David Raboy

Thanks Nikolaj!  Just updated the code.  Didn't notice it earlier. 

Outlook Add-in Forward to Zendesk
Link to open source code:
https://github.com/dbr2hb/Outlook-to-Zendesk
Note: currently this is windows only.

For those that have tried using the Outlook to Zendesk case creation add-in know it’s limitations:

1. You cannot send inline images
2. Web outlook add-ins will not work for a shared inbox, (like a support inbox).

To work around this Zendesk does provide the ability to Forward an email and place some mail api code in it, which allows you to set the original sender as the ticket requester as noted here:

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203663316-Passing-an-email-to-your-support-address#topic_jfs_cwr_2k (you can also forward if the subject has the fwd or fwd, but using the mail api eliminates the need for this)

This add-in builds on prior VB macro tips and code out there like this one from Andrew Bray:

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203458956-Forward-email-as-Ticket-Internal-Users

Basically it does a one click forward email to your support email address with the original sender.  Assuming you properly have zendesk setup to assign forwarded tickets it will create a ticket with the original sender as the requester.

Enable Email forwarding under Admin > Settings > Agents

I’ve taken it a step further and created an installable program you can distribute to all users vs having to copy and paste a macro into each users outlook.

Before you start you'll need Visual Studio 2017. Make sure to also shut down your outlook client.

Open the .sln program.  In the visual basic code make sure to put in your correct zendesk email address.  Make sure to do a "clean" of the code first. You should be able to start the code in debug mode and run it. It'll open up outlook and the add-in will show the on your ribbon.

You will need to install your own signed certificate to distribute the code to your team.

Included in this package is a user install document as well that you can edit and give you a better idea of what the add-in does.

Please ping me or add an issue to the list on GitHub to fix for any problems or leave a comment here. Also if you'd like to contribute please put in a pull request. Thanks.

Hi Teri,

Unfortunately the current VSTS app isn't going to be exactly you need. It's a basic information tool to create work items and send comments/updates back and forth.  By the way, the plugin is maintained by Microsoft not Zendesk, so Zendesk doesn't have control over it. I see you already found the link below with the same comments you made here, which is good.

https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-zendesk-app

Probably your best bet on this if you want it now would be to update this application yourself to do the updates you want as it already has the connection between VSTS and Zendesk. You could update this app to allow for some additional tagging that in turn would allow you to setup the triggers you want out of the box.  

There is one thing you could do now though which is part of what you want and that is set an automation after X days.  If you've installed the VSTS app, you'll see when you link to a work item it'll create a tag similar to this:

In your automation you could just add check for a tag containing vso_wi and have it change the priority after X days.

Hi Juan,

You'll need to edit a little bit of code to make this work, but it should be pretty easy.  

If you are using the default theme you'll need to edit the request_page.ebs file:

In the request_page.ebs file I believe you should be able to just comment out or remove all the following code:

I'm not able to currently test this, but looks like this should work.  could you report back here to verify?  Thanks.

Sometimes it may make sense to provide a direct link to a category, topic or non zendesk page.  Anything that is not a helper type link that Zendesk provides.   In this example we'll include a simple html link in the header, but this can apply to other areas of he site as well.  Don't worry!  Even you know zero code this is super easy!

 Here is the standard theme header with a few links.  Let's add another one called "Other Category" which will link us to a specific category:

You'll need to get into your theme and edit it.  

 Next click on header.ebs as this is the file we need to edit:

In here you'll add a simple html link into the existing code as follows:

Of course, make sure to change it to your actual company name and you'll need the html link to your category or section.  You can do that by right clicking on your existing link and copy the URL.  Or put in any URL for the link you want.

So now, this is what it will look like with a link in the header to your category: Simple! 

If you want the link to open in another tab simply add the target="_blank" attribute:

 https://yourcompanyname.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/360000014392-Other  target="_blank'>OtherCategory

Here are some additional resources for getting started on editing your theme:

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/216367358-Help-Center-templating-cookbook-Guide-Professional-

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203664326-Customizing-your-Help-Center-theme-Guide-Professional-

https://developer.zendesk.com/apps/docs/help-center-templates/introduction

+1 for me too. like others mentioned here we are putting documentation online.  If they follow it, they should get content update notification. 

+1.  desktop notification was almost the first question from my users. 

Wanted to note I just wrote up a installation and usage tip for the above mentioned Visual Studio marketplace integration as the instructions are not complete and there is a bug:  https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115010577488-Tips-for-installing-and-using-the-Microsoft-VSTS-app-for-Zendesk

Hey Cameron.  To me it looks like you can't do this. The only permission restriction seems to be by group, unless someone else can see another way? I checked on my system and that's the only option. 

The work around of course would be to do what you're already doing and have the trigger move it to that specific group based on tags and location, so in affect it will work once you have the roles enabled.

Would be nice to make it more like a trigger and allow granular permissions. Might want to open ticket with Zendesk and see if they know.  If they come back with not currently possible, let's add it to the Product Feedback thread and see if we can get it up-voted.  My suspicion would be they want to keep the ZD model of triggers to groups though. 

Yep.  upgrading to Enterpise will get you role capability. I believe that it's only avail on Enterprise level.