Draft mode in composer - We want your feedback :)

I just turned on Agent Workspaces today, and came here to report a bug thinking that this obviously must not be intended behavior. Sadly found this thread and am surprised to see a 'Draft mode' be created rather than the must easier and more intuitive 'old way' that used to allow agents to toggle back and forth.

Yellow background is 'safe', white is 'not safe' when it comes to drafting replies and things of that nature. Draft mode is not a solution that we will use.

I am sure my team will continue to have to copy-paste our messages from internal notes to public replies, adding an extra step is what used to be a simple and fluid workflow.

I've just switched over to the Agent Workspace and, like many others before me, have been adapting to the new composer paradigm.

One specific pain point regarding Draft Mode is that, as far as I can tell, making use of the "persistent Draft Mode" feature requires a mouse click. This is an unwanted and inefficient imposition on efficient, consistent, and predictable workflow.

It seems like I can either:

1. Manually re-enable Draft Mode at the start of working on every ticket, and then manually disable it before submitting the ticket—all three possible via keyboard shortcut; or
2. Manually enable Draft Mode once, save/submit the ticket—both via keyboard shortcut—and then confirm the send through Draft Mode—and be forced to move to the mouse to click the "Save" button

In the old workspace, my ticket workflow was this:

1. Load into a ticket, defaulted to Internal Note mode
2. Compose response
3. When ready to submit, use ctrl+alt+C to switch to Public Reply mode, then use ctrl+alt+S to submit and solve the ticket (or the shortcut for a different status)

The basic shape of this efficient and predictable process flow is broken by the design of the new Workspace. Not only am I forced to switch to Public Reply mode immediately—adding another step to be memorized for the process—but if I want to make use of Draft Mode to replace the Internal Note mode's previous "drafting/safety" function, then I'm forced to swap interaction modality from keyboard to mouse and aim for a small button target to submit every ticket.

I'm confused as to why the "This message is in Draft Mode, do you want to send it publicly?" modal does not either:

1. By default place focus on the "Send" button; and/or
2. Accept a simple keystroke to activate the "Send button"

In fact, based on extremely standard UI design principles, I would already expect 'enter/return' to activate the "Send" button, because it is clearly colored as the default UI element. However, regardless of whether I trigger the "Are you sure?" modal by clicking the "Submit" button in the Ticket UI or by using one of the keyboard shortcuts that submit a ticket, focus does not appear to land on the "Save" button—neither the 'enter/return' nor the 'space' keys trigger that button.

The button can be navigated to by pressing 'tab' twice and then 'space' to activate the button, but not only does this force the agent to take even more actions, it is easy to over- or under-shoot the number of inputs necessary, especially when an agent's time is spent handling dozens of tickets or more every day.

Either there should be an ability to default to Draft Mode when loading the Public Reply composer for a ticket—regardless of whether Draft Mode was manually turned off in the previous ticket—or if you're dead-set on forcing a modal dialog to confirm sending through Draft Mode, it needs to be navigable by simple keyboard interaction.

If you can get to the "Are you sure?" modal via keyboard shortcuts, you need to be able to also get through the modal with keyboard shortcuts.

Hey ZD Team,

I would like the ability to enable draft mode using a macro.

I have macros that add public comments to tickets with placeholders that the agent has to edit. The old workaround was to make the comment internal, and then the agent could make it a public comment when they have replaced the placeholders; now, this is unavailable as a workaround (unless they cut & paste). so I would like to have the option to run the macro but add the comment as a draft public comment. Then, the agent could turn the draft off once they have populated all the placeholders.

Thanks

I haven't noticed Draft Mode being made available to us.


Amisha Sharma Based on the conversations here, would it be exceptionally challenging on a UI-level to retain text when transitioning between an internal note and a public reply within the new agent workspace?

It worked well the way it was. I echo the comment made by DL above. 

Now it requires a workaround of copy/pasting when you decide to switch form public to private or vice versa. By the time you realize you want to switch, it's too late to turn on draft mode. And draft mode creates extra steps when you try to save... 

Agree that drafts being visible to all agents would be helpful across tickets.

Is there a way to toggle draft mode in composer within the mobile app, or is there a timeline in which this feature may be rolled out?

Hi Zendesk Team!

It would be really nice to have an ability to switch on/off draft mode as enabled by default for all agents in our Zendesk instance.  

Too bad you guys broke markdown... the new internal note editor is horrible. We use complex macros to auto-populate internal notes with tons of markdown and now all that is broken. Jira does this too and they suck at it. One rule of thumb over all my years of using markdown, DO NOT RENDER IT ON THE FLY. It makes it extremely buggy and hard to edit while working on crafting a message. Bring back the preview function, PLEASE!!!

I have to agree with the previous posts, that a real draft function where working together on replies would be very helpful. 

Adam Glover mentioned the Cancel Ticket Submit app and I believe that that functionality combined with the possibility to collaborate on a response would be ideal. What is also missing in the app (and the draft function) from our point of view is the possibility to have a glance at how the ticket will look like for the customer that receives it. 

Either integrated in this function or seperately from it, I think this could improve the feeling of security especially for agents that are new to Zendesk and new to the concept of sending a response without seeing all elements of it (such as which previous messages are being sent with it, as it would be with a classic mail response). 

While I like the concept of draft mode, it does not work as we were hoping. 

Current behavior:

• You select draft mode
• You type your response
• You hit submit
• It prompts you with a big screen that greys out what you typed "are you sure you want to send"

Desired behavior:

• When you are using draft mode and hit submit, it posts an internal note that is viewable for other members and can still be edited and then submitted when approved
• It would be an added bonus if other folks could edit it too (if their role permitted - like a manager) and they can approve what is to be sent

The desired functionality for draft mode is to have it proofread by team members