Deactivate field values instead of deleting them

This is a pain. As OP states, removing fields will destroy your Explore reports, and looking at old tickets, will give a bad UX. 

We use a custom private app to hide some fields in Zendesk Support as a workaround. Not great to maintain, and really should be built into the product. Our workaround only works because we don't use guide or built in web widget, the workaround would become very complicated if use those. 

Zendesk, this is a hard problem for you customers to work around.

Would love for this to be prioritized. 

Part of Zendesk's USP is building powerful solution using custom fields, yet we lack this basic support for maintaining the lifecycle of our custom fields. 

I have no idea why this is not yet in the product. Is the request not "sexy" enough? AI is cool, but I also want Zendesk to nail the basics. 

Hey everyone! My team has a custom solution to this problem. We have custom fields in our ticket submission form, and we also have some values that we don't want to display to our users.

In the following code block the value in pointer1=$('.request_custom_fields_+field_id) is the class assigned to the dropdown div. Replace "field_id" with the id of the dropdown you wish to hide values in. 

Replace the the "tag" values in the private_options array, for the values that you wish to hide in the dropdown, you can find these by going to the field in Zendesk Admin page. (It must be the tags and not labels).

It's not a beautiful solution, but I hope it helps someone out there!

/*---------------------Function to restrict contact reason fields------------------------------*/

var pointer1=$('.request_custom_fields_'+field_id).children('a').attr('aria-controls');

var skip1='#'+pointer1

$(skip1).on('DOMNodeInserted', function(e){

var nesty=$(this);

//get all cr values

var raw_cr_options=nesty.children('ul').children();

var all_cr_options=raw_cr_options.map(function(cr){

var li=raw_cr_options[cr];

var id=li.getAttribute('id');

return id;

});

var private_options= ['outage_notification', 'infrastructure_notification']

//filter for only the desired values

var remove_cr=all_cr_options.filter(function(cr){

var li=all_cr_options[cr];

return (private_options.includes(li));

});

remove_cr=remove_cr.map(function(cr){

var li=remove_cr[cr];

return ('#'+li);

});

remove_cr=Array.from(remove_cr);

try {

var i;

for (i=0; i<remove_cr.length; i++) {

raw_cr_options.remove(remove_cr[i]);

}

} catch (error) {

console.log (i);

console.log('ERROR!', error);

}

});

The issue continues to grow for our team. We cycle through products often. 

1263169420950  Sorry to hear this doesn't solve your problem... Not sure why ZD hasn't prioritized a solution for this...

1263082116169 Will you get this information added to a HC article?  Seems like a BIG gap in knowledge sharing with your customers. 

cc:  1266008449550

1263213804249 - We do use this app. But it's only helpful for hiding field values from agents. It doesn't hide field values from customers on the ticket submission form. This is why I have two product fields. One product field for the ticket submission form that only contains the current values. The second product field thats visible to the agent and contains all current and historic values. The ticket field manager app is configured to hide values on the second field that would otherwise be deactivated. 

For each of the field values on the first field, I have a trigger that sets the corresponding value on the second field.

Not sure why none of the moderators recommended this app or why none of the HC content writers or managers have included instructions on how to use this app, which was built by ZD?  

We use this app https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/223753/ticket-field-manager/ to hide picklist values we no longer want agents to use.  Works well.. 

I too would like the ability to deactivate values in custom fields instead of deleting them. A team member recently updated a field value. I'm guessing that means I cannot get data associated with the old field value. I have a workaround of placing an X or OLD before the "archived" field value but as previously mentioned this will get cumbersome. It's disappointing to hear that Zendesk has no plans to fix this.

1265060203909 - I use the "Ticket is created" condition. You would only want to use "Ticket is updated" as a condition if you want the trigger to fire for updates that occur after ticket creation.

Meet ALL of the following conditions
Ticket is created
Webform product field is Product A

Action
Internal facing product field = Product A