Disable / Un-check 'Create follow-up' option

This would be great for us as well. Many of our customers find the latest email and just reply to it creating a followup when it is actually a different topic/issue. We would still want our customers to be able to create follow-ups, but once created we would LOVE to be able to change it to not being a followup essentially breaking the link between the new ticket and the old one. 

In this thread, there is a healthy discussion. 

I'm wondering if Zendesk can please most or all of us by giving us options.  We have a trigger in place to catch replies to Closed tickets and clear out the tags, but that just doesn't do everything we want. Can we click a box that says "Not a follow up ticket"? and maybe "Clear all fields" and then the ticket is standalone? 

In the link above, Leann's comment captures a GREAT way Zendesk could modify current functionality:

--Perhaps you could prevent false follows up by process of elimination. Before a ticket can be considered a follow up two things must be true:

• End user must be responding to the email address that points directly to a previous closed ticket.

       AND

• Subject line from new email must contain the full string of the subject line from the original ticket.

+1

Same here, we also like to disable or have more options to disable/undo a followup.

Frankly, this should be a direct toggle within Zendesk itself. "Disregard email reply if ticket is closed." Secondarily it would be nice to have a message that can be automatically replied back to the requester with customized text such as "The ticket you are replying to has been closed. Please open a new ticket by emailing xxx@xxx.com. Thank you."

There are too many people that search for the last email they sent and reply to that instead of sending a new email. While it may be easy to train 50-100 customers to stop responding to closed tickets, it's virtually impossible to train hundreds if not thousands, especially when many of them may only open support requests once or twice a year.

My time is valuable and I use tools like Zendesk to automate everything. Any time I have to go into the system and "massage" data, settings, or ticket values that tells me that you need to make your system just a bit more flexible. I hope you take this seriously because the lack of this simple toggle wastes a hell of a lot of time for my company each week. Time we could be using to make money, mind you. 

+1

+1

In Reply to Cloudbringersupport comment above, you can easily create an automation that sends out an email to customers if they respond to tickets that have already been closed:

Conditions:

Status-Changed From-Closed

Actions:

Email User = (requester)
Email Body:

Your message that (#{{ticket.id}}) has already been closed: Please email your@email.com to raise a new ticket.

Action:

Status = Closed

We have this setup in our Zendesk and works fine.

:)

Garry's solution does not seem possible in my setup.  There is no Status changed from closed, and an email generated from a closed ticket opens a new ticket.

Looking at this again and finding that "Changed from" is an option in Triggers rather than Automations,  But, still does not make sense since a new submission to support+123456 (with 123456 being a closed ticket) will not change the status of a closed ticket.  It will open a new ticket referencing the old ticket.

+1 

We have a nice flow going with handling the incoming tickets, the follow option disrupts this quite a bit. Is there any news from Zendesk considering disabling this function? Or even better cleaning all ticket information.

Hi Koen, 

We do not have an update at this time. But, should this functionality get prioritized, we will be sure to update this thread. 

Also, I see that this is your first post - Welcome to the Zendesk Community! I encourage you to head over to the The Lounge to familiarize yourself with our Community Guidelines and to post in the Introductions thread to introduce yourself to everyone.

We look forward to seeing you around the Community. Happy Zendesking!

Hi,

Following on from my previous request above, when our customers are 'creating follow-ups' when they shouldn't be, this appears to be affecting the 'First Time Reply' reports that are built in to Zendesk as I think it's calculating when the original ticket was raised rather than when they created a follow-up.

Please correct me if I'm wrong ;o)

Thanks,

Sharon

Looking at Gary's solution, I'm not sure if it will work. A follow up seems to create a new ticket linked to the previous one, but does not change the status of the original ticket.

+1

Hey Russell - Please be sure you've used the voting arrows on the original post to register your vote. Thanks!

So just to be clear. There is no way to currently to create a trigger that will auto-close generated follow up tickets and provide them with directions on the "right" way to open a new ticket?

This is a great idea, really need this as we have some people in our business who cannot send a new email into the help-desk or apparently refuse to. 

We have also big issue here, because some clients taking old ticket email, deleting information writing down as a new ticket, but zendesk always catch it as follow-up ticket because of reference number. In one of ticket biggest issue that first ticket has 10CC users, and everytime client submit a new ticket (without anyone on CC) everyone still gets information (3rd parties included). So I would say it's a big security issue. Should an option also on closed tickets to "disable follow-up" from that ticket. 

Yes, we face the exact same issue as all of the users above - not only follow up tickets are often not referring to the original subject and are completely separate cases, but also all the information from the previous ticket is being copied (such as tags, for example) - which affects the reporting in a negative way. Since there are different ways to group the tickets from one organisation or one user - this 'follow-up' functionality is a bit restrictive.

Having an option to disable 'follow-up' functionality as a whole would be great for many Zendesk users, of that I'm sure. I see it this way:

1. Initial ticket is getting solved (and then closed).
2. Customer replies to the same email.
3. A new ticket is being created, without the 'follow-up' mechanic.

Would such arrangement be possible to achieve?

It definitely affects reporting in a negative way.  Should we all be paying this much money for something and not able to disable a feature such as this?  Reporting is important and affects the entire portal making this pointless.

Please let us disable follow-up tickets, when a ticket is closed.  

We have many customers who create tickets as a 'follow-up' when in fact they are not related to their original ticket at all.  This causes lots of problems with ticket routing and with reporting.  

Hi Jim, how frequently does this come up for you? 

We have it happen several times each day.  Please, please, please - create a way that we can disable this feature entirely.  It is a useless feature which serves absolutely no purpose to our organization (beyond confusion & frustration), and until end-users discover they cannot create follow-ups, they'll never follow the proper procedure and protocol for creating new ticket incidents.

Normally we catch it and update the fields manually so the new follow-up tickets are recorded and routed correctly.  But we neglect to do this about once a day.  

I don't mind customers creating new tickets from closed ticket links.  The problem is when the new ticket inherits all the fields from the closed ticket.  

This is a major issue for my company. Follow up tickets are also pulling in our custom ticket fields and sending CC notifications to the people cc'd on the original ticket who have nothing to do with the new ticket. There has to be a way to stop this from happening. This seems like a major flaw that needs to be investigated thoroughly and not waiting for upvotes on an enhancement request. 

We have been receiving more "follow ups" at our organization.  End users are stating they are creating new emails that should not be prompting follow ups.  Any updates on when this issue may be reviewed?  An option to remove the "follow up" would help!

You or your Admin needs to verify they are indeed "follow-up", Nelson.  If not, then your issue would be something else.  If they are follow-up you might be able to train the users to not choose an auto-filled email address to your Zendesk with a ticket number in the address.  The training has worked for many of our users and we get less now.

+1