Add Submit A Request for Agents

We would absolutely love this feature. We use Zendesk for Internal tickets and teams, and have had to create triggers to close tickets that were submitted by agents without any of the fields filled out. Submitting tickets through the Help Center is a cleaner experience and would be much more preferable for our agents to use, especially since some of them can't seem to figure out how to correctly submit a ticket in the Agent view. 

I just wanted to add myself to this list.  We are wanting to roll Zendesk out to different departments in our organization, but having our ticket forms unavailable to new agents in different departments is a major hindrance.

My company would very much appreciate this as well. We get by without, but as time goes on, more and more employees end up as agents for one reason or another. The GUI change is a frustration but not a big deal, but the bigger challenge is that the Agent interface for creating a ticket doesn't enforce the same requirements as the end user form.

One up for our company as well. We really need this for testing purposes as well as allowing all of our staff to log different types of request.

+1. We use Zendesk heavily for internal ticketing flows and have multiple teams within one instance. As we roll out webforms it's critical that agents can submit requests via the webform the same as end users. We have previously tested the preview_as_role trick; however, if this doesn't worked when logged in or for light agents it looses its effectiveness. 

+1. We are now about to start using zendesk, with multiple brands, to serve both end users and internal users. The lack of this functionality was a surprise to say the least. @zendesk, please update us with information about that beta functionality mentioned previously in the thread. 

Adding my support to this - agents/light agents not being able to submit a request in same way as end users is a major drawback for us. In an earlier post Kristen Woodard referred to a workaround

"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>"

can anyone point me in right direction as to how to configure this - can we edit page templates in this way? Thanks in advance

Hello, I'm Benjamin, and I work in the Product team for Guide.

We currently don't have a feature planned on our roadmap that would support the Agent as User functionality being discussed here. However, this type of functionality is something we do get requests about...

What are the most important use cases for this? ...  your feedback would be appreciated!

1. Internal department wants to get tickets from employees who are agents

2. Testing and training 

3. Logging tickets on behalf of end users

Hello @Benjamin Keyser, 

I wanted to give you more feedback on my company's use case. We have both self service customers and managed service customers. Our self service customers obviously raise tickets themselves but our manage service customers pay to have a dedicated account team. This account team raises any issues that the managed service customer has. An account team member is the requester on the ticket and handles all the communication with the support agent assigned. We don't consider this to be a case of raising tickets on behalf of the customer because we don't expect managed service customers to ever log their own tickets/communicate with our support staff via Zendesk.

Since our account team assignments change, people take time off, etc., we have all of our account teams in the role of Light Agent . This way they can see all tickets submitted, making it easy for one account team to cover for another when needed.

We have had to put in place a lot of technical work arounds to make Zendesk meet our needs. We would really like to see Zendesk be more flexible when it comes to the concept of both internal and external requesters. For one, the logic surrounding Zendesk ticketing should be less role-based and more actor based. If you're the requester, the system should treat you as such, without taking into account if you are an agent or an end user. 

I'd be happy to provide more feedback as needed. Just say the word. 

I'll provide some additional information on our use case and why this is critical for us.

We are a District-level college IT department that initially implemented Zendesk as our ticketing system and had the desire to roll it out to our other district as well as college-level departments as a standard for ticketing systems.  We have a single instance where other departments are added into groups (to keep tickets and queues separate, but connected).  

The problem was introduced when we added a new agents in another department and they would like to submit a ticket to a different department; the form in the agent view is not practical or friendly for some of our more complicated forms when the agent is unfamiliar.  After stalling our roll-out for several months to come up with a viable solution we were settled on a 3rd party product that used the Zendesk API to submit tickets.  We found it very disappointing that this functionality was not even on the roadmap for such a mature support product with so many features.

If anyone else is interested in our workaround.. we have rebuilt our forms with the 3rd party product "Form Stack" and integrated them using the Zendesk API.  We then added some code to the Help Center main page to add buttons linking to the different support forms and disabled the built-in ticket form option for users.  While we didn't want to have to do this, it has been working well for us...  We now have a consistent experience for agents as well as end users to submit service tickets to any department within our instance.

+1 for agents being able to submit a request.

The section when an agent creates a new ticket from within the support section is far too compressed to be practical.

Either allow for agents to submit requests, or at least allow the new ticket creation for agents to be presented in an enlarged section.

@Jeffseed I would love to learn how you implemented Form Stack as the lack of this functionality may be the last straw that breaks the camel's back and forces me to migrate to a different incident management system all together

Our company need this desperately...

Purpose is:
1. Internal department wants to get tickets from employees who are agents 

We are using zendesk for internal helpdesk, and have multiple ticket forms for different purpose.
So an agent for one subject is very likely an end-user for another.
It is much friendly if they can submit tickets from the same interface as end-users.
And easier to make ticket request manuals for me.

In addition, we have a couple customs in the help-center form to generate the ticket title and description based on the selected custom fields.  This does not work in the Support interface, so our agents must do this by hand.

Our company is hosted Zendesk using Onelogin and we have onboarded this tool for three departments , 

Where the other department agent  will be enduser for few departments . Since we are on Onelogin , agents cannot logout and submit the request as anonymus user . 

We are stuck and this is one of the basic features , there should be an option to login as enduser as well as agent . 

If remove the tool from Onelogin , User will have to login all the time to use the tool , and while raising ticket they should enter the email address . 

Also when they login for first time they should set a Password for it . Which will be a lot of work . 

Our use case for this is simple - our staff need to be able to submit the same requests as our customers in an easy to use manner. 

We want to be able to direct our staff to a single page where they can choose the nature of their request and fill out the fields to submit the form. The help centre page is much cleaner and simpler than logging it from inside Zendesk.

I can't think of any valid reason to not have this as an option. It would make a huge difference to simplifying workflows and making life easier for everyone.

Any new updates on this one ? 

Our agents used to be able to submit requests by adding "preview_as_role=end_user" to the URL but after upgrading our theme this feature seems to be broken. Having no alternatives available I find this very disappointing. It is making us consider switching to other tools.

In our system, one agent can very well be an end-user for a different type of request (form) handled by another team.
This together with some simple code logic in our script file can prove to be very powerful and versatile for our requests.
For us this was one of the main selling points and strengths that Zendesk could offer over other systems and got us all very excited. Now being limited by something seemingly so futile ...

I cannot think of any reason not to allow everyone to submit a request via the help center.
Certainly not if you're already allowing it for all roles via the chat widget...

If there is any way for us to get signed up for that beta, or if workarounds exist please let me know.

Hi,

Totally agree with that.

When using Zendesk for Internal services it's a MUST that agents can access the ticketforms in the helpcenter.

By example, we have a contact form for making "Business cards". So this form is used by end-users , Agents and Light agents.

The same issue when you use contact forms for HR.. 

I think this make sence? ...

The lack of the basic functionality for agents to submit requests is a workflow blocker for our company. Our Zendesk instance is used to support multiple internal teams and issues, and we use different forms for different processes. Agents that solve certain tickets for one form may very well need to submit a request through a different form.

The preview_as_role=end_user workaround in the URL no longer functions as it once did unless the HC preview is enabled, but that only seems to be possible for Team Leads and Administrators.

This issue has been open for 4+ years. Is anyone from Zendesk prioritizing this functionality?

It's been more than 6 months since I posted here - are we any closer to this functionality being available? My company recently was forced into the theming update and after doing so, the hacky workaround we had used previously to provide Agents with a link to create tickets using the end-user form, no longer works - making this functionality vastly more critical than it was before.

While griping persists about experience, I remain committed to the notion that the primary need here, is in allowing forms-owners to actually require data.

There is a vast gulf between "require end users to complete before submitting" and "require agents to complete before solving" and in the gulf is a lot of frustrated consumers of forms, and creators of forms.

Can we get a zendesk response to this please?

This would be very beneficial for my company as well. We have started using Zendesk for a place where our employees can submit different types of requests, which then gets assigned to a "light agent". The light agents, who are our managers, will also have a need to submit tickets to the main "HR" Admin in the system. 

Maybe implementing a switch role type functionality? 

@Benjamin

the most important use case is:

"1. Internal department wants to get tickets from employees who are agents"

Thank you.

Thanks for that vote! The internal departmental use case is a really important one for Zendesk, and we're actively working on providing a better solution. We're currently in the process of identifying how to create a robust solution, and I'll come back to you here with more as the solution comes to light. 

Thank you Benjamin ! This is great news.

Is there any update regarding this?

We are new customers and use Zendesk for internal customers only, this means that in some cases our agents need to report tickets as an end user.

Currently these users need to email in the request instead of using the portal where we have/planning to configure custom forms to improve our workflow and internal processes.

Just having the submit a request button to be available for any logged in user (not just anonymous our end-user) would be useful.

Sending in my vote on this- my use case is the same as all others mentioned- we need to allow internal staff to submit tickets - viewed as the end user. 

Adding my upvote --> Internal department wants to get tickets from employees who are agents

Is there any update on this functionality?

+1 for:

allow internal staff to submit tickets - viewed as the end user

Jessi - no updates. It's not something the product team has picked up at this point in time. 

In our organisation we have different groups - and one member of another group really needs to be able to submit ticket forms regarding IT - support. But since he is an agent he cant. So.. im one of all those who needs this feature.