[OPEN BETA] Announcing custom fields filtering in the new request list experience

Announced on	Rollout starts	Rollout ends
January 30, 2023	January 30, 2023	February 2, 2023

We are very excited to announce that users can now filter their requests based on custom field values in the new request list experience.

Additionally, we have improved the UI for showing and hiding columns by adding column search and making the interface more accessible to users using assistive technologies, in line with our strive to deliver experiences that everyone can use.

This is the second update to the new request list experience after its initial release and its first update

Why did we build it?

We built the ability to filter on custom field values so that any user of the new request list experience can quickly and easily find the exact requests they need.

This is particularly useful for many businesses that are customers of Zendesk's customers. These B2B customers often file hundreds of support tickets a month with their vendor and the tickets are usually created through large and complex ticket forms with many custom fields.

In many of these cases, these hundreds of tickets are shepherded by a project manager or similar from the business that is our customer's customer. This new filtering capability saves the project manager time when having to follow up, provide new information, report to her organization, etc.

What is it?

Filtering on custom field values

Filtering on custom field values gives users of the new request list experience the ability to

• choose custom field values as filtering criteria
• filter requests where a specific field is not empty (for some field types).
• Combine these custom field filtering criteria with each other and with filtering criteria on system fields to surface exactly the requests you want to see.

Improved the UI for showing and hiding columns

We have added the ability to search for columns to make it easier to configure your view when you have many custom field columns and in the process, we have changed from a dropdown experience to a modal experience to make it more accessible when you use keyboard navigation.

How do I start using it?

If you are already using the new request list experience then you don't need to do anything. As we roll out the update your end users will be able to filter the custom fields set as readable or editable by end users.

If you are not using the new request list (in Open Beta) yet, you can see how to get started here.

If you want to enable end users to see and filter fields that are currently not visible or editable by end users, you can change the field's setting in the Admin center.

What does Open Beta mean?

This feature is in Open Beta so anyone can opt-in to using the feature as described above, but the feature is considered in a Beta phase as it still has key limitations.

What’s next?

Now that you can filter custom field values in the new request list experience the next releases as currently intended are:

• Supporting Custom Ticket Statuses
• Improved customization of the new request list experience
• Enable CSV download of requests
• Enable sorting on custom field, Subject, priority, and type columns
• Combining multiple organization filters.

Known limitations

The new request list experience still has some known key limitations, which is why it is currently in BETA.

Sorting of custom fields- and other columns

The requests list cannot be sorted by custom field columns, nor can it be sorted by the Subject column.

Look and feel Customization

The new request list is rendered as an encapsulated component, which means that it is not customizable 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 with customizations. This comes with the limitation that the look and feel of the new request list experience are only customizable 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 organization filters to see tickets from more than one organization 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.

Custom ticket status support

The new request list does not yet support Custom Ticket Statuses (CTS).