You can create triggers that automatically add public comments and internal notes to tickets. Public comments can deflect tickets without requiring agent intervention. Internal notes can provide agents with helpful process reminders or other information. Either way, your support team saves time and effort.
This article contains the following topics:
Automatically adding comments and notes to tickets
Using ticket triggers to add comments to tickets, whether they're visible to end users or only to agents, is done the same way any other actions are defined for ticket triggers.
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Create or edit a ticket trigger.
- Click Add condition to set up the trigger to meet All or Any conditions.
If you have the Advanced AI add-on and choose to include intelligent triage conditions, this could result in the trigger's actions being counted as automated resolutions.
- Click Add action and set the actions that occur when the trigger's conditions are met. In this case, include either:
- Ticket > Autoreply to add a public comment, visible to agents and end users
- Ticket > Internal note to add an internal note, visible only to agents
- Under Reply body, enter the text of the comments or note the trigger will add to tickets.
Note: To create line breaks in your reply body, press Shift + Enter. If you only press Enter, it will look like a new line in the text editor, but won't be reflected as a line break in the ticket comment.
- Click Create trigger.
Example: Automatically adding a public comment to tickets received outside of business hours
You can create a ticket trigger that automatically adds public comments to tickets. If the Notify requester and CCs of comment update standard ticket trigger is activated, the requester and any CCs are notified of the comment via email.
In the example below, the ticket trigger is configured to check whether the ticket was received during your configured business hours. For tickets that are created outside of business hours, you can create an automatic reply that informs them when they can expect a response and directs the requester to any self-service resources that might help them resolve the issue themselves.
To add a public comment using a ticket trigger
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- In Trigger name, enter a name for the trigger, such as Automatic reply for requests outside of business hours.
- (Optional) Enter a Description and Category for your trigger.
- In the Conditions pane, under Meet ALL of the following conditions, add the following conditions:
- Ticket > Status | Is | New
- Ticket > Agent replies | Less than | 1
- Ticket > Within business hours? | No
- Under Meet ANY of the following conditions, add the following conditions:
- Channel | Is | Email
- Repeat the condition above for additional channels
Tip: These conditions ensure that autoreplies apply only to tickets created through certain channels. For example, you might not want autoreplies to apply to messaging tickets, which are created when a user requests to speak with an agent.
- In the Actions pane, add Autoreply and enter the following Reply body:
Thanks for reaching out. We've received your request and appreciate your patience. Our customer support team will get back to you during our business hours: Monday - Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm ET. In the mean time, you can check out our help center.
- Click Create.
Example: Automatically adding an internal note to tickets about data loss
You can create a ticket trigger that automatically adds an internal note to tickets.
In the example below, the ticket trigger is configured to look for key words in the ticket's subject and comment text that indicate the customer is experiencing a loss of data. Time is often a big factor in successful data recovery, so the trigger sets the ticket's priority to Urgent and adds an internal note reminding agents to use the expedited ticket escalation process.
To add an internal note using a ticket trigger
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- In Trigger name, enter a name for the trigger, such as Automatic reply for data loss fast-track.
- (Optional) Enter a Description and a Category for your trigger.
- In the Conditions pane, under Meet ANY of the following conditions, add the following conditions:
- Ticket > Status | Is | New
- Ticket > Agent replies | Less than | 1
- In the Conditions pane, under Meet ANY of the following conditions, add the following conditions:
- Ticket > Comment text | Contains the following string | data loss
- Ticket > Subject text | Contains the following string | data loss
- In the Actions pane, add the following actions:
- Ticket > Priority | Urgent
-
Internal note
For the Reply body, enter Data loss can be a critical and time-sensitive problem for our customers. Make sure to follow the fast-track escalation process.
- Click Create.
42 comments
Bobby Watton
Is it just me, or did Zendesk remove "Internal Note" as a trigger action recently?
9
Kevin Rotairo
Bobby Watton It looks like this is only available when you have the Advanced AI Add-on based on this article. If you're also comfortable working with Webhook and Zendesk APIs, you can also set that up but please note of this possible side effect.
0
Jordan Haun
It looks like this document might be outdated. I do not see an action called 'Autoreply' when trying to add a public comment via trigger. Is this now called "notify by"?
0
Nicole Saunders
Thanks for letting us know, Jordan. We'll have the team take a look and update the documentation if needed.
0
Kerry Charlton
I have tested the "Ticket > AutoReply" feature with the messaging channel. A public autoreply is added to the ticket comment. However, the customer who initiated the messaging conversation does not see the autoreply.
When I contacted Zendesk support, I was told I needed to add an additional condition to the trigger to actually send a response to the customer. This is done using the "Notify by" feature. However, there is no "Notify by" option for messaging, only email.
When a customer is requesting a response via messaging, you wouldn't want to send them a notification via email. You would want to send the notification via the channel they initiated the conversation from i.e. messaging.
It looks like the "Ticket > AutoReply" feature simply appends a comment which is then visible to agents only. Is this correct?
In the near future, will Zendesk release the ability to send an automated reply via the messaging channel?
4
Izabella Hammar
Hi,
Can you confirm Trigger Action: "Ticket > Internal Note" only is available for customers with Advanced AI add-on? 😃
3
JR Lausin
That's correct you need to have the add-on to use this feature.
Sincerely,
-13
Andy Hidalgo
Hi JR Lausin , thanks for the clear response to Izabella Hammar. Could we make the feature available to clients without the Advanced AI add-on? It seems like a valuable, non-AI-specific and basic function that would be beneficial for a lot of us. Thanks
8
Shawna James
-7
Alex Staunton
Crazy how many of the "help" articles are so outdated that they aren't helpful at all and that feature that people obviously need was taken away. Can you recommend some workaround for somebody to accomplish the same thing? I'd like to create an internal note based on the content of an incoming SMS message.
1
Arianne Batiles
Hi Alex Staunton,
I understand that you would like to update a ticket with an internal note based on the content of an inbound SMS message. As suggested above, you can create a trigger that automatically adds an internal note to a submitted ticket if you have the Advanced AI add-on.
Alternatively, a workaround is utilizing a middleware service like Zapier, Workato, or ZIS. It's important to note that while using a trigger/webhook method might be feasible for some, it's not officially supported due to potential race conditions, as advised here.
-6
Sydney Neubauer
I am confused as to why this feature (that has been asked for years and can be done via webhooks/api) requires the AI add-on. What part of AI is referencing this new action?
The comments: Can I configure a trigger to add a comment to a ticket? – Zendesk help
Post: Create Internal Notes when a Ticket is created – Zendesk help
Feedback from 2016: Feature Request: Triggers - Action: Add Internal Note as a trigger action – Zendesk help
13
Ulises
We manage several Zendesk accounts with Professional/Enterprise plans and were able to add internal/public comments through triggers. We faced a price increase in plan renewals because we were told that Zendesk was investing in creating additional features, most of which were irrelevant to our use case.
Now basic features, like adding comments, are part of an Add-on that costs an additional $50 a month per agent and as an alternative, you suggest we use:
Unfortunately, existing triggers that added comments stopped working and impacted our workflows.
This is not only enraging but also worrying, I wonder what basic features we will be charged for next. Zendesk is the most expensive app we use today.
12
Julian
I agree with Sydney - could we have an answer from the Zendesk team?
I understand that the “intent” feature is part of the new AI-Add on, but the feature to trigger an internal note should not… @Zendesk, you should keep your app usable and friendly, even on lower plans… We have been requested this feature for many years.
2
System Admin
This is very disappointing. I frequently defend Zendesk at my company because of the robust set of features, but when you make decisions like lumping basic automation functionality into a new product called AI that has nothing to do with AI, that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I've voted on feature request:
Feedback from 2016: Feature Request: Triggers - Action: Add Internal Note as a trigger action – Zendesk help
I hope you're listening to your customers on this one, Zendesk. It's already challenging enough to defend the cost of your product. We won't be paying more for AI. I can only hope that our executive team doesn't pull the plug on Zendesk altogether.
5
Izabella Hammar
Hi,
It is possible to create internal notes with webbhook, so there is a solution for this 😃
1
System Admin
Thank you for the comment, Izabella Hammar. I'll use that method. I appreciate it. I'll just need to be careful of race conditions.
0
Sydney Neubauer
Izabella Hammar we are aware of that feature as well however the problem is:
1. ZD does not support this method
2. This is a heavy toll on the API to accomplish
3. There are race conditions that can go into effect
This should not be gated by the AI add on when it doesn't require the AI add on to accomplish adding an internal note. This is not the only feature gated by AI - there is a recent one for transcribing incoming/outgoing calls. This also does not require AI to accomplish and yet if you have been waiting years for it, you have to pay additional money to get it even though it is not AI relevant.
I hope ZD will change their mind as these are features we have been waiting for and using the API to accomplish it is really stretching what ZD can do.
4
System Admin
I decided to use Zapier in this case instead of the webhook. It was not worth it to take the risk of a race condition. I try to only use Zapier as a last resort. In this case, it was the best workaround since the volume of tasks should be manageable. I wish I didn't have to work around this feature limitation. I think Zendesk should offer it with our current plan “Zendesk Suite - Enterprise”.
0
Leslie
Do we have an updated on Kerry Charlton 's comment?
0
Nicolas Distefano
Hi team, this feature needs to be enabled, it's a basic feature for a ticketing system. We do not want to send AI-generated messages, we just want to provide basic information every time some conditions are met. This is enabled in every ticketing system.
Having the “workaround” of generating a webhook is way far from optimal, as a bad trigger configuration could cause a really big mess on the API quota we have.
1
Sam Goulet
This is a bit ridiculous to have to resort to paying more for something as basic as this.
Here's our scenario that in my opinion is so basic yet ZD is not implementing part of it and putting a paywall for the other part. We have our customer facing portal, and we had a need to give the clients the ability to bump the priority of their tickets if things changed on their end or the impact on their business (custom field) become more severe. We also used this for another custom field labelled “ticket update interval” that influences how often we send them updates.
As most of you know, the feature for an end user to edit their tickets after it's submitted does not exist out of the box. We had to resort to “API kung fu” to achieve this because apparently ZD doesn't want customers to edit tickets once they're submitted. I believe there's existing requests for this but that's besides the point. The point is we had to develop the system further to achieve a basic feature that really should be built in. ZD is a pretty powerful tool and it's great for lots of things but some other things are lacking and it does not always make sense. I'm a huge fan of ZD, I've been the advocate in my organization for the platform but that said, things like what's discussed here in this thread gives me pause.
When our customers are changing the priority of the tickets or the other two fields, I NEED to indicate it in the ticket in a visible way other than a tag or other custom field added that will further clog the interface. I would prefer to add an internal note that has a timestamp that says “Hey this client bumped the priority of the ticket”. I dont' want to have to go through the whole API Kung Fu fight all over again to add a webhook just to do something basic like this.
I will also say a huge NO to ai. Our organization prides itself in having humans replying to our clients. We are NOT going to go and adopt some AI stuff, we prefer the human factor, yes it means having boots on the ground so to speak but that's what makes us better in our industry. And I did do a trial of the ZD AI features and not only are they feeling as lacking and incomplete, they are just not good enough to justify the steep increase in cost. So putting this behind paywall is just not ideal, and really it's disappointing considering as others said it is not something that requries ai on other platforms. Also, things such as copilot, chatgpt etc are free and you can achieve most if not all of what your AI solution is providing via other better free options or very small costs.
I get that ZD is trying to recoup some R&D costs into AI by asking customers to pay for these new features. AI is the cool fad right now, people are all over it but it's also often inaccurate, it's disruptive and it's just not the same as talking to a person. (I'm not even going to go over bots…) Putting basic things behind a paywall that are not really related to AI is not great. ZD is already very expensive compared to other solutions so this AI feature is just an added cost that is a very hard sell to management that is budget conscious, especially since there are many free options out there.
4
Brad Cotton
0
Brad Cotton
0
Ian Marston
Added feature request:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/8135347328538-Feature-request-Triggers-and-automations-to-allow-action-Add-internal-note
3
Sam Goulet
hey folks please go vote on that feature request if you want this to happen!
1
Yavor Ivanov
Hm adding an internal note should not be an AI only feature in my opinion. Most of our use cases that require this are not based on AI cases. It needlessly overcomplicates backend integration with API or Ultimate.
0
Stephen
Hi,
Calling out my dis-satisfaction with the decision to paywall this feature behind AI, when it doesn't appear to have any tangible relationship with the AI add-on itself.
This is an automation function that has been requested for multiple years (as others have noted) and that is an extremely common capability of other automation tools in task based platforms (Hubspot / Jira).
It is incredibly dissappointing to see this feature locked behind something so basic and pushing people towards unsupported methods of performing this action (via webhook) or investing in 3rd party add-ons.
0
Jon Thorne
How can this core functionality be hidden behind an ‘AI add-on’, when it was there previously and has nothing to do with AI?! Crazy and infuriating
0
annaelle.sabban
Hi! Is the autoreply update rolled out progressively?
My only action option is “Autoreply with articles” which consumes Automated Resolutions.
1