Add Submit A Request for Agents

Did anyone ever write a means to do this?  I would agree that this would make teaching our Light Agents how to use Zendesk simpler, too.

H Drew. I haven't seen anything or found a ready-made solution. We didn't plan on teaching to use Zendesk for our Light Agents which are just consulting employees either. 

My realization is that HC doesn't seem to be built for agents to use at all: 
- 'My Activites' redirect to Zendesk UI
- there is no way to submit tickets through HC
- HC doesnt handle internal comments

So I guess we have to think again. 

We would love for agents to be able to use Help Centre forms.  Over a quarter of our company are either agents or light agents so teaching them how to use forms away from Help Centre is just an extra step we dont need

Agents can also submit tickets from within the agent interface without filling in all information.  If they use Help Centre, all fields must be filled in before submitting which is what we are trying to ensure

Is this on the roadmap at all?

Hey all,

Just wanted to quickly chime in here. I do know there are use cases here where agents sometimes serve as both agents and customers (especially when used for internal teams). While we're aware of this request and understand the need, I also want to be up-front and let you know that improving Zendesk for this particular use case is not on the roadmap at this time.

That being said, we'll keep this thread open so others with the same need can continue the conversation. It is, of course, possible that we might change our stance on this in the future.

Best,
Erin

Having the ability to access forms from the New Request page as an agent would also allow us to test conditional field form configurations prior to publishing them for end-users. We're able to set forms to Agent-Only, and make the configurations behind the scenes, but there's currently no way to test that the configuration is working without publishing the form to our customers. We're currently developing some complex forms, with integrations to PagerDuty, that we really need to be able to test prior to pushing to production. Currently the only solution is to set everything up in a sandbox, but as we all know Zendesk sandboxes can't push configuration changes to production, so you're effectively doing all of the work twice, and migrating the configuration introduces the possibility of errors occurring even after you've validated. The whole point of validating ahead of time is to avoid this, and this would be a simple solution.

Hi Erin,

First of all, I'd like to thank you for chiming in on this thread. The need in theory should be as simple as adding (or updating a permissions setting on the back end), since the button and functionality already exists.

Our use case is that we have employees who are non-technical, that are required to do a small task in congruency with our tickets, and then reply that their bit has been done. Since they are non-technical, they do not need the full agent view when they submit their own requests, although, having both views for them will greatly help on the learning curve.

By having this functionality, we'd get more corporate buy-in on the platform, and enable the organization to increase our agent count. Please consider this when evaluating the cost for man-hours vs. user-friendliness and total potential revenue.

Cheers,

 ~Wez

After much digging around, we have been given this by our ZD AM

https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=?????;preview_as_role=end_user

where ????? is the form id

Not sure why nobody else at ZD knew about this though?

Thanks Fabian - I've been looking/asking for this for a long time!!

I second the "Thank You!" A very helpful tidbit!

Thanks Fabian Bellino! 

I have created an i-frame and popped the link to the agent "submit a request" view so they can submit from within the portal. 

I used the URL that includes preview_as_role=end_user, however a logged in agent hits that link and gets redirected to the internal agent form instead. I am having a hard time understanding why hiding the external-facing Ticket Form is a good idea or a feature... we've got office admins that are agents who fulfill office supply requests who at times also need to submit IT Support tickets. Submitting through the agent interface is a little awkward, and also creating tickets there does not enforce required field rules.

I would also like to see this implemented. For us and for our customers who we consult about Zendesk, the possibility to use Help Center form would be welcome. Light agents participate in end customer support usually by email and are not familiar with Zendesk agent user interface. They are also customers for internal IT support and other internal support services. It seems quite unnecessary that they need to use Zendesk agent interface in this case, as more convenient form exists. 

In addition to in some cases customers have multiple brands with multiple forms for each brand. In this case there is a cost for both, and agent interface usability is low. Light agents should be first able understand to select brand, and still the form selection is not filtered, so there can be similar forms to select from, which does not make it any easier.

Does anyone have a workaround for light agents (other than advising them not to log in in internal IT Help Center)?

@Claire Can you share how you did your iframe?

@FernandoDuarte there is an app for it:

https://www.zendesk.com/apps/iframe/

We have utilized the "Preview as role = end user" URL switch, however, it requires the agent to have admin status on our Zendesk Instance. This switch is actually referring to the preview state an agent can access when creating/modifying the html of the portal. I cannot feasibly make every agent an admin on the portal, it defeats the purpose of security settings.

We utilize Zendesk for more than just support requests. Users request equipment, mobile devices, etc through various Zendesk forms on our site. Many of our Agents are also managers who are expected to request equipment and devices on behalf of their employees. It is much more efficient to fill out a form rather than a ticket.

I would love to see this redirect to the agent interface when attempting to access a form as an option rather than a forced setting. This would allow Zendesk to serve the folks who would prefer not to be redirected and still maintain the feature for those who love it.

Very disappointing to see the new Zendesk Guide rebrand come through while ignoring this feature requests. This seems like a very obvious interaction that should exist by default, allowing Agents to determine the best method of submitting requests for their workflow. 

The inability for agents to use forms is a huge hurdle when using conditional fields.  We have complex forms to handle requests and reports that both end users and 30% of our agents need to use.  Additionally with SSO and company computers we can't just ask agents to logout.

Without the ability to access the forms it makes it very difficult for many.  Zendesk please just add this as a setting in agent roles.

We're in the same boat here. We use Zendesk for internal support and have a need to allow our agents to be able to submit tickets through the Guide.

Tyler,

Try adding the following to the top of your "New Request Page" in your portal. It's not pretty (a dialog will pop up asking if you really wanted to be re-directed) but at least it stops the agent re-direct.

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
window.onbeforeunload = function(){
return 'Are you sure you want to leave?';
};
//]]>
</script>

I would still love to see a simple checkbox in the zendesk settings for companies to chose whether their agents are able to use the helpcenter forms or are forced to redirect. 

I believe that there is a beta to allow agents to view the "Submit a Request" page. Can someone at Zendesk provide an update? 

I also have these challenges in our Zendesk with allowing an agent to use the end user interface to submit tickets.  Some of the forms require different fields based on agent/end user usage and it can be tough.  However, I just had a thought that might help some of the people in this thread.  If you have a web widget, you might be able to use the newly released ticket forms feature in the web widget to guide your agents through a version of the end user form.  I haven't tried this since our web widget is actually hacked into performing a different internal process for us, but our main challenge in not having access to the end user side is knowing what fields need to be filled in and which are required.  If the ticket form is available from the widget, this could potentially solve that problem in my use case and maybe for some of yours. It'll be a while before I really dig into this, but if someone else finds it useful then I hope it works for you! 

Daniel has a great point! For those that do not use conditional fields in their forms, the web widget is a completely viable option! Unfortunately, we use conditional fields heavily in order to make our forms easy to use for our end users while still collecting the exact information necessary to fufill the request. Had the web widget included conditional fields functionality I would have encorporated the web widget into our support arsenal immediately.

The lack of this functionality that used to be available in Web Portal is why I did not migrate to Guide until I was forced to.

Bumping this up. 

I find this a huge oversight as just because someone is an Agent doesn't mean they don't need to file a ticket.

Yes, they could do it from within the support tool - but they shouldn't have to.  We have multiple forms and fields that agents regularly have to fill out and not allowing them to do it the same way others do is a huge problem.  We want to practice what we preach to end users so being able to have the same experience for all is huge.

At least give us the option to "Show Submit a Request to Agents" so we have the choice.

Rebecca,

With the new "Guide Manager" permissions in the agent profile toggled on, you can now allow your agents to view the forms in the guide using the url switch "preview_as_role=end_user" without having to make them a full admin of the site.

Example hyperlink:

https://{your domain here}.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?preview_as_role=end_user&ticket_form_id=388068

The ticket form id is only necessary if you have multiple forms capability.

It would be nice to have the functionality without the switch, but, we are running and stable using the above workaround now.

The  "preview_as_role=end_user" only works for agents, and not for light agents.

Hi All, 

This was a sticking point for my company to sign up with Zendesk. They got us added to some sort of beta that allows agents (full and light) to use the Help Center forms just like end users. I didn't have to do any setup on my end. It's not something that I've seen advertised in the Zendesk Help Center, so I'd suggest raising a ticket and asking to be added to the beta. 

Hope that helps! 

Candace,

Can you provide more info about this? I put in a ticket with support and they said they couldn't find such a beta.

Thank you