Zendesk Query Language (ZQL) to create queries in Explore

Feature Request Summary: 

Creating a query in Explore can be tedious. The user must do a lot clicking to just to accomplish simple tasks like adding metrics, attributes, or filters. What's more, every time a change is made to the query the user must wait for the results to update. This is particularly problematic with larger queries. 

Zendesk should create a full query language (ZQL) to allow Explore users the option to write a full query statement to pull the data they need. 

Description/Use Cases: 

Users would open the query editor in the same way they do today. There would be a new option to switch from the UI based editor to the new text based query editor.

Writing queries would be similar to the way custom metrics and attributes can be created, but it would extend to the full functionality in the query creator. It would be similar to SQL in many ways (I think Explore is based on SQL anyway?). It would start with a SELECT command and allow users to structure their query with various conditions. 

An example statement might look something like: 

SELECT count(ticket_id)
FROM tickets 
WHERE (INCLUDES([Ticket tags], "some_tag");

It could mirror the syntax and functionality (like auto-complete) already built into the formula editor, and this would provide savvy users with a sense of familiarity. 

Rather than automatically updating the query results after each minor change, users would press a button or enter a keyboard shortcut when they're ready to run their query. 

Nice to have: Users can switch from the text editor to the UI based editor and see their written queries carried over (and vice versa). 

Business impact of limitation or missing feature:

Using Explore is often time consuming. This feature would save Explore users valuable time, and make it much simpler to pull ad-hoc data when needed. 

Other necessary information or resources:

Jira has their own query language called JQL. It's not a 1:1 to what I'm suggesting here, but it's an interesting approach to accessing the right data in complex systems.

Side note: something like JQL might actually be useful in advanced searches in Support. 

 

 

Implementing ZQL would be a natural extension of several current features, and would greatly improve the user experience for many Explore users.