You can use CCs and followers to bring internal users (agents and admins) and external users (your customers or end users) into a conversation about a ticket and control who receives ticket notifications by email.
About CCs and followers
- CCs allow you to include end users and agents on ticket notifications. Internal and external users can add CCs (copied users) to tickets. Agents who are added as CCs will have their email addresses visible to all end users in the thread (agents are not copied separately). CCs can respond to ticket notifications publicly, or they can remove the requester from the notification to submit a private response. A ticket can have up to 48 email CCs.
- Followers allow you to include additional internal users (agents or administrators) on ticket notifications. Internal users can add followers to tickets. Followers receive updates on the ticket without exposing their identity to end users. There's no limit to the number of followers you can include on a ticket.
It's important to understand what happens when different users (your end users, agents, CCs, and followers) reply from email. See the following related articles for more information:
About adding CCs to tickets
CCs allow you to copy end users and agents on ticket notifications.
Agents and end users can use the CC line to add external end users to a ticket’s email thread. If the ticket is restricted to certain groups or organizations, agents can use the CC line to add internal agents who are not part of the allowed groups or organizations.
Both internal and external users can add CCs to tickets. Internal users are your company's agents and admins who can view the ticket. They can add CCs from the ticket interface or when replying to ticket notifications by email. External users are your customers or end users and can add CCs when replying to ticket notifications by email.
All copied users can:
- Send and receive public comments to the ticket conversation.
- Add other external users to the conversation via the CC line.
- Be seen by other CCs and followers on the ticket, as their email address is visible in the ticket header. Agents who are added as CCs will have their email addresses visible to all end users in the thread (agents are not copied separately).
- Send private comments to a ticket conversation by removing the requester from the notification.
- Receive and respond to private comments in a ticket conversation if they are explicitly included on that comment.
- Remove themselves or other CCs from the ticket conversation.
About adding followers to tickets
To include additional internal users (agents or admins) on ticket notifications, add them to the ticket as followers.
If your administrator has enabled Automatically make an agent CC a follower, you can add internal users to tickets as followers from ticket notifications by adding them as a CC. In this case, the internal user becomes both a CC and a follower. See Setting permissions for CCs and followers.
Internal users who can view the ticket can add followers to the ticket. There's no limit to the number of followers you can include on a ticket.
Note that if an agent replies to a ticket notification and they're no longer the requester or assignee on the ticket, they are automatically added as a follower to that ticket.
Followers can:
- Receive public comments and private comments added to the ticket conversation.
- Make private comments and public comments.
- Create a private comment by replying to a private comment and likewise for public comments.
- Remove themselves from the ticket conversation.
- Remain hidden from CC'd end users and other followers on email notifications. Their name and email address don't appear in email notifications sent to other users. For more information about the email notifications that followers receive, see Best practices for using email clients with CCs and followers.
- Access any ticket that they are following, even if they would not normally be allowed to access the ticket.
10 comments
Alex McFarlane
We used to be able to prevent external users from adding CCs to a ticket. Is that no longer possible?
We've found that allowing CCs to add further CCs can lead to data breaches.
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Christine
It is not possible to allow only agents to add CCs to tickets. When the Enable CCs option is checked, both agents and end users can add CCs to the email thread. This is a hard-coded restriction as one of the goals of the CCs and followers experience is to make CCs behave more like they do in emails.
If this is a roadblock in your workflow, you can roll back CCs and followers for the old experience.
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Alex McFarlane
Thanks - it appears we will need to do this. I think the option to only allow agents to add CCs was there for a good reason and it is a pity to see it has been removed. We would have liked to have used the followers functionality but we cannot afford that loss of control.
Can I ask another question? On enabling 'CCs and followers', agents currently CCd on a ticket are automatically converted to followers. If we rollback, will they be switched back to CCs?
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Christine
When you 'Opt out of the CCs and Followers experience', as also outlined in the article I shared above:
After a few minutes, refresh your browser and open a few of your tickets to verify that the Follower field in the sidebar has been replaced by a CCs field. Existing ticket Followers will still be present on the ticket as CCs.
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Bruce Whittaker
Question regarding CCs and Users.
We have a closed system, where all of our users are registered. If a registered user sends us an email with a CC to a person who is not registered, does the CC automatically become a user in our zendesk?
We disabled CC's to prevent this from happening, in our current application. If this is still the way cc's are handled then we won't be able to migrate to the new application.
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Tony
So, according to this article, I don't believe it should happen.
Best,
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Jee
Hi there, I have a question about the CCs and Followers behaviours,
Say Person A (external client) emails to our registered support email in Zendesk and creates a support ticket. Then, the generic support team (Team B) CC'ed Person C, who is a light agent and/or contributor to take over the said case separately via Outlook as light agents/contributors are unable to send public replies to the requester directly. The issue I encountered is person C is unable to view the identity (email address) of Person A as when the generic support team (Team B) loops in Person C. Hence, when person C wants to take over/follow-up with the said case, he/she is unable to identify/know who is he/she responding to. Is there a workaround to this/settings that I overlook?
Be glad to hear your advice on this soonest! Thanks
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Joyce
When a Light Agent or Contributor is CC'd on a ticket, they receive notifications via the Followers notification. These notifications are sent separately from the "Requester and CCs" email notifications, which is why the To: field appears blank in these emails.
Here's a workaround to make things easier: You can add the requester's name and email in the follower notification. You can do this via the Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings. This way, Light Agents/Contributors can see who the requester is without having to check the ticket details in the Support interface.
You can check this article for information about the Zendesk Placeholders.
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Bryan Haeussler
Is it possible to fully prevent the automatic addition of followers? There is a privacy concern with a ticket moving through a normal email system and eventually getting to an agent who was not involved in the original ticket but then forwards it back into Zendesk, resulting in a public reply on the original ticket since their forwarding automatically makes them a follower. In most cases you may want an agent's emails to the system to be public, but in this case they have no idea they are going to contribute a ‘third party’ response to the existing ticket.
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Francis Casino
Fully preventing the automatic addition of followers in Zendesk is not straightforward due to certain built-in behaviors and dependencies within the system. However, you can significantly reduce or control this behavior by carefully configuring settings and permissions. Here’s a more detailed approach:
Steps to Control and Minimize Automatic Addition of Followers
By taking these steps, you can greatly reduce the automatic addition of followers and maintain better control over ticket notifications. However, a complete prevention might not be achievable due to inherent system behaviors and dependencies on how certain actions trigger follower additions.
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