Ability to forward emails into an existing ticket

92 Comments

  • Stéphanie Cettou

    Hello,

    I found this post of 4 years ago. But from my understanding, the only solution would be to run a macro ticket by ticket and copy-paste the ID provided, right ?

    This unfortunately would not work for me, as I would like to receive a notification email from am other system, based in the ticket #.

    Is a similar solution available now ?

    Otherwise, is there a Web API that would permit a similar behaviour ?

    Thank you very much

    1
  • Micah Mount

    Hi @Stephanie CETTOU,

     

    Maybe this has been discussed above already, so apologies if this is a duplicate post.

     

    I found it helpful to create a macro that adds an internal note to the ticket. It just prints a note with the info we want, which is the "ticket.encoded_id".

    Here's what my macro looks like:

     

     

    Once the internal note is added I grab the encoded Id and pop it into the subject line of the email I want to add (double check, but I think maybe the encoded Id has to be the only thing in the subject? I don't remember for sure off the top of my head), and send it off to our default Zendesk email address. Viola! it's included in the ticket. 

    You can also use hashtags in the message to make it a private note, etc. More on that here. e.g. if you want to forward a message and make it a comment, but not notify the customer use #public false and it'll make private note.

     

    Hope you find this helpful! I've found it to be a decent, if slightly tedious workaround!

     

    Best,

    Micah

    1
  • Richard Hartley

    @Micah - the encoded ID can be appended to the subject.  That's how we use it.  We have more or less abandoned side-conversations in favour of this method.

    1
  • Micah Mount

    @Richard,

     

    Oh--great, thanks for the clarification!

    0
  • Stéphanie Cettou

    Hello,

     

    thank you very much for these answers!

    Unfortunately, this method doesn't really work for me, as I would only have the ticket #.

    It would not work on our process to run an API for every ticket. We would like to be proactive and if I ask an agent to run the macro to copy the internal ID, we will not always remember to do it. 

    The thing is that I don't want to follow exactly the flow to redirect an e-mail into a ticket.
    I would like to use an external web service, to add a notification into a specific ticket.

    Not sure if clear. However, indeed, the only information that I would have is the ticket number.

    Best,

    0
  • Mobile Mentor Admin

    If you want to automatically display the Encoded ID without having to run a macro manually, you can use this method.

    Setup a new Ticket Field

    1. Create a new Ticket Field (Text) - note down the field ID
    2. Add the Ticket Field to your Ticket Form

    Create a HTTP Target

    1. Create a new HTTP Target (Settings > Extensions) with the following settings
    • URL: https://YOURDOMAIN.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/{{ticket.id}}.json
    • Method: PUT
    • Content type: JSON
    • Enable Basic Authentication (failing to do this will cause the target to fail)

    Create a trigger

    1. Create a new trigger that will run matching your required conditions
    2. Add an action: Notify Target 
    3. Enter the following JSON

    {
    "ticket":

    {
    "custom_fields": [{"id": INPUTFIELDIDHERE, "value":"[{{ticket.encoded_id}}]"}]
    }
    }

     

    Now each time your trigger conditions are met, the ticket will display the Encoded ID as per below.

    1
  • Alejandro Colon

    @...

    It looks like we have never received an official Zendesk response here. Can you help a brother out?

    1
  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hi Alejandro - 

    If there's no update from the product manager, that generally means that there isn't anything that we can share about this request. 

    -1
  • Alejandro Colon

    Nicole

    Can you share if it has been picked up?

    If it is planned?

    If we definitely won't see it in 2020?

    If we need to supply more use cases?

    If it needs more votes?

    Anything?

    --------------------------

    Update 2020-06-10: @...

    I tried to reply to your very nice comment. But, my response is awaiting approval and I am not sure it is going to make it since I was just served a CoC violation by the Zendesk Community Team. Hopefully, it will make it through to you soon but I am not sure if it will. 

    2
  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hi Alejandro, 

    As stated in the Product Feedback Guidelines, we do not generally share ETAs in the community. I don't have information on whether or not the product team will be picking up the request or when it may or may not happen. That depends on many different factors that impact the roadmap planning process. 

    So long as the request is open, it may be considered at some point, and users are welcome to continue to vote and add use-cases. The number of votes and details shared in the comments do help product teams to prioritize requests based on need and impact. But there's no set in stone number of votes or timelines for when a given request will be considered. 

    0
  • Stephen Belleau
    Community Moderator
    Zendesk Luminary

    @...

    I have observed @... investing so much time in the community over this past week, creating dozens of feature requests, sharing detailed use cases, and commenting on posts like this. He has even encouraged other users to not give up hope.

    We all understand that timelines can't be committed to, but is it out of the question to have Product at least acknowledge the request and say "This is not a priority for 2020" or "We see the need and are reviewing roadmap priorities to see if/when it can fit", or "Tell us more about how this is impacting you".

    More transparency and product acknowledgement would be great. Please keep Alejandro engaged! You have an incredibly invested power-user with a wealth of feedback to share, and I would hate to see him lose hope and see the feedback community as a black hole. 

    @... Also, I need to apologize. You've submitted several posts that resonate with our own use cases and I have yet to find the time to chime in and upvote. I see you, and appreciate your efforts to make this platform better for all.

    1
  • Alejandro Colon

    @...

    Thank you for your kind words and you have no need to be sorry. I really appreciate you going out of your way to post that.

    I completely understand that everyone is busy and not able to devote as much time as they would like to the community. I recently have had some free time and I have been lurking this community for years before I eventually had the time to participate in a meaningful way. 

    --------------------------

    I completely agree with what you are saying in regards to requesting some more transparency and acknowledgement from Zendesk concerning feature requests. 

    I personally do not think it is too much to ask that Zendesk acknowledge a request and say as you stated, "This is not a priority for 2020." Maybe even a little something along the lines of this is not something we are actively planning on NOT doing. I would take a "We have no reason why we would not implement this in the future." I have seen feature requests where Zendesk has responded that they are not going to implement a feature request and I would much rather have that response than no response from Zendesk. Obviously, only if it is true. Please do not lie. 

    ------------------------

    Seriously, though please do not feel obligated to upvote or chime in just because I posted something or asked for a vote. I really try and preface any post asking for support that people only support if they feel comfortable with it and it aligns with their use cases. Thankfully, it seems like that is what you are referring to and I am glad. 

    ------------------------

    I would also like to say that Nicole has been a major force in pushing this community in the right direction. Without her, people like me would not be this committed to the community. I know as a Community Team there is only so much you can do or even say in some cases.

    While I can only speak for myself, Stephen is absolutely correct I sincerely would like to make this platform and community better. I hope that it does not seem as I am simply saying that, I believe that my actions have been able to show that as well.

    -----------------------

    Last thing before I get off of my soapbox. 

    I shouldn't have to but I kind of feel obligated to say the following statement. 

    "I did not ask Stephen to say or post anything. As far as I know, I do not know Stephen outside of this community, and to my recollection, I am not quite sure we have spoken before. I have posted a lot so I cannot be absolutely sure we have not spoken before. But, I can say for sure I did not ask or pay anyone to post nice things about me."

    lol I just wanted to make sure that was clear. 

    1
  • Michel Schuurman

     

    To Nicole:

    It is a disgrace that ZenDesk in no way comes with a proper response to a feature request which is supported by lots of users and which was requested FIVE years ago. 

     

    1
  • Alejandro Colon

    @...

    ----------------------------

    Please do not take this response as an accusatory or inflammatory, I am simply speaking from my experience with trying to make some changes to the community, product, and moderation.

    I also do not want my response to indicate that you should not post at all. It is actually quite the opposite, we need more people like yourself in this community who have strong feelings about the product and are willing to share your feedback with Zendesk. 

    ---------------------------

    While I agree with your sentiment/frustration, I am not sure with the way your comment is worded that it will bring any meaningful resolution or attention to this feature request.

    ----------------------------

    I agree that it is frustrating that the Zendesk Team does not always give us insight into the status of feature requests. But, in their defense, they explicitly claim that they will not do so in the Product Feedback Guidelines

    That being said, I do believe that it is possible to change this overall Zendesk mandate by appealing to the Zendesk Team as users of their product. I have done so here. Feature Request: Public Zendesk Product Roadmap

    I would encourage you and all others that would like to see Zendesk change their policy on providing the status of feature requests and products to go there and show your support.  

    If you feel that my feature request does not adequately cover everything you would like them to change, feel free to create a Feature Request that does. I will be more than willing to show my support for it. 

    ----------------------------

    I say all of that to say, that you (and everyone else in this community) will be better off served by wording your responses in a way that is more in line with professional conduct. It is, as they say, "you get more bears with honey than with vinegar."

    The Community Team and the Product Team do read all of our posts. So, if I can make a suggestion, I would word your post in a way that shares your frustration and dissatisfaction but I suggest phrasing it in a way that is more clear as to the fact that it is your frustration that Zendesk is not meeting your personal opinion of what they should be doing. 

     

    3
  • John Korsakas

    It's absurd that this isn't a standard feature of Zendesk. EVERY ticket system should have this.

     

    0
  • Joel F

    Can we please get this feature implemented? 

     

    I lately like Zendesk is shouting at me, look your self for another helpdesk system, if you want anything done.

     it's really sad and frustrating. 

    1
  • Hire Technologies

    This is already a feature, but apparently nobody realizes it?

    Just forward the email to this exact format:

    support+id PUT TICKET NUMBER HERE@YOUR SUBDOMAIN HERE.zendesk.com

    for example:

    support+id5248@joescomputerhelp.zendesk.com (Yes you include the + sign)

    follow me for more recipes...

    0
  • Adam Fronteras

    @...    The Support+id   does not work any more for two reasons 1) Zendesk security changes mean that these are automatically put in the suspended queue , so meaning someone has to manually un suspend them, 2) it does not work with Office365 which checks its a valid address 

    0
  • Hire Technologies

    Works fine for us, via outlook using office365. But yes, you need to do an unsuspend on the zendesk side, which can be done in bulk if you have a high volume of tickets. We have our suspend notification threshold set to 10 minutes, so that we know right away if a suspended ticket comes in.

     

    That being said, we rarely get any other suspended tickets, so anything that slips through a couple times a year doesn't hurt.

    0
  • Shlomie Feldman

    I've been succefully doing it for a while. Just append either in the subject line or in the body the ticket encoded_id with the square brackets (like this: [ABC1DE-2F3G4]) and it will automatically be linked to the ticket.

    You can also add to the top of the email body #note to have the forwarded email be added as a private note.

    2
  • Nina Cullen

    This exists just about in every other support system I've used (SalesForce's system, TeamSupport's system, HubSpot, Freshdesk, etc). Is there a reason this basic functionality is not available? 

    Currently I'm using the workaround of putting the ticket encoded id into a comment so that people can use it to forward emails coming to them but we often get customers emailing our individual engineers and not responding to the ticket so we just want to loop them back in easily by adding a ticket id, not a ticket encoded id that's in the backend. Please make this work. This is another item that makes me want to look at other support systems for future. 

    0
  • Connor Ingram

    +1... Having coming from a system where you can put the "ticket 12345" number in the subject and sending to an E-mail address will auto add the e-mail to a ticket history. 

    0
  • Rob Powell

    In mid-2021 Benjamin Kirsch said that there would be an update on this request. Multiple use cases have been posted. Multiple agreements that this is a feature available in your competitor's software (I can absolutely confirm it is a feature in Autotask). We still have no idea when this will be addressed and why after 8 years this is still an ongoing request that never seems to get enough attention. Can we get a commitment from the Product Manager that this will be addressed and when or have enhancement requests all but stopped being entertained?

    1
  • Henry Eagar

    An official word on this would be nice.

    1
  • Christopher Lowe

    Vote up from me.

    Our old ticket system was able to do this and it makes writing simple flows really easy.

    Use case, new starter.

    I have a PDF that is a checklist, a few of the steps is to notify the various stakeholders, I can create an email using all of the variables for the new starter. Worked a treat until we moved to Zendesk where these generated emails failed to get added to the ticket.

    PLEASE ADD THIS AS A MATTER OF URGENCY, it would change my life.

     

    0
  • Patrick Lanwehr

    We also need this.

    Unfortunatly, even the workaound Heather shared, does not work.

    "ticket.encoded_id" is not available for me and the brackets are just empty.

     

    Another upvote for the post from 2015

    1
  • Mark Szemple

    I contacted support to see if this feature is available yet and they directed me to this post to upvote and comment as for a use case.

    I see that this post was started in 2015 (8 years ago) and there are comments that development is working on it and would be released in a future update.

    I'm new to Zendesk coming from Goto Assist Service Desk which I have been using since 2010 and they have that feature.

    As for the use case, there are many times that a ticket is created and instead of the customer or others on the ticket replying to the ticket, they send another email.  I want the information from that email to be added to the ticket as it might be critical for a solution.

    With GotoAssist Service Desk, all I had to do was forward the ticket to my own company specific email address with the Ticket Number in the subject and the ticket would get updated.

    I work for a software company and this should be a relatively simple solution to do.  Do know why its taking 8 years and still no solution since so many people have asked for this.

    2
  • Roger Kirkman

    +1 for this functionality.

    At my last job, we had the ability to forward an email to the support email address, and if it included the formatted ticket tag in the subject or body of the email, it would be added to the ticket.

    So we could reply to the customer from our regular email, CC the support address, add the ticket tag, and the reply would go to the customer and add to the ticket thread.  If the customer does a Reply all, it goes into the support ticket.  If it only came to me, I just forward the email to the Support address and it gets added to the ticket.

    This is crucial for maintaining the paper trail of all conversations around the ticket.

    Example ticket tag:     [XJ370319]

    If you build this, it would also be great to be able to add another tag like [private] to make it an internal comment only, and that it would notify followers of the ticket, but not the customer.

    3
  • James Johnstone

    I think Roger put the requirements perfectly (previous post, above ⬆️).

    To add our use case. We run orders and support requests through Zendesk.

    When we ask customers to email supporting materials in (i.e. photographs, or forwarding emails form other people) they will often send to my direct email address or, if they have it, the email off a colleague.

    This happens mostly when the customer (requester) is:

    1. In a hurry
    2. Not computer-savvy (yes they exist still!)
    3. Lazy

    (Or a combination of all three.)

    Manually adding ticket content into Zendesk is time consuming without the ability to forward.

    We do sometimes forward then merge, but this creates a myriad of updates to the customer about new tickets, and when that customer is already confused by their computer, this can cause further problems with that customer, leading to further inefficiencies. 

    So the ability to forward or reply, and add something to tell Zendesk to add that email to a particular ticket (and whether or not it should be private or public) would really save a lot of hassle. 

    1
  • Ian Christopher de Jesus

    Given that there has been no response from Zendesk for a very long time. I am planning to build the intergration instead. I do require some information and also some process validation. To those interested please fill out the form here https://forms.gle/nrYib7gvJE9jGM2H6  

    If I have further questions. I will reach out to each of you directly. Thank you :)

    0

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