Link 2 tickets more easily

Hi Chao, can you tell us a little more about what you're looking for? For example, are there specific types of relationships between tickets that you'd like to express? Or are you looking for just a generic "link" between tickets? And how would you like to use these links? In our native reporting? Some external analysis tool? In Zendesk search?

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi Joe,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Yes, I am looking for a generic "link" between tickets. The reasons are:

We don't want just to improve product bugs, we also want to make our product as simple as possible to clients, so that it saves our resource on investigating client's case repeatedly. For example, linking tickets with types of "Questions" can help us provide the data of what kind of questions clients are asking and who are asking them in a timeline way because our product is very complicated as most of the data are dynamic and some clients are keep asking questions about how to use them or understand those features from time to time. Without linking them together, it is hard for us to get the data to see and make improvements on these issues. Sometimes we also want to unify our communication and solution to different clients when a feature is very complicated or confusing. So, linking them together will allow us to see how many similar issues has happened and when they happened, which gives us a timeline and data to see if an issue happens to a client during a certain phase.

The native reporting doesn't support to do analysis like this as quite often, these tickets cannot be categorized in advance. Not until clients are asking them, we won't know if they are the same/similar questions. External analysis tools and native reporting both require huge amount manual work to filter the data and almost impossible for us to do it. 

Zendesk search is not a really good experience as different agents may use different words to explain the same issue based on client's business and background. But linking them together can let us to analyze them as a whole so that we don't miss any data.

Please let me know if this is enough for you to evaluate this idea or if there are any questions. 

Thanks!

Another option may be to look at the Knowledge Capture app that is in Early Access.  Instead of linking tickets, you link knowledge articles to the tickets and you can review reports that show you which articles are most commonly linked in solving tickets.  This might get you close to the same goal to find common problems and resolve them.  The app will also let you quickly add new knowledge and flag things that are wrong with an article easily. 

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, we are not just looking for the feature to capture the knowledge. It will be part of our purpose, but we will also need a feature like this to unify our communication and collect data as a feedback to our product. I don't see how this app can help us capture the data like how many clients have asked similar questions and who are asking them. 

Thanks!

Hey Chao and others - 

I've written a Zendesk app (Linkets) specifically for this purpose, namely linking tickets with a specific relationship (blocks/blocked by, parent/child, relates to). It isn't published on the Zendesk App Marketplace yet, but you can install it as a "private app" if you want to try it out. 

Here's the GitHub repo, including the ZIP file you can install as a private app - https://github.com/alexdglover/linkets

And here's a quick write-up explaining how it works - http://www.alexdglover.com/linkets/

Let me know if you have any feedback on the app!

Thanks,
Alex

Thank you, Alex! I will try it out and let you know our feedback.

Thanks!

Hi Alex,

When i try to install the app, I get an error. Please see the screenshot attached. Would you please let me know how I can fix it?

Thank you!

Hey Chao -

Sorry it's not working for you. How did you download the zip file from that repo? If you just right click and choose Save As, you'll actually be saving the GitHub web page instead of the zip file itself. You can confirm this by trying to open the file you downloaded (linkets-master.zip) with a text editor.

If you clone the repo, then grab the ZIP file from there, it should work (just tested again to verify). I'll copy the ZIP file somewhere other than GitHub later today to make it more accessible. Let me know if you get it working!

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex, 

Please see the screenshot attached. I believe I downloaded the right file.

Please let me know if that's not the case.

Thanks for your help!

Hey Chao, that looks correct. Apologies, not sure why the installation is giving you issues. I had another user report a different issue, and unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce either of your issues in my Zendesk account. That's the bad news - the good news is that I have officially submitted the app to the App Marketplace, so barring any unforeseen issues it should be available soon! I'll post back here if/when it's available.

Thanks for your patience!

Thank you, Alex! 

Looking forward to it!

Hey Chao (and other interested parties) - Linkets is now officially published on the app marketplace! This should save you from any installation headaches, and also sets you up to get the latest features and fixes. Let me know what you think!

Regards,
Alex

@Alex, a coworker of mine just found your app and we installed it immediately—I think it'll be a great app for us. We needed a solution to relate one ticket to many (something the Project app we're currently using doesn't do) and we're so excited to use it! 🌮

Fantastic, glad it fits your use case! I saw the GitHub issue you opened as well (fixed now), please let me know if you think of anything else!