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How to email ticket info automatically to Non-Agents

Andrew J
  • Edited
Community Moderator

How to Forward or CC automatically to Specific Non-Agents

In some workflows, it is necessary to pass ticket information to users outside of your support team who are not Zendesk agents.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to implement automatic emails to specific users outside of your helpdesk, and give an example of how this could be used.

Limitations: Each person you wish to notify will need a separate target made, so this is somewhat limited to predicable persons and by logistics of the number of persons to be included.

Mail Extension: It is possible to extend this so that a single target can be used in Zendesk, but this requires configuration in a mail system outside of Zendesk and may not be available to all users.

The Problem

When adding outside users as a CC to a ticket, notifications are only emailed if the comment is public, thus the End User also sees the comment.   

The Plan

In this tutorial, we will show you how to use targets, tags, triggers and macros to send notifications to a predefined non-agent users.

By creating the outside targets, we are able to define the persons we expect to be notifying, in this example, Mike in our admin team.

The Steps!

Create the Target

1) In Zendesk, navigate to Admin > Settings > Extensions > Targets

2)  Select ‘Add Target’

3) Give you target a descriptive name.  Example: ‘Mike – Private Email Notification’

4) Enter the email address. Eg:  mike@mydomain.co.nz

5) Enter a Subject, you can include placeholders.  Eg: Private Notification - {{ticket.title}}

6) Test the target, then select ‘Create Target’ and Submit.

Target completed!

Note: You will need to create a target for every email address you want to be able to notify.

Create the Trigger

1) Navigate to Admin > Business Rules > Triggers.

2)  Select ‘Add Trigger’.

3) Select desired conditions. 

This could be used in a number of ways.  For this example we select the following:

  • Ticket: Is…  Updated
  • Ticket: Tags  Contains at least one of the following  mike_notify
  • Ticket: Status  Less than  Closed

4) Select the actions to perform.  Example below.

  • Notifications: Notify target ‘Mike – Private Email Notification’ (As created in above target sample)
  •  Message: 

Please contact the client below to address this issue.

View here {{ticket.url_with_protocol}}

Email: {{ticket.requester.email}}

Phone: {{ticket.requester.phone}}

Previous communication as below.

{{ticket.comments_formatted}}

  • Ticket: Remove Tags mike_notify
  • Select ‘Create Trigger’ and Submit

Trigger completed! 

Note: You will need separate triggers for each target, unless of course you are wanting to notify a group of people rather than just one.

At this point, you have a manually activated target.  You can now manually add the tag mike_notify to your ticket, and submit with any other changes, including a Private/Internal comments.  However, we would always prefer to make things as simple and agent-proof as possible, so the following Macro will make this example complete.

Create the Macro

In this example, I am wanting to close the ticket by referring to Mike and will expect him to take over.  Personally I would make this a public comment, so that the customer knows what is happening.  You can easily set this to private if this suits your needs. 

  1. Navigate to Admin > Manage > Macros.
  2. Select ‘Add Macro’.
  3. Enter a Marco Title.
    Example: ‘Notify Mike and Solve’
  4. Perform these Actions.
    Ticket: Status Solved
    Ticket: Add tags mike_notify
    Ticket: Comment Mode Public (or Private as you prefer)
    Ticket: Comment/Description - as below…
    -------------------
    Hello {{ticket.requester.first_name}},
    Your request has been referred to Mike in our admin team.
    This ticket on our online system will now be closed and Mike will contact you via phone or email to continue to assist you.
    Thank you for contacting us!
    ------------------- 

Macro created!

All set 

You now have a VERY simple way to move a request outside of your Zendesk!

 

34 Comments

  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Slight mistake - for the trigger should read "Ticket: Status      >Less than             >Closed"

    It has been corrected in the text.

    0
  • Jennifer Rowe
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Thanks for sharing this, Andrew!

    0
  • Carolin Matthoff

    This works really well for us, thank you!

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello Caroline,  

     

    Glad you like it. We have been using this for several weeks now and it seems to be going nicely.  

    0
  • Dave Trumbull

    Hi,

    I've started using this to notify non-agents when a particular type of ticket comes in. The problem I'm having is they can't simply reply to the email to append a comment to the ticket. Their reply creates a whole new ticket.

    Any way around this?

    Thanks,

    Dave

     

    1
  • Laura D.

    Hi Dave, 

    This is expected behavior for replies to email target notifications. Since the reply is coming from someone who is not part of the ticket (and possibly not even associated with Zendesk) Zendesk won't append the reply to the existing ticket, you'd have to merge the new one with the old one. You can do this with private notes so as not to notify the requester of the original ticket about an update. 

    If you want to be able to have the replies update the existing ticket they would need to be a CC (which may be too revealing and could lead to unintended information being added in public comments) or an agent. 

    1
  • Jelmer

    Thanks for the step by step tutorial. Works like a charm!

    But is there a way that the created forward also sends attached documents from the ticket?!

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello Jelmer,

    Try adding this to the trigger message.  It will give the link to the attachment.  Only any use to someone that is not an agent if you do not have private attachments turned on.

    {% for comment in ticket.comments %}

    Comment: {{comment.created_at}} {{comment.author.name}} {{comment.value}}

    Attachment: {% for attachment in comment.attachments %} {{attachment.filename}} {{attachment.url}}

    {% endfor %}

    {% endfor %}

    0
  • Jennifer Rowe
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Hey Andrew, thanks for posting the answer!

    And nice to see you. :)

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Yup - I am still here.

    0
  • Jelmer

    Thanks! :-)

    0
  • Kristof Van Kriekingen

    Thanks for sharing, I wonder how I could not have seen this post yet!
    To bad it only works for an update but I will look into it a bit myself now xD

    Question though about:

    1. Ticket: Is…           Updated
    2. Ticket: Tags         Contains at least one of the following     mike_notify
    3. Ticket: Status      >Less than             >Closed

    What happens here if you change 1 --> Ticket is... New 
    So:

    • Ticket: Is…           New
      • Ticket: Tags         Contains at least one of the following     mike_notify
      • Ticket: Status      >Less than             >Closed

    And you give a specific organization the tag: mike_notify

    Each new ticket would have the tag ( for that organization )
    Wouldn't that work? ( And ditch the macro ) or am I overviewing something here.
    Are you able to create an automated fill in end-user CC's email for each new ticket of an organization?

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    @Kristof - it depends what you are trying to achieve.  We wanted to select when and who the request was passed to - you could use this to email an account manager and NOT close the ticket, or to close all tickets from an organisation and email someone else. 

    Please let us know what you decide and how you use it.

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  • Kristof Van Kriekingen

    Hmm I think I see what you mean, I'm going to try and play around a bit with it :)
    Thanks for the feedback

    Kind regards
    Kristof

    0
  • michael jack

    Make the modification, and deactivate the original, so you can always return home if something goes awry.

    0
  • michael jack

    The problem I'm having is they can't simply reply to the email to append a comment to the ticket. Their reply creates a whole new ticket.

    1
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello Michael,

    If you wanted the person to continue the conversation in the ticket - you either add them to the ticket as a CC or make them an agent and assign the ticket to them.  The entire intention of this is to move the request outside the helpdesk.

    Our message to the 'non-agent' is very clear that they must now contact the person directly.  You could use more 'persuasive' wording if needed in the trigger.

    0
  • commercevision

    I want to use this feature to facilitate mentions to our development team who are not Zendesk users (they use TFS). We have a trigger set up to email the target when a @Andrew for example is on the ticket. 100% of these comments are all marked as internal - but because the target is not an agent - when they get the email - all of the internal comments are not there - how do I solve this? 

    2
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello Andrew - not 100% sure on this, but the trigger that sends the message to the non-agent target - you should be able to use a placeholder for the full comment stream, not just public comments.

    0
  • Richard Lussier

    I am having the same issue as Andrew, the private comments are now coming through.

    1
  • Laura Wickesberg

    I'm having the same issue, it's only showing public comments, none of the internal comments

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Possibly the private comments are specifically withheld based on the email address?  So you are sure you are using the full ticket comment stream?  Public and Private?

    0
  • Laura Wickesberg

    Not sure why private comments would be specifically withheld from the email, I haven't blacklisted anyone or set anything as I'm sending to targets within the organization.

    I am using the syntax {{ticket.comments_formatted}} so I assume that would be all comments versus  {{ticket.public_comments_formatted}}

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello Laura, 

    'Ticket comments formatted' would be the standard variable display, which means that agents can see private comments, and users cannot. See -Zendesk Support placeholders reference

     

    I suspect that unless the receiving email is for an agent, the private comments will be hidden - it's possible that how this works in targets may have changed since this was written.  But I don't think I was worried about that when I wrote it.

    This may will be possible using liquid - see Using-Liquid-markup-to-customize-comments-and-email-notifications

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Will see if one of the liquid experts in the mod team can help :)

     

    0
  • Matt Winer

    Any way to setup an email target to go to more then one person.  I need to notify my leadership team.  Seems silly to setup one target per email.

    0
  • Dan Cooper
    Community Moderator

    Hi Matt,

    We use distribution groups in our targets to send to multiple people and it works out really well for us.

    0
  • David Scczerak

    @Andrew J .... I'm in need of this same feature

    (the ability to have both public and private comments pushed to my target using "notify target - email")

    Have your mod team members come up with a way to do this?

     

    The use case here is essentially escalating tickets to outside teams.

    For instance, if an issue comes up that requires a legal consultation, the external legal advisor needs to see the full ticket thread with all comments.

     

    I looked at the liquid markup page you linked, and didn't see anything that spoke to the issue of including private comments.

    0
  • Andrew J
    Community Moderator

    Hello David, nothing about liquid has come back to me.

    For your use case, I'd suggest forwarding one our your notification emails directly to the lawyer.

    Fundamentally, private comments are 'agent only', to allow these to go to non-agents is both dangerous (private data could get sent to a user), and not good business sense for Zendesk (basically allowing non-agents to act as agents)

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  • David Scczerak

    Thanks for the reply Andrew.
    Certainly the idea of forwarding emails to third parties had occurred to us as well, but it doesn't allow the tracking of those requests the way that setting a tag and notifying a target does.

    In addition, most of our agents don't get notification emails when the update a ticket themselves. The email notifications are only triggered when a non-self agent updates a ticket. So generating a current email to "self" that can then be forwarded is a hassle.

    Another use case where a full thread of comments would be very handy is in sending threads to an external system. For example, our development group uses a tracking system they built in house. Currently the process of sending a ticket to the dev group is manual, but the ability to send the full thread would allow us to close out the zendesk ticket, and at the same time create a project in the devgroup tracking system complete with all details and attachments.

    I understand your points, but disagree slightly. sending full thread emails to targets wouldn't create false-agents... since "replies" to those emails aren't threaded into the original ticket. Instead they spawn new tickets... so the external targets can't act like agents, since they can only receive information. if they send information, it is received just like from any email address in an open zendesk setup... as a new ticket.

    So the bottom line is that once again I'm left high and dry... with a use case that isn't supported, but must be followed regardless. Nothing new, just frustrating.

    Have a good day.

     

    P.S. official prediction. One day someone is going to create a ticket system geared towards small companies, with few, if any, mandated workflows... and they will sweep the small business market. Zendesk and her competitors will still own the enterprise market, but the small business segment will jump ship in a heartbeat. --david-circa-2017

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