total of all email attachments cannot exceed 10 MB. When these limits are exceeded, Support will attempt to process the attachment as a linked attachment instead.
If you try to attach a file that is larger than 50 MB, an error message will display and inform you that the file is too large. The attachment will be dropped, meaning it will not be attached to the ticket (as either an email or linked attachment).
For more information about attachment types, see About email attachments.
0
Adam Brown
Thanks, @.... As I understand in the two examples, the email will still go through; however, if they are too large, the attachments will not.
The issue I'm experiencing is the email (from Side Conversation) looks like its sends, and I can see it in the ticket body, but the recipients do not receive the email at all.
1
Christine
I created a ticket on your behalf, and continue to assist you from there. Kindly check your email for updates. Thanks!
0
Jason Wong
We have created a trigger & macro that initiates a side conversation for email however, in the To field we are populating it with a placeholder to the organization area.
ie.
{{ticket.organzation.custom_fields.xxxxxx}}
However, this is not expanding. If we use any ticket.ticket ticket.assignee type placeholders those do expand. Nothing in the custom org fields are retrievable, is this a limitation or not support thing we can use for email side converations.
0
Afabio Junior
You can make it work by using the correct placeholder.
If it is for the email address for an example, you can use ticket.organization.custom_fields.<field_key>
Please, notice that you should not referencing it by ID, instead you need to use the field_key to get the To field populated.
For a drop down field type, you can use ticket.organization.custom_fields.<field_key>.title
More details about it on the following article:
Zendesk Support placeholders reference
I hope that helps.
0
Jason Wong
Hi Afabio,
Yes, I was able to ascertain that the user fields and org fields in placeholders use different id values. We've resolved that issue now.
0
Arno (EMEA Partner)
Finding: Email based side conversations do not apply the same logic with attachments as normal tickets do. There is incorrect information above in this discussion.
If you attach a large file to side conversation, for example 40MB, it would be sent as normal email attachment, not link. Now depending on the receiving email service, you may or may not receive a rejection email due too large size of the email.
Therefore it might look like your message was not sent, as receiver does not get it, and you do not get rejection back, but message was sent, just not delivered.
I reviewed a couple of cases we experienced with Zendesk support, and they verified, that is the case with large attachments. It is by design, at least for now.
0
Nora
Is it possible to change the email address that the side conversation gets sent from within Zendesk?
1
Paolo
You can use the Select an Address app to achieve this. However, since the side conversation is dependent on which email address was used for the parent ticket, it will affect the parent ticket as well. Basically, the email address used in the parent ticket will always be the same as the side conversation.
0
Kate Collardson
Is it possible to delete an incorrect email address from the list that pops up when you start typing in the To: box? Someone left a letter out once, and now it's an option for the entire team forever. Can we remove it?
0
Dane
End-users will be automatically populated to the Side Conversation > Email > To. To remove it, you just need to delete that user.
1
Kate Collardson
That worked - thanks so much, Dane!
0
Hannah Lucid
Can someone clarify this sentence for me:
Is this for the agent who created the side conversation, the agent receiving the side conversation, or both?
0
Destiny
Thank you for your question. The system is configured such that notifications for side conversation comments within the Support UI are sent out to both the person who made the request and the assigned individual after 60 seconds. I trust this resolution will prove to be helpful to you.
0
Devadasu Yasasvi Raman
how can i change the from address of the side conversation
0
Destiny
The notifications for side conversations are sent from the support address linked to the main ticket where the side conversation was initiated. If you're looking to select a specific 'from' address for these notifications, you might want to consider the "Select an Address" app. This app provides the ability to specify the email address from which your side conversation notifications will be sent.
For more detailed information, please visit the following link: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408844206746-About-side-conversations?page=4.
0
Shawna James
0
Saurabh Srivastava
Hi, I was using macro for side conversation where I have used subject line with 900 characters using some placeholders and if-else logic to send email to backoffice team. I am trying to add one more field in subject line and then observed that it's not allowing me to use more than 256 characters in subject. This has a severe impact on my solution. Please suggest how can I achieve the same.
Thanks
Saurabh
0
Evelyn Gill
We expected the side conversation > email functionality to work similar to a side conversation > Slack where a response on the Slack thread reopens the ticket. Does this not work the same?
0
Michael B.
Hi team!
We heavily use Messaging, but there is a known limitation when adding ticket comments to the side conversations:
“You can't add ticket comments to a side conversation from tickets created from messaging or social channels.”
Can we please look at implementing this feature in the future?
Thank you!
1
Sierra Collins
Hello, was the update to the Side Conversation context panel rolled out? My team and I are just seeing this update after refreshing Zendesk and didn't know it was coming. The feedback I've received is when applying a macro template to the side coversation, they now have to expand the comment box. Before it showed in the middle of the ticket and they did not have to expand it.
0