This Early Access Program includes a set of enhancements to child ticket side conversations. This batch of changes is intended to offer more control over child ticket workflows.
Parent ticket requester
Agents can copy a parent ticket's requester to a child ticket along with other ticket fields.
Side conversation access
Agents can interact with child ticket side conversations the same way they can interact with any other channel - if they can access the parent ticket, they can respond to the side conversation regardless of the child ticket's group or visibility settings.
An agent's reply to a side conversation appears on the child ticket's conversation log with an indication that it came from a side conversation.
Child ticket settings
New child ticket settings are now available in the side conversations page in Admin Center. When child tickets are enabled, these settings allow admins to customize certain aspects of child ticket workflows.
Comment types & private notes
Historically, child tickets have been public tickets. This new setting allows two new behaviors:
- Internal where the child ticket is started as an internal ticket. All side conversation messages are published as private notes regardless of ticket privacy
- Match ticket status where the child ticket is started as an internal ticket. All side conversation messages are published as private notes until the ticket status is changed to public. From that point forward, all new side conversation messages become public comments.
There's an additional setting to include private notes in your side conversation threads.
Status updates
A side conversation's status is now automatically updated when its child ticket is solved or re-opened. This can be toggled off in the settings.
Using triggers on child ticket status updates
When the "Status updates" setting is on, a side conversation will be set to closed when its child ticket is resolved. This can be used to trigger a change on the parent ticket such as an email notification or a status update without requiring action on the side conversation.
Ticket Fields
Determine which fields are available for agents to include in child tickets as well as turn fields on or off by default.
Always including a ticket field
We can always include a ticket field with the following setting configuration:
- "Include by default" is set to true
- "Show selector" is set to false
In this case the field will show in the list of fields to be copied to the child ticket, though its selector will not be visible. The field will always be copied to new child tickets.
Yes, it is plausible to assume we at Zendesk are continuously working on enhancements to improve the functionality and user experience of our products, including the ability to copy over data from custom fields into child tickets. The ability to transfer information seamlessly between parent and child tickets is a common request from users, as it can significantly streamline workflows and improve data consistency.
If this feature is part of an upcoming enhancement or Early Access Program (EAP), it would be aimed at providing users with more flexibility and efficiency in managing their tickets. We appreciate your feedback and interest in this capability, as it helps us prioritize features that meet our users' needs.