Zendesk provides many types of native data objects for storing and managing your customer data, including tickets, users, organizations, and more. These are called standard objects. However, standard objects can't provide every possible type of data object that your organization might want. With custom objects, admins can create custom objects to capture data that doesn't fit into those standard objects. Then, agents with permission can add that information to Zendesk by creating custom object records.
If you're looking to update custom object records, see Managing custom object records.
Understanding custom objects
A custom object is a user-defined object with unique fields and permissions. Custom objects can be almost anything, including a product, contract, delivery driver, asset, or event. Think of a custom object as a data table. Each of the custom object's fields is a column in the table. After the table is created and the columns are added, agents can add data to the table. Each row of data in the table represents a custom object record. Another way to think of a custom object is as a schema or model, which is created and made available to users to add data, such as in a ticket or form. Every time an agent uses the custom object to add data to Zendesk or an admin bulk uploads data for an object, new records are created. These records can then interact with business rules, such as triggers and lookup relationship fields.
Here's an example. Let's say you're a car rental company. A Zendesk admin at your company created two custom objects to track vehicles and reservations: vehicles and rental agreements. Using these custom objects, every vehicle and reservation can be tracked within Zendesk. Now, when a customer contacts the company to rent a car, a ticket is created for them. The standard ticket and user objects hold information about the customer and their request. In your account, an admin defined lookup relationship fields connecting the rental agreements and vehicles to tickets and users, so everything the agents need to resolve the request is now available in the ticket. They're able to search records of available cars in the requested location and date, create a rental agreement, and relate the rental agreement to the vehicle and user.
Later, the customer has an issue with their rental car, and they contact your company again. Again, a ticket is created for them and is associated with the user, the vehicle, and the rental agreement. Because each of these custom objects has been added to the ticket form, agents can see details about both the vehicle and the rental agreement within the ticket while they assist the customer.
Adding a custom object record
To add data to a custom object, you create a record. Within the record you'll add the information to the custom object's fields. Admins and agents with permission can edit records.
To create a custom object record
- In Support, click the Custom objects icon (
) in the sidebar. - Select the custom object you'd like to add a record for.
- On the records page for that custom object, click Add.
- Enter the required information. If you have it, you can also add the optional information.
- Click Add.
Adding a related custom object record
When an admin creates a custom object, they also define its relationship to other standard and custom objects in Zendesk. Adding related records helps connect this new record to other records in Zendesk as the admin intended. From the Custom object records page, you can add related custom object records. This isn't supported for adding related standard object records.
To help you keep track of which object you're adding a related record to, the tab in agent workspace includes the object's name as a subtitle.
- In Support, click the Custom objects icon () in the sidebar.
- Select the custom object for which you'd like to edit a record.
- Click the name of the record you want to add a related record to.
- Scroll to find the related object you want to add a record for and click +Add.
- Enter the information you have for the related object, then click Add.
Searching for custom object records
As an agent, there are a variety of situations in which you might encounter a custom object and need to search for records. For example, a lookup relationship field on a ticket might point to a custom object or you might see custom objects mentioned on a user's profile under the Related tab. In these cases, you might need to perform a search to find what you're looking for.
- Search queries check against all text-based fields within the records. That means queries can match against the Name field value as well as values in fields of the following types: Text, Regex, or Multi-line.
- Search queries match on the beginning of words only. In multi-word values, queries can match against the beginning of any word in the value.
You can perform searches for custom object records in lookup relationship fields and in the Custom objects list. When searching for values in lookup relationship fields, a list of auto-completed matches is displayed as you type.