Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
---|---|---|
June 27, 2022 |
June 27, 2022 |
July 6, 2022 |
We are happy to announce an improved request list experience with better filtering, sorting and column management. This release is phase 1 in a series of releases to improve request management for end users. See also the feature documentation.
Why did we build it?
While for many end users with one or a few requests, managing their requests is doable with the current my activities page, there is a group of power end users that manage many more tickets, sometimes hundreds. These end users are typically managing tickets on behalf of a department or organization often as customers of a B2B vendor.
Managing hundreds of tickets has been painful for these end users and now we are taking the first step in upgrading the customer portal to enable ticket management at scale.
What is it?
With this first release of an improved request list in the Help Center we are adding 3 new combinable filtering options, the ability to sort more columns and the ability to show/hide columns.
Combinable filtering
We have added three new filters to “My requests” and “Requests I’m CC’ed on” so you can now filter you tickets on when they were created, where they were last updated and which organisation they are in.
Under “Organizational requests” we have added the ability to filter by when requests where created and when they where last updated in addition to the existing organization and status filter option.
What truly multiplies the value of these new filters is that they can be used in combination and you can set multiple values for the same filter to create an OR filtering condition. For example you can now filter on tickets within the Organization ABC OR Organization XYZ that has the startup Open and is updated in the last month.
Improved sorting
Now you can also sort your tickets by “Status” and “Created date” in addition to “Updated date” by clicking on the arrows above each column.
Manage columns
A completely new feature is that we are now allowing end users to show/hide the column they want to see. You can still filter on columns that are hidden and the sort order is maintained when you hide a column that is sorted by.
How do I start using it?
If you are using a Copenhagen standard theme, your theme will review the update before the end of the rollout period indicated at the top that will enable you to turn on this feature if you wish.
Here you can find a description of how you enable the new request list experience for Standard and Custom themes.
What does it mean it is in Open Beta?
That the feature is in Open Beta means that anyone can opt in to using the feature as described above, but the feature should be considered in a Beta phase where we are aware that it still has key limitations.
Known limitations
- Look and feel Customization
- The new request list is rendered as an encapsulated component, which means that it is not customisable as other advanced helpers by targeting the HTML. We have done this to allow for quick iteration of the feature without breaking any help centers. This comes with the limitation that the look and feel of the new request list experience is only customisable through theme settings where the component inherits colors from the settings the same way that the previous request list experience does in the Copenhagen theme.
We are working on enabling better look and feel customisation.
The good news on this is that to build the new request list experience we have allowed querying of the Requests API by end users. This means that anyone can now build a similar experience, a better one or a more custom one, exactly as they like using these APIs.
- The new request list is rendered as an encapsulated component, which means that it is not customisable as other advanced helpers by targeting the HTML. We have done this to allow for quick iteration of the feature without breaking any help centers. This comes with the limitation that the look and feel of the new request list experience is only customisable through theme settings where the component inherits colors from the settings the same way that the previous request list experience does in the Copenhagen theme.
- Combining multiple org filters
- In the “Organisational requests” tab you cannot combine organisation filters to see tickets from more than one organisation in the same list.
- In the “Organisational requests” tab you cannot combine organisation filters to see tickets from more than one organisation in the same list.
- API rate limiting
- The new request list is rendered client side and uses public Zendesk REST APIs, mainly the Requests API, which means that it is currently subject to the account's rate limit. Our data shows that the majority of accounts and end users will never be affected by this, but we are intending to solve this limitation.
- The new request list is rendered client side and uses public Zendesk REST APIs, mainly the Requests API, which means that it is currently subject to the account's rate limit. Our data shows that the majority of accounts and end users will never be affected by this, but we are intending to solve this limitation.
- Custom ticket status support
- The new request list does not yet support Custom Ticket Statuses (CTS) that is currently in EAP, but we will add support for CTS.
What’s next
This is just the first Beta release to improve the request list experience. Next step is that we will enable you to easily configure that your end users can see specific custom fields in the request list and allow end users to apply the new improved filtering, sorting and column management to those custom field columns. Stay tuned!
Want to learn more?
See the feature documentation.
51 comments
Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
Tanawat Oonwattana At the moment I can't give you an expected timeline as we are juggling several priorities. I can probably give some more information by end of march.
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Shana Blackstone
We are about to rollout multibrand with our company to give customers a better Help Center experience.
Are there any plans with these enhancements to see tickets across brands by an organization and perhaps filter by brand?
We provide a wide range of software options that not all of our customers utilize. By breaking into brands, we are better able to control how much they have to search to find answers to what they might be working with. These customers might be using any number of brands, and it would be beneficial for their admins to see any tickets for all brands open for their organization in a centralized place.
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Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
Shana Blackstone We don't currently have this functionality planned, but I have recorded your feedback in our prioritization tool together with similar requests and we will continuously evaluate when we would be able to add this functionality.
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Stephen
Hi,
I am seeing an issue, whereby if a Ticket is created, it will not appear immediately in the Requests view and can take some time to appear.
Is this expected?
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Dane
i have tested it on multiple accounts and there's a delay of less than a minute for the newly created (proactive or submitted by end-user) to appear on the "My Requests" page.
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Susan Schneider
I have several customers who need to see who requested the ticket under the My organizations tab, when can this field be added as a column? It was in the old version but not able to sort.
Is there a workaround trigger to manually update a custom field on the form when a new ticket is created?
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Dane
It still has the requester column but cannot be sorted.
For more information on customizing the request section please refer to How can I add content to the Help Center Request list page activities?.
Regarding the custom fields, it can be part of the trigger action.
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Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
Stephen This is unfortunately expected because the index of all tickets in an account can be very very large it is not updated instantly, but rather in scheduled batches.
Could I ask you to elaborate on why this is a problem in your use case and how important it is to have fixed?
It will help inform our prioritization.
Thanks!
1
Stephen
Hi @Gorka,
I appreciate the reply here - this is relatively minor. I only raised this as an issue because I was doing some demos for customers and was moving quite fast through the Requests page, where it became obvious.
The delay is quite short, so I think this would be low on the priority list.
I would be much more interested in seeing things like Requester, Ticket Form and Custom Statuses as options.
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Spencer Barrett
Hey Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen, to piggyback off of other comments we have many customers complaining that when you are viewing Organizational Requests the Requestor column is no longer available and with utilizing the New Request List we cannot add this column as needed. Do we have any timeframe of when this will be brought back/resolved?
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Tanawat Oonwattana
Hi Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen,
just a follow up on my question earlier, how soon will custom ticket staus be available with this new request list?
thakn you.
2
Susan R.
I also cannot roll this out to my customers until the Custom Ticket Status is supported. It's too confusing for them.
1
Gizelle Butler
We are also looking for the roadmap to have Custom Ticket Status (CTS) available for this feature since many clients during our testing have requested better sorting and filtering options.
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Fridtjof Hals
This looks really great Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen :-D
One comment from a customer of ours though, is that they miss the column for requester when using other than their own requests (organization or cc'd tickets).
Is it possible to add that to the list of columns somehow?
Thank you.
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Amy Gracer
Is there any way to hide either the CC'd or the Organization tabs?
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Kirill Akimov
Hi Zendesk team!
Can you share some plans for this beta requests list? And namely, if it's planned to add export functionality for customers, so that they could get all tickets in one file (CSV or EXCEL)?
Another thing, is it possible to add requester name or email to the list of requests in “Requests I am in CC” tab and “Requests of my organization” tab? It could be really useful for “big” customers.
It would be also nice to make feasible style formatting of request list. As I see so far, the element is closed, and we can't do anything to it:
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Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
Kirill Akimov
You can find a non-exhaustive list of known limitations that we intend to add in this announcement under "Known limitations".
While not on the above mentioned list, we do plan to add it. No ETA yet though.
We have received this feedback from other customers as well and plan to add it , but we are probably looking at 2024 for this. If it's urgent you could fill out a custom field via triggers and automations with that information and thereby make it available for filtering.
We wan't allow for more granular customization, but for now we have prioritized speed of iteration. I write a bit more about it in the "Known limitations" linked above.
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Stephen
Hi Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen,
Thanks as always for being so communicative on these requests.
I just want to confirm - Ticket Form and Requester name as optional columns are currently planned for 2024?
Is there anywhere to see a list of planned features for the request list and tenative release periods?
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Kris Bravo
Hello,
We were unable to use this new feature for a reason that may be worth considering:
It would be ideal if we could include the list of fields to show by default, as well as restrict fields by brand, so that they do not bleed across views.
Take Care,
Kris
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Jake Warren
We have some issues that I'd like to get some feedback on.I also posted this over on this article - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4628113350170-Using-the-new-request-list-experience-in-the-help-center-customer-portal-Beta?page=3#comment_6645901030810
After turning this on, we've had users provide some feedback that we feel like is justified and should be considered for improving this beta feature.
1. Users that have "can view tickets from user's org" no longer have the system field "Requester" as a column when in the Organization tickets tab, and it's not an available column to add in.
In this article it states:
"The new request list experience (Beta) improves the way in which end users can manage large numbers of requests in the customer portal. When you enable the new request list experience in your theme, end users can use the new combinable filtering options to refine the requests they want to manage as well as new column configuration options to show/hide both system fields and custom fields."
How do we get this available for those users as a column to add? This is critical for users who monitor ticket submissions across their org so they can quickly scroll through and see who submitted what.
2. Is it possible for a user to save what filters/columns they have set? Having to reset them with each visit to the help center seems unnecessary.
3. Is it possible for clients to be able to add a "last updated by" column? Seeing who last updated a ticket could be helpful for those that oversee tickets for their entire organization.
1
Owen Price
Hey team,
Has anyone had any success adding this to lotus templates that use syntax like:
<div class="lt-container-inner">
</div>
This is what Lotus themes use and was curious if it's possible to add the request list to these?
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