What’s best way to add custom statuses?
Due to Zendesk not having custom statuses, I’m struggling to set it up to support my workflow. I only need a couple of extra statuses but just not sure how best to do it.
Basically we sometimes charge for work. So I want to add in statuses of Quoted and Approved. And then I have To Invoice once a paid task is complete which only the Accounts group see.
I want the View to be grouped by status. The status is the workflow of the task so we can see them grouped in the relevant section as they pass through our process.
So I thought I’d add a custom field called Status. To have them grouped by all status I also have to create statuses the same as Zendesk. So pending, on hold etc. This means there’s two fields to change which is bad, and open to errors. I’m trying to create Macros for it instead but it’s still causing issues if someone doesn’t use the macro and changes one of the status but not the other.
I’m trying to use triggers also so if someone does change only one status the other changes but I’m having strange results and tickets disappear from the view. Probably a conflict in triggers.
So I’m struggling creating this setup.
Maybe I use tags instead but I’ll probably have the same issues. I think custom statuses are tags.
Maybe I don’t have custom statuses the same. Maybe I keep their statuses then just add a few extra tags for my additional ones. But then how can I group by their statuses AND my extra ones?
Does anyone have a suggestion? I know custom statuses have been requested for years and it’s very strange it’s not added because I’ve only been using it for the past few days and immediately hit this barrier. I shouldn’t be spending all this time trying to figure it out.
Thanks
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Hi Laurence,
This can be a frustrating and time consuming process.
Within the current possibilities of Zendesk I'd still recommend you use a custom field, but only for those missing statuses. Then you can filter the views based on these values. When using triggers it is important to be really careful as they could indeed contradict each other.
If you can tell me a little bit more about what you are trying to achieve with some of the automated workflows, perhaps I could help you set up the triggers!
KR,
Jalle -
Thanks, but then the view can only group by the statuses I created, and then wont have the other statuses.
Workflow:-
- Customer emails us a request (New Status)
- Support staff take it and reply with either a quote (Quoted status) or asking for more info or just in discussion (Pending status)
- Customer accepts a quote (Accepted status)
- Support staff Take a ticket whether it was inAccepted status or no need to quote so from the Pending status. This is then Open Status or maybe In Progress.
- Ticket is completed then it gets Solved, OR if there is a cost assigned to it (another custom field) then it goes to the Accounts group with a status of To Invoice.
So thats the gist of it, and I want my ticket view to show all the unsolved tickets grouped by all our statuses through our workflow.
Your statuses wont allow people to re-create their own workflows.
Custom statuses do, but then you have two statuses to manage potentially causing issues.
I am not sure Zendesk is right for us now anyway. I have just discovered for customers to see their tickets they need another system, Guide, and although thew basic plan is free with Support, because we dont need Guide we need to change the Guide interface so its orientated for tickets only (we are not using any knowledge base feature) and so to do that I have to pay to have custom templates. So basically, in order for us to have a suitable support ticket system for customers to see, I will need to subscribe to Guide even though we dont need it. Quote a starnge setup to put half of the support system in guide and charge for guide due to lack of its features. So I dont think Zendesk is suitable as a proper support system (unless you want to use guide and happy to pay for custom templates) - I am waiting on another ticket I have open to explain all this to me.
Thanks
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Hey Laurence!
I think it should be relatively easy to set this up using custom fields; can you show us a screen shot of your triggers list? We might be able to figure out which on is messing up your routing.
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