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Managing Projects with Zendesk
Posted Jan 08, 2014
For companies that aren't yet big enough to use a third party provider to manage projects, the Project Management APP from Zendesk labs will come in handy.
This APP allows you to create a Parent ticket and attach multiple child tickets to it, without having to use the default Problem-Incident scenario. This also helps with analytics, allowing you to track tasks instead of problems.
Installation
- Go to Project Management.
- Click Get it and complete the process
How to use it
Creating the Parent ticket
- Create a new ticket. This ticket will be the project's parent ticket. Disregard the ticket field you created (for now)
- Once the ticket is created, on the right-hand side under APPS you will see the Project Management app.
- Click on Make a Project from this ticket.
Creating child tickets
- Access the parent ticket
- There are three options: Single Ticket, Bulk Ticket, Add existing. A Single Ticket will allow you to create one child ticket. Bulk Tickets will allow you to create several child tickets. Add existing will prompt you to enter an existing ticket ID.
All children tickets will have to be assigned to the appropriate agents/groups and all additional info entered (this process is manual.)
As tickets are worked on, the status can be viewed from the parent ticket.
Enjoy ! :)
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73 comments
Chae Journell-Klain
Thanks Jessie. That does help.
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Jonathan Santoya
Is it possible to have a little more instruction on how to use the "ticket form" part of the ticket?
I want to make different ticket forms that are pre-filled, so I can just select the tickets form and create because we have the same tasks to complete for different users. I added some JSON information to the "Preset Template Mappings", but nothing popped up for the "ticket form".
Thank you!
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Jessie Schutz
Hi Jsantoya!
Are you looking to pre-fill ticket fields in the agent interface? If that's the case, there's no native way to do that. You would need to create an app to do it.
The other option is to set up a series of macros that will fill out all the fields for you. You would select your ticket form, and then apply the appropriate macro for that form. It's an extra step, but would get you where you need to go without needing to build an app from scratch.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
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Jonathan Santoya
https://github.com/zendesklabs/project_app/blob/master/assets/screenshot-1.png?raw=true
Just like in that picture. It shows that there could possibly be different ticket forms.
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Jessie Schutz
Hey Jsantoya,
That app is set up to give you the option to choose your ticket form, and to duplicate the subject and description of the original ticket if you want to, but doesn't give you the ability to auto-fill the form with custom information.
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Corrin Duque
Is it possible to add existing tickets to the Project/parent ticket? Most of our projects require the ability for us to attach existing tickets to the overall project for workflow management.
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Jessie Schutz
Hi Corrin!
Yes, this is possible! When you go into your main project ticket, the Project App will show the option to "Add Existing".
From there, you'll have the option to enter the existing ticket numbers to add them to the project.
Hope that helps!
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Corrin Duque
Great thanks. I had not yet installed this when I posed the question and missed where it stated this option in the article. We love this app!
Curious - why is this app not listed on the Zendesk Marketplace in the Project Management apps? Or at least listed in the Zendesk Marketplace in general. Looks like it has been in existence since at least Jan 2014.
I had specifically and diligently hunted for a Project Parent/Child type app from our beginnings with Zendesk and none of the ZD agents I spoke/emailed with were aware of this app either. Holly from Zendesk clued me in yesterday when I finally decided we would attempt to force the Problem/Incident Ticket feature into an unconventional project usage. I was going to have to create Insights reports to try to see solved and closed tickets related to the projects (and we'd have to rename the Type for all our project tickets with "incident" even though almost all of them were tasks). My yesterday's Zendesk Super Hero (Holly) actually found the Project App via a google search.
Why is this so burried? It's a GREAT app! Please add it to the Marketplace to save others like us the year long search for a project parent/child ticket workaround. And THANK YOU Zendesk for creating it! We are already experiencing a corporate sigh of relief and I only launched it yesterday evening!
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Corrin Duque
Hi Jessica,
I think I got my answer for why this was not listed in the Project Management Apps from Megan at ZD when I raised a functionality question ticket (I did finally find it listed in the ZD Laps apps).
"the app you are inquiring about is a Zendesk Labs product developed by community members. I'm afraid that this app isn't something that we support here at Zendesk, so we unfortunately wouldn't be able to assist you with bugs or troubleshooting with this app."
Question: Why is it impossible to remove a Closed ticket from the Parent Ticket but is is possible to ADD a Closed ticket to a Parent Project ticket?
Detail:
I was testing to see if Closed tickets could be added to the Parent Project Ticket in the Project App. The good news is that they can! A red font message with an exclamation point appears in the upper right cornder of the screen with the message "ticket is closed!" But it adds to the list of child tickets.
The not so good news is that they cannot be removed.
Questions:
The closed ticket I tested that successfully added to the parent project ticket is ticket #9777. The closed ticket updated the new tags. But of course I cannot remove those tags and the button "remove ticket from project" does not work.
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Jessie Schutz
HI Corrin!
As you observed, the Project App is a Zendesk Labs app so it's not supported and it's not actively developed or maintained.
As far as your questions go, my suggestion would be to post in our Community to see if any of our coding gurus can help you tweak it!
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Corrin Duque
Thanks for the link Jessie! I'll reach out to the community and see what I can find. Have to say it again - I LOVE this app!
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Diane Albert
Admittedly I have not downloaded this to try because I'm still kinda crunched in my peak season yet...but this sounds like it might be a boon for when my photographers send images to be uploaded to sites...and i want their customer to know it's been uploaded, but i do NOT want the customer to see / have access to the link the photographer sent.
The photographer ticket with images would be the parent ticket. My uploaders can go work that as needed. Issues with the images...we're still chatting with the OP would be the photographer.
The child tix would be the actual customer who just receives notice that we have images from their photographer and they'll be uploaded shortly.
Does resolving the parent resolve the children or would I need to trigger that? Andrea / Jessie...I'll gladly take personal insights here and if you want to hop to the Mod board so we're not junking up a thread, I'm game. I can be more specific on my use case.
We tried the Linked Ticket App and when we found out it created a tag for every linked ticket...that stopped really quick. my tags are bloated enough as it is.
Diane
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Jessie Schutz
Hey Diane!
This is definitely not junking up the thread. I'm sure others would find you input helpful. :)
In the interest of full disclosure, the Project App uses tags as well. That's how these apps are able to identify the child tickets that are linked to the parent ticket. I know the struggle of bloated tags, but I'm afraid it's a necessary evil here.
Solving the parent ticket does not solve the child tickets. So you would need to close the child tickets manually, or see if you can wrangle a trigger for it. I'm not sure exactly how that would work off the top of my head, but it might be possible.
If the ticket tags are a deal-breaker, and it's really important for the child tickets to be closed when the parent ticket is closed, have you considered the possibility of using the Incident/Problem functionality?
The photog's ticket would be the incident, and then your proactive ticket to the customer would be the linked problem ticket. No extra tags, and when you close the main ticket, the child ticket is solved automatically.
The only catch is that you would need to be careful with posting a public comment when you solve the Incident ticket...that gets added to the linked Problem tickets when the Incident is marked as Solved. This could be easily worked around, though, with a standard macro that would apply to both photog and client. Something like, "Your images have been published, find the link here: <link>".
I'm just spitballing, but it could work provided you're not using Incident/Problem for anything else.
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Diane Albert
I've used incident / problem for true problem ones, but we tend to like the personal approach to working with customers so I don't use it often.
I'm okay with solving child tix separately....and with child tix reopening separately from the parent tix.
Basically what i kinda do now is if I have a photog that doesn't want his stuff public, i open a new tix to the customer. In internal notes, i use #tixnum so *I* know what one i'm dealing with...then in his tix i do the same with the customer tixnum. That gives me my clickable links.
One of the things this would solve for me is the nightmare i have with multiple orgs. If you're a photog with XYZ studio sending me 4 different schools' worth of photos, you can now do it in the same ticket...and I can "child" out to the 4 customers separately.
I can see i have some flowcharting to do before I start deconstructing things. That needed to get done last year and didn't so I'm behind by a process year anyhow. sigh....
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Jessie Schutz
So it sounds like using the Project App is really just going to streamline a process you're already sort of using. It'll also add transparency to anybody else who might be looking at the tickets, so they can see what tickets are associated with which. Plus it'll just generally be able to keep track of the conversations with the child/parent tickets listed in the app tray.
Since you're already doing something kind of similar, hopefully it won't be too difficult to implement!
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Pat Prince
Hi!
I've noticed an issue and was curious if anyone else has seen it and if they have a fix for it - which would be really great!
It seems like the Project Ticket app works pretty well in our organization, up until there are 40 Child Tickets (and 1 Parent Ticket, which is >40 Tickets to display). At that point, the app seems to "forget" that that Ticket (Parent and Children) are part of a project and the app changes back to the default state with the button "Make a Project from this ticket". If you select that and choose "Add existing", it otherwise seems to work exactly as it should in every other aspect (field being filled in and Tag being added) except that the app itself will not display the Project Ticket list or even acknowledge that it's part of a Project.
Has anyone else seen this and potentially know a way to mitigate it?
Thank you,
Pat Prince
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Jessie Schutz
Hey Pat!
I've never tried adding that many Child tickets to the app, but my educated guess would be that there's something about the way the app is coded that makes it confused when there are more than 40 tickets associated with the Parent.
I'm afraid that the app isn't supported by Zendesk, but I'd recommend heading over to our Apps forum to see if anyone there is able to give you some additional guidance on how you might be able to tweak it!
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Niek ter Horst
Hi All,
I just started to use the Project App since it is perfect for our workflow.
However, I'm struggling with the reporting.
When working on a Project (Parent) sometimes multiples people are working on there (children). However, for reporting purposes this still should be consider a "single ticket" instead of X number of tickets.
Is there an easy way to set this up?
thanks for your help!
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Jorge Harnecker
Hello,
We have been using "Project App" these past few days and it has worked very well, however, when we receive a ticket with an attached document and generate a child ticket, the attached document is not transferred from the parent ticket to the child ticket.
Can attachments be transferred to child tickets?
Thanks!
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Nicole Saunders
Hey, Jorge-
Apologies for the delayed response. There is no automatic way to pass on the attachment; you would need to do it manually by downloading the attachment and then attaching it to the child ticket.
Also I see that this is one of your first posts - Welcome to the Zendesk Community! I encourage you to head over to the Welcome Thread in The Lounge to introduce yourself.
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Niek ter Horst
Hi Guys,
still wondering if someone could answer my question above?
Additional question is on a bit more guidance on how to add the specific JSON code (what code exactly) to auto-select the appropriate group when creating a child ticket.
Thanks!
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Keith Hayward
Hey Niek,
Regarding the Parent/Child Tickets, the best way to exclude Child Tickets is to make sure each of them gets a Tag. You could create a Custom Field to note it being a Child Ticket and then Filter by that Tag that gets attached to those Tickets. Filtering Tags can get a bit complex and would require you to create this metric here:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203664306-Insights-tag-reporting-Reporting-on-tickets-with-one-or-more-tags-Professional-and-Enterprise-#Filtering
Regarding your JSON coding question, I'd recommend placing that question over here and seeing what answer you get:
https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/groups
Thanks!
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Steven Loeb
We've been using this app for awhile with almost no problems. It seems that there was an update recently and ever since then it has been very buggy. A lot of times after creating a child ticket it will not actually create the project and link the tickets. Any insight?
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Skip Moore
Steven Loeb, This is the 1st time I have heard of not creating the project links. Could you post here https://github.com/zendesklabs/project_app/issues anything you have on replications steps
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Gernot Danner
Hello Zendesk Team,
we recently started to use the app to escalate tickets between teams.
Is there a possibility, that the parent ticket gets reopened as soon as the child ticket gets updated with a comment?
Thank you
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Jessie Schutz
Hi Gernot!
The app wasn't built with that functionality; it would be necessary for you to build a custom version of the app that linked the parent and child tickets in that way.
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Jorge Moreno
Hello,
I have two questions regarding functionality, before we go ahead and instal it:
- Can we email all child tickets from the parent ticket?
- Can we solve all child tickets in bulk from the parent (maybe solving the parent, for example?).
I don´t mind if any of these two needs to be set up outside of the app, whatever works.
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Jessie Schutz
Hi Jorge!
The Linked Ticket app doesn't link tickets in that way. Have you checked out our Problem/Incident Ticket functionality? It does exactly what you're describing. So you could create Child Tickets from a Parent Ticket, set the Parent as the Problem Ticket, and all the Child Tickets as the Incidents.
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David Sisson
When using Project Management app, should I be able to Solve a parent ticket that has an open child ticket? My system allowed me to do this.
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Jessie Schutz
Hi David!
To the best of my knowledge this is expected behavior. I'm not sure whether it's possible to code that kind of dependency into an app, but I do know that the Project App is not built that way.
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