Signature formatting and Side Conversations
Posted Dec 14, 2020
While it looks like we can use Markdown to format signatures in our users' profiles for outbound ticket communication, if the signature is injected into a Side Conversations using Markdown formatting (which occurs by default), the formatting is then rendered into text and Markdown is disregarded - sending the recipient a textual version of the Markdown formatting, which is not ideal (and makes our communication unusual).
I've tried to commit to memory which areas of Zendesk permit HTML vs. Markdown formatting, but it's gotten more difficult to manage as there is a bit of overlap across the various outbound communication methods. For our purposes, ideally this would be standardized to support HTML across the board, but I see no way to enforce this from a global standpoint.
Thank you in advance!
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29 comments
Official
Toby Sterrett
Hey all, thanks for the feedback here. I agree that the signature support in side conversations needs to be improved to handle the Markdown formatting. At this time the way the signatures are handled in side conversations is different than tickets in that they are inserted into the composer itself when authoring a message rather than being hidden and processed/inserted when submitted like with tickets. This is due to side conversations not going through the same processing system as tickets, which includes Markdown conversion and placeholder replacement. We are going to be looking into how we can do the same processing for the signatures at the time of insertion in the composer, but we don't have that in place at this time. We are definitely aware of this, though, and have plans to tackle it in the future.
In the meantime, if you'd like to have signatures in their current state disabled on your account you can let us know and we can make that happen.
A potential workaround is having us disable signatures and then setting up a macro with an action to initiate a side conversation with "signature" text at the bottom of the message body. Initiating side conversations with this macro instead of the + button will give you an approximation of a rich text, dynamic signature. This is by no means a full solution, and will only work on the initial side conversation message, but if that is adequate for your needs it may get you a better result than plain text.
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Sydney Neubauer
We used to use the Signature field on profiles for our ticket signatures but we require formatting. As such we needed to move signatures into triggers that pull information from profiles. The issue is that Agents expect the Signature field to display details in tickets but it only does so for SC.
We are multi-brand and each team has their own set of signatures (even groups inside Brands). We have very specific formatting (first line is certain color, font, font size, second line is another size, third is a link with custom text etc).
What are our options to have a single signature field that is used for both public replies and SC AND has the required formatting?
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Alex
Clayton Waters I posted a possible workaround that works for my situation, it may be useful for you: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/5581699884826-Have-Separate-Signature-for-Side-Conversations-Public-Ticket-Responses
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Alex
Toby Sterrett Also commenting on here to check on updates regarding this issue
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Clayton Waters
Toby Sterrett any updates on supporting markdown in side conversations? The last update on this topic is from 7 months ago. Our support agents continue to look silly as their signatures are going out with what appear to be extraneous characters. Our team knows about removing the signature from outgoing side conversation emails, but this is a persistent annoyance.
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Jorn
Hi Toby Sterrett. It was ticket number 11150901, but it got solved eventually.
Looking forward to your update!
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Toby Sterrett
Jorn can you provide the ticket number? I can check it out and get the signatures removed for you. It's a bit of a manual process.
I'm going to be talking with the team early next week to see about getting the hydrated signatures into the side conversations editor. I'll post here when we have something to try out.
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Markus Schulz
No, we created a 'blank' macro without using the standard signature and we have implemented simplified signature in this macro. I have to mention that we use the side conversation email for internal and vendor communication only. In these cases a simplified signature is enough.
BR,
Markus
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Jorn
Markus Schulz Were you able to disable the auto created 'signatures'?
I'm in contact with a Zendesk agent, which repeatedly is telling me they can't remove it (despite Toby Sterrett 's message).
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Markus Schulz
Dear Jorn,
We have the same issue, but we have created a work around: We have established a macro which creates a blank side conversation email with a signature and some dynamic fields (name, phone no., email, ...).
Maybe it helps but of course zendesk has to provide this function in the near future.
BR,
Markus
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Jorn
Toby Sterrett Any news about this matter? We're not able to use the side conversations for any outbound messages.
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