How to allow email target responses to thread into existing ticket
Hello fellow Zendesk users!
Out of the box, Zendesk Support will allow agents to forward ticket information to an external source using email targets. Natively, when the external source replies to the email sent from this target, the response will generate a new ticket in Support. In some cases this native functionality can make it difficult to track ticket information between multiple tickets - which can negatively impact the customer experience.
Below I will walk everyone through the appropriate steps for threading the target’s response into the existing Support ticket.
Create Email Target
Navigate to Admin>Settings > Extensions > Targets > Add Target > Email Target.
Enter the following information:
- Title (Name of the target you wish to create)
- Email Address (destination you’d like to forward ticket response to)
- Subject (The subject of your email you’d like to send followed by [{{ticket.encoded_id}}] . Be sure to include brackets on both sides of placeholder.)
Select Create Target and click Submit.
Screenshot of a sample target below:
Create Trigger
Navigate to Admin > Business Rules > Triggers > Add trigger
Enter the following information:
Meets all of the following conditions:
- Ticket > is > Updated
- Comment > is > Public
- Tags > contains at least one of the following > notify_email_target
Actions:
- Notify target > (Title of your target)
- Message: {{ticket.latest_comment_formatted}}
Select Create
Screenshot of a sample trigger below:
Note: Conditions may vary depending on your ticketing workflow.
Based on the conditions configured above, you will need to update your ticket with a public comment and add the notify_email_target tag.
Once the ticket has been updated, the agent can confirm the target has been notified by viewing the events of the ticket.
The recipient will receive an email notification including the ticket encoded ID in the subject of the email.
Finally, the target recipient can reply back to the email which will thread to the existing ticket in Support.
Note: Because the external user replying to the target notification is not CC'd to the ticket, their response would be added as an Internal Note. For the response to be public you would need to CC the target recipient.
That’s it! Now that target responses are threaded, agents can efficiently and effectively work through the ticket without the hassle of tracking down the necessary information through multiple requests.
If you have any questions regarding the above steps, feel free to comment below :)
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Hi Brett,
Thanks for sharing this but I'm confused with this process. I may be wrong or miss something but why not CC'ing contact directly to do the same thing when the response needs to be public?
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Hey Thomas,
CC'ing is certainly an option but going through the forum I've seen cases where agents prefer not to CC the external user to the ticket but instead forward the email to the target. At least with the above, they could forward the update to the external user and they can reply back with an internal note.
Let me know if you have additional questions for me!
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Got it Brett, thanks for the clarification!
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Happy to help Thomas :)
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Hi Brett,
I was able to set this up and got the response from an external email (target) go to the internal note.
On the Assignee side of things, I created a trigger to notify the assignee that an internal note was added in the ticket. Upon receiving that email notification, I (as the Assignee) responded, the external email got my response but in Zendesk, it went to the Public Reply. Is there a way to keep the Assignee's response in Internal Note?
Thanks,
Albert
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Hi Brett,
Just following up if you had a chance to review my question/business case?
Thaks,
Albert
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Hi Albert,
Is the agent replying back via email? If so, you can use the Mail API to reply back as an internal note. You'll just use the # note call at the beginning of the email.
Hope this helps!
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Awesome info Brett!
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Hi I set up an email target,
but when the external users reply the email, it doesn't add an internal note to the original ticket, but create a new ticket. why?
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Hey Janet,
Can you confirm you've set up the appropriate target and triggers so the response is added to the already existing ticket? If so, can you provide a screenshot of the target and trigger you've set up so I can take a look?
Thanks in advance!
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This is very interesting. Any idea how I can CC the external target automatically upon ticket creation? We want the reply from this specific target to always be public directly without agent touch.
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Hello @...,
I did a little digging, and this user-submitted tip should breakdown how to CC the external target automatically upon ticket creation.
Auto CC user(s) on Condition (Ticket Create)
Best regards. -
This article is the closest solution I've seen in lieu of native forwarding so thanks!
Here is my issue. Much of our forwarding would need to provide the external email target contextual information in addition to the formatted comments. This contextual information shouldn't be visible to the original requester.
Rudimentary example:
Hey third party, please review the comments below and send me an estimate. This is for account 123.Is there a way we can include additional comments (again not public to requester) to the email target?
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Hey Elisha,
AFAIK there wouldn't be a way to accomplish this outside of using the API.
If they were agents on the account they could use the mail API to make sure that their comment is sent as an internal note, but these would need to be sent in a separate email.
Otherwise you may want to look into the side conversations feature which would allow you to have separate conversations within a single ticket directly from the agent interface.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
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Hey @...,
Is it mandatory to add the [{{ticket.encoded_id}}] at the end of the subject? Or is it possible to place it at the beginning of the subject? Any possibility to have it in the mail body instead?
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Hey Alexandre,
In my testing previously I couldn't get this to work when including the encoded ID in the email body.
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Hey Brett,
I would like to be able to have a conversation with the e-mail target (vendor) without letting the ticket requester (customer) knowing it. If the agent needs to sent the target a response to their mail it would require to create a new public comment with the result of the requester (customer) getting the response like a ticket update.
Is it in anyway possible to edit the trigger so that the e-mail target only recieves when the agent uses internal comment? I have tried this but when I change conditon to Comment -> Is -> Private/present the email target (vendor) only recieve the original public post.
I know that I am trying to make a workaround a Professional plan and Side Conversation app.
Thank you, mate! :)
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Hey Casper,
I'm afraid agents would only be able to see these internal comments on a ticket. If you're trying to notify an end-user using a target then the expectation is that they would only receive the public comments on a ticket. I can't think of any sort of work around to this outside of using the Side Conversations functionality.
Let me know if you have any other questions for me!
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