Feature Request - Ability to edit closed tickets

Our ZD instant is the system of record within our organization. As our business updates and we make changes to categorization, we need to be able to update tickets for historical reporting and support of our business. Also, many of our cases will take over 28 days to resolve and up to months. I really don't want to keep everything in some type of pending status as it will slow down the system but we need a way to edit old cases to re-code based on business changes. This is a critical feature.

Any update on this feature? This is almost necessary due to human error etc.

Our concern is when human error are done and can not be undone, it creates faulty information when creating reports in Explore.

As everyone working in Support knows, there's always a need for cleaning up things like categorization etc, for analysis purposes. The fact that we cannot edit (I don't need a re-open) closed tickets has a critical impact on the usability and our ability to get to actionable insights and monitor progress. 

This should be fixed asap!

The lack of ability to do this makes Explore reporting significantly less useful to our organization. Please stress the importance of this feature to the team.

+1 
Same needs : 
 there's always a need for cleaning up things like categorization etc, for analysis purposes. The fact that we cannot edit (I don't need a re-open) closed tickets has a critical impact on the usability and our ability to get to actionable insights and monitor progress. 

This feature is really needed to make Explore work and be more useful! 

Found this thread after being asked if it was possible to update historical data. I thought it might be with the API, but I'll echo what others say above that it's pretty shocking this has not been added yet.

Unreliable data causes process interruption and poor data hygiene. 

Our use case in case devs are reading this:

Name of a field has changed. If we rename the field and associated tag, then to look at the full picture, two data points will have to be reviewed. If someone running a report does not know this, then they are not getting a complete picture of the data. 

I'll check in with my rep, but will put in here for others, in hopes Zendesk Support follows up.

Question for Zendesk:

Is updating historical data possible with a data service?

After further discussion yesterday, it was shared that, for compliance reasons, we should not be manipulating old data in any case, even if it were possible.

Thank you, @dave12 for the response. Appreciated.

Here are just a few use cases and parameters around the desired ability to edit closed tickets hang on for us.

1) The default group when you add someone in as an Agent is (as they have to be a member of a group) is "Support".  Of course, you can change this group, but the situation is the same whether or not you use "Support".  If you don't keep things clean and you have a dozen or more people who are members of their 'real' groups, and still members of this default "Support" group, you can have the situation where tickets are being assigned or closed in the wrong group, a group which is not monitored or reported on because nothing is expected from it, and reporting will be wrong.  Correcting an assignment group, especially in the case where the set default group is "Support" and it needs to be fixed should be OK to do where you aren't changing the assignee, just the group.

2) Missing tags.  As acting change manager I realized too recently that a macro I'd created to add tags to our Informational changes to show that they are pre-approved failed to include an important tag... a really obvious tag... one that shows that it's an informational change!  I only discovered it when I decided to report on the presence of the tag and barely found any tickets that matched.  I've since corrected the macro, but would love to go to all the closed changes for which I can validate (and it's easy to do) that they were informational changes and add that tag in so I can accurately provide people with reports on which tags went through CAB and which were informational.

3) We have a number of instances where certain 'meta data' type custom fields (such as "contact type" that shows whether a ticket was the result of a call, an email, a web page, etc.) are empty and again interfere with accurate reporting.  We can correct some of these going forward with adding the required field parameter to them, but it isn't possible for all cases.  I'd like to be able to correct this data.

4) Constraint ideas: 

a. Perhaps things like "Description" and the ticket's comments should never be alterable.  I could live with that.  However, a subject should be editable.  We have macro templates people use to create tickets and sometimes I see things like "....(Place Description Here)" as the subject which shows me someone didn't edit that ticket template before saving it.  I'd love to fix these to be more useful in viewing historical tickets.

b. Ticket Notifications:   Ticket notifications should not go out when a ticket is corrected on the back end due to a custom field.  The last thing I'd want is to fix a ticket from a year ago and notifications start going out to people as that would cause a bunch of confusion, so any historical ticketing option would need notification suppression.

c. Key date fields:  I could understand the possibility of needing the ticket's "Updated" record changing to show that there was a modification to the ticket after the fact, but the "Closed" date should not be altered.  That should remain a "historical fact" that can't be changed.  In fact, there should be a way to correct the ticket without it being technically "reopened" to do so, just fixing some field data. 

Just some thoughts to further fuel this discussion.

Ben

Thank you for this @ben15. Your comments describe our pain-points exactly!

Well, i must jump in here! we are currently updating our process and we would like to tag side conversation tickets. We think is an important feature (perhaps for admins) for data analysis and improve visualization in Explore.

Only 2 reponses out of 39 from Zendesk - one said it was on the roadmap for 2022 and the other said it isn't possible.   It would be nice to keep data clean between closed and open tickets but I guess this isn't possible

This has been a product defect in Zendesk for 13 years now:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203421476--Closed-for-comments-Add-or-Edit-Tags-on-Closed-tickets

... with hundreds of responses on multiple threads noting how important it is to be able to edit archived tickets. I somehow doubt their competitors (at ServiceNow, Oracle, or SalesForce) have this problem.

Administrators should be able to edit closed tickets, this is NOT an optional feature for an enterprise company. This product gap makes a mess of our support ticket data and, given their unwillingness to address it, any enterprise company considering Zendesk support should probably explore other options.

@billie11 I have used SalesForce, ServiceNow and countless other systems that allow this abililty.   I am migrating two brands and it looks like one of the brands closed tickets won't get updated

I have to agree with Billie.  I'm a big promoter of Zendesk but this problem looks like it's going drive me to another product.

We need this. In Salesforce, for reporting, there are fields that can be configured to be editable after closing. 

Do we have any guidance on when this will be possible? I am new to ZD coming from a company that was using SFDC, and this limitation really surprised me.  In support, case housekeeping is usually a post-case resolution effort, as the focus of the support engineer is to fix the issue, and later update the case.  Is there any technical justification/reason for not having this?

Thanks 

It would be very helpful if we were at the very least able to retrospectively edit tags for data and reporting.

Gaurav Parbat please provide a status update for this feature request.

Hi
This feature is really needed! We have some customers that organically changed (business reasons) and we need the ability to edit their past closed tickets for better track and understanding.
Unfortunately, now their organizational changes can affect our services as well.

would be nice to have this, for example to change tags to improve statistics, if for example a tag has been updated

Agree with all the above!! As relatively new ZD users sometimes our unfamiliarity with the system caused early mistakes that are now skewing our reports. This NEEDS to be an option!

"We have taken this feature request into consideration for our 2022 plan."

THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Run it up the chain of command and commit to it. We're pissed if you couldn't tell.