Zammad Agent Documentation¶
Zammad Glossary¶
Ever wondered what we mean by a specific term? We’ve been collecting the most relevant terms below for your insight.
Note
Due to translation alphabetical sorting may be off in non english versions of this page.
A¶
- Admin
An admin(istrator) is a user in Zammad who has special rights. Admins can configure user accesses, time recording settings, templates, and text modules and, on a higher level, integrations, reporting, etc. So if you’re looking to make a change within your Zammad and you find that it doesn’t work, find an admin in your organization and ask them – chances are, they can help.
- Agent
An agent is what we call a user in Zammad who processes tickets/inquiries. There are usually several or many agents who use Zammad regularly and sometimes even consider it their main tool. Some of them are admins, meaning that they can change settings, user rights, and so on (see above).
- API
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a connection that allows you to create or modify business objects. Zammad has a REST (Representational State Transfer) API that allows our users, among other things, to connect third-party systems to their instance (such as social media or messengers).
You can learn more on our API landing page.
- Automation
There are many processes that can be automated with Zammad. This means that certain steps or actions take place automatically, hence no further action is required from the agents. One example would be the weekly deletion of tickets at a pre-defined time.
- Article
Each correspondence within a ticket is called an article. Ticket articles can be internal (so only agents can see them) or public (e.g. emails to your customers, which they receive, too).
- Autosave
Autosave might be one of the coolest traits of Zammad: It saves all your work as you go along, so if you ever log out unexpectedly or your browser crashes (we’ve all been there…) none of your work gets lost!
You can learn more on our Autosave landing page.
B¶
- Branding
Every company has a different identity, and Zammad accommodates this in various ways, e.g. by letting you design your signatures freely and add your company logo to the platform.
Learn more about branding options in the admin documentation.
C¶
- Custom Development (CD)
We are constantly working on improving Zammad, and we keep adding new features with every single release. However, sometimes our customers might require a very specific new feature, addition, or adjustment that is either very urgent or very particular to their individual use case. This is when a custom development can take place: We offer the customer to develop the desired feature at a price that we agree upon previously (which is based on the expected hours needed for completion).
- Changelog
With every new release comes a new changelog. It is basically a list of all the things that have changed, from new enhancements to bug fixes.
- Customer
A customer is a person that you communicate with from within Zammad. Every customer receives a profile page, which we call the Customer Information Page, and it shows all the tickets of this particular customer. Various customers can be assigned to the same organization. Each customer can access their individual Customer Interface, where they see all their tickets with the current status and live updates.
- Core Workflows
This feature allows every organization to configure their individual dynamic fields and ticket masks based on their specific workflows. This way, certain Groups will only (or always) see certain fields. You can even set up dependencies, as in, if one field is filled in, another one opens up or becomes mandatory.
- CTI
CTI stands for Computer Telephony Integration and allows you to collect detailed information on all your incoming and outgoing calls. This includes, for example, a call log, an overview of which agent is currently on a call, a caller ID search, and even a Do-Not-Disturb-Mode.
Learn more on our CTI landing page.
Here’s the fitting documentation pages:
- Checkmk
Checkmk is a powerful IT monitoring tool that can send real-time status alerts to Zammad via email or REST API. Set these alerts up in Checkmk, and Zammad will automatically create, update, and close tickets based on the health of your system.
Learn more about checkmk integration in the admin documentation.
- Clearbit
Clearbit is a marketing data engine designed to collect information on your contacts. Thus, new queries from unknown users in Zammad can be automatically enriched with information such as company, number of employees, annual turnover, industry, and much more.
Learn more about clearbit integration in the admin documentation.
- Conflict Warning
When two agents edit the same ticket at the same time, a lot can go wrong - from duplicate replies to overwritten messages. Zammad helps you to avoid this with its integrated conflict warning. So if you see another agents avatar and a little pen at the bottom of your ticket, it means they are currently editing it.
D¶
- Dashboard
The dashboard is every agent’s individual Welcome Page in Zammad and gives you feedback on your situation by collecting information and statistics about your work. Here you can find all sorts of overviews, such as the open tickets, the average waiting time, or the reopening rate. You can also see what your colleagues are doing by checking the Activity Stream.
Learn more on Checking Your Stats.
- Documentation
If this Glossary isn’t enough already (just kidding, it won’t be), our Documentation is the place to head to for all information on Zammad, especially when it comes to the more technical aspects, such as settings or installations.
We have three different ones: Zammad for Agents, Zammad for Admins, and the general Zammad Documentation (System Administrators, API).
E¶
- Escalation
An escalation is what happens after the deadline for a ticket has passed and, for example, no update to the customer has been created. The ticket is marked in red in your taskbar and the overviews and everyone else who is involved in its process gets very sad. So don’t let tickets escalate! Also, in order to prevent escalations, you can use our SLAs (see SLAs).
- External Authentication
External authentication is an easy, one-click option for your users to log into Zammad. It has various benefits: not only is it faster but it also means that your users will have to remember fewer passwords. Zammad currently supports more than ten login providers, such as Facebook, GitHub, GitLab, Google, or Microsoft / Office365.
See our admin documentation for all third party authenticators.
- Exchange Integration
The Exchange integration allows users to sync their contacts from their Exchange address book with Zammad. This way, every time a contact is updated in Exchange, the iteration will be reflected in Zammad, giving you direct access to all your Exchange contacts from within your helpdesk.
Learn more about the exchange integration in our admin documentation.
- Elasticsearch
Zammad offers an Elasticsearch integration (a free and open search engine) that makes the search process within Zammad super fast (even for data sets of several terra bytes!).
Spoiler: Zammad is currently the only helpdesk system with a search function that combs attachments, too!
Note
🤓 This affects hosted environments only!
Via a read-only user in Elasticsearch, you can also integrate your favorite reporting tool (e.g. like Grafana).
F¶
- Feature
A feature is what we call the different functionalities of Zammad, such as our integrations, productivity tools, or time-saving aspects. We keep adding new features with every release.
- Feature request
Users can let us know if they are missing a particular feature in Zammad. We collect all of their wishes in our Community in the Feature Request category. If a request comes in regularly and we feel that it would be a great addition, we’ll put it on our roadmap and start working on it.
- Feature sponsoring
If an organization urgently requires one of the features on the list, they can fast-forward the development and put it on top of the list by sponsoring it, which means that they cover the costs for the development.
G¶
- Groups
Groups are a synonym for departments or processing groups. The incoming tickets are assigned to them. The corresponding group is responsible for the processing. Within the group, an owner can be defined, who is then responsible for this ticket. Access rights to tickets are also controlled via the groups. The possible permissions are “full access”, “read-only” and “no access”.
If you have worked with the OTRS system in the past, you might remember the principle of “queues”. The groups in Zammad are the same as the queues in OTRS.
- Grafana
Grafana is an open-source reporting tool. Zammad users on the Plus plan can integrate it into their instance and receive detailed analytics on their performance.
Hint
🤓 Self Hosted users
Hooking up Grafana to Elasticsearch is an possibility you can do on your own as well.
Learn more on how to add Grafana dashboards for Zammad on our documentation.
- GitHub
GitHub is a service for the version management of software development projects. It uses Git, a software that tracks changes in file sets. Here at Zammad, we use it to maintain our repository.
As Zammad in an open-source project, many developers and tech-lovers from all over the world contribute to it. GitHub is where we coordinate all of this.
You can find the repository here.
Besides our own repo, Zammad also has an integration for GitHub. It creates a data exchange that shows you all relevant information about your issues directly in the helpdesk, such as status or assignees.
Administrators can learn more about GitHub in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: GitHub / GitLab Integration.
- GitLab
GitLab is similar to GitHub. Here at Zammad, we use it for our internal development.
There is also an integration that allows users to connect GitLab to Zammad so that all their issues and their corresponding changes are reflected in both systems.
Administrators can learn more about GitLab in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: GitHub / GitLab Integration.
H¶
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I¶
- i-doit
i-doit is a CMDB (Configuration Management Data Base). It helps you to keep an eye on every piece of the physical and digital infrastructure. A corresponding integration makes it possible to connect it to Zammad, where it adds a new tab to Zammad’s ticket sidebar so you can link to existing i-doit objects for easy reference. It also allows you to create Zammad tickets in i-doit.
Administrators can learn more about i-doit in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: i-doit: Use Tickets to Track Company Property.
- Icinga
Icinga is a monitoring system that supervises the availability of an organization’s entire system infrastructure. It can be integrated into Zammad so that it triggers a ticket in case of a warning situation.
- Issue-tracking system
Issue trackers are usually systems that track processes on a technical level. Two of the best-known examples are GitHub and GitLab.
Zammad is also often referred to as an issue-tracking system. However, as a helpdesk, it focuses on communication at the customer level rather than the technical level.
J¶
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K¶
- Knowledge Base
Think of a very extensive set of FAQs – that’s exactly what the Zammad knowledge base is. It collects all important information: definitions, processes, how-to’s, organigrams, etc.
Knowledge base articles can be either internal or external, so you can either show them to the world (good for information on your product or service, for example) or keep them for your team (e.g. for internal processes or team info).
Administrators can learn more about the Knowledge Base in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: Knowledge Base.
- Kibana
Kibana is a browser-based, open-source reporting tool that focuses on data evaluation. It was developed by Elastic, which is why it is not a surprise that it uses data from Elasticsearch for its analytics.
Kibana can be integrated with Zammad, allowing for helpdesk data to be mapped in the reporting tool.
Hint
🤓 This does not apply to SaaS Zammad instances.
L¶
- LDAP
A Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) helps provide information about your users within Zammad. Authentication of users against the LDAP and LDAP role mapping to Zammad roles are also possible.
Learn more about LDAP integration in the admin documentation.
M¶
- Macro
A macro is a series of actions. By starting the macro, the actions are also triggered (like a domino effect), so users don’t have to work through each individual step separately. It saves an enormous amount of time and ensures that no step is forgotten.
An example of this is declaring a ticket as “spam”. The manual way here would be to assign an owner, set a status, and add the tag “spam”. Using a macro, all this can be done in just one action. Macros can be used in the ticket zoom or within an overview (using multiple selection).
Administrators can learn more about Macros in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: Macros.
- Migrator / Migration Wizard
If a company wants to switch from another helpdesk software to Zammad, they often have one concern: What about their existing data? That’s why we have built our migration wizards that help with migrating all data at the touch of a button.
- Monit
Monit is an open-source monitoring tool that relies on a simple setup and a strong community. You can integrate it with Zammad – this way, a ticket is created every time you receive an email in Monit.
- Mentions
Mentions are a Zammad feature that allows you to tag another agent in a ticket. Just type
@@and the name. The selected person will be notified and will be watching the ticket from now on.Learn more on this page: @mentions & the Subscribe Button.
N¶
- Nagios
Nagios is another monitoring tool that alerts IT teams when, for example, a server is no longer accessible or a hard disk is about to be exhausted. Nagios can be integrated with Zammad so that a ticket is created in case of an alert.
O¶
- Owner
The owner of a ticket is the person responsible for it and ensures that it is processed in the best possible way. Of course, ownership can be transferred to another agent. In this case, it is recommended to leave a handover note on the ticket so that the new owner knows what is expected of them.
Learn more about ticket owners on this page: Ticket Settings
- Organization
An organization identifies a grouping of customers that operate under the same roof or within the same customer group. If a customer whose organization is “sharing” logs in to the customer interface, this user has access to all tickets of his organization.
P¶
- Parent/Child Relationship
If one ticket results in other subtasks (or additional correspondences), you can split it into several tickets. The main one will then be the parent ticket and the tickets with related subtopics are children. By the way: in the same way, you can also merge two tickets into one.
Learn more about this function on this page: Linking Tickets.
- Placetel
Placetel is a Cloud Telephone System that allows users to make phone calls via VoIP. Use your regular phone number and call someone directly on their mobile or landline while still having all communication in one place (aka Zammad).
Integrating a Placetel account with Zammad provides users with a call log, making the history of their correspondences even more accurate. Callers are identified directly by their caller ID - a key function that saves agents a lot of time when assigning callers.
Administrators can learn more on the placetel CTI integration page. Agents can learn more about this function on this page: Caller Log
- Priority
Every ticket gets assigned a priority. By default, the priority is 2 (normal). But it can be changed to either 1 (low) or 3 (high).
Q¶
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R¶
- Role
Everyone who logs into Zammad has a predefined role. There are three types: admin, agent, and customer.
Admins have the most rights: they can define roles, permissions, and settings for the entire team and instance.
Agents can view and edit tickets, but not change any settings other than those of their own profiles.
Customers can view their tickets’ processing status in their individual Customer Interface.
- Release
Every few months, we bring a new version of Zammad into the world, which is called a release. It all started with Zammad 1.0.
Every release adds new features to our software. There are major and minor releases: major releases (such as Zammad 1.0, 2.0, etc.) bring major changes. Minor releases are installed on top of them (such as 1.1, 2.1, etc.) and bring smaller updates.
S¶
- SSO
Single-sign-on (SSO) allows you to access all your systems and devices with just one login. There are various providers that make this process easy and secure. Zammad currently supports SSO via SAML and Shibboleth.
Hint
🤓 Self Hosted users can also use Kerberos authentication.
- S/MIME
S/MIME is the most widely-supported method for secure email communication. By activating it in Zammad, all messages sent from Zammad will be signed and encrypted.
Administrators can learn more about S/MIME in the admin documentation, if you’re an agent you can learn more about the functionality on this page: Secure Email.
- Sipgate
Sipgate is a SaaS solution for internet telephony. The Zammad integration for Sipgate provides users with a detailed call overview. If you have a customer that wants to get connected to a certain agent, the caller log will tell you if this colleague is currently available.
Administrators can learn more on the sipgate CTI integration page. Agents can learn more about this function on this page: Caller Log
- SLA
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between an end-user and a company that defines the minimum expected service requirements including quality, availability, and punctuality. They are used to set expectations and hold companies accountable for keeping their promises.
You can easily set up SLAs in Zammad and define parameters such as the time for the first response, an update, and a solution. Once the deadline has been reached, the ticket will escalate.
- Status
Every ticket has a status. You can change it once you’ve updated the ticket. There are four types of status, and they are all color-coded.
Learn more about states and they color coding on this page: State
T¶
- Text module
If you find that you send the same answers / text bits over and over again, you can save yourself a bunch of work and create a text module. This way, you just need to type
::shortcut and the pre-defined paragraph will automatically appear in your article.For example, here at Zammad, we have a text module with the shortcut
::ilff, which turns intoI look forward to your feedback.Administrators can learn more about text modules here. Agents can learn more about this function on this page: Working with Text Modules
- (Ticket) Template
If you create many similar tickets or write many similar texts, you can create a template for them. This is helpful for introductions to your product/service or for drawing up an offer. It’s a real time-saver!
You can learn more on this page: Ticket Templates.
- Tags
Tags help you to categorize tickets. You can define them based on your use case. For example, if you’re a retail business, your tags could be based on your product categories to help you organize tickets by the type of product they refer to. But they could also be based on the type of request, e.g. refund, delivery issue, missing…
Administrators can learn more about tags here. Agents can learn more about this function on this page: Tags
U¶
- User
A user is any user of the ticket system. Each user is assigned certain permissions, which allow them to access certain areas and information. Users can have various roles, with the standard options being agent, admin, and customer.
V¶
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W¶
- Webhooks
In a nutshell, webhooks are an easy way for systems to communicate with each other and allow you to send real-time data to any other application. We use them to allow our users to inform a third-party system about new information in Zammad.
X¶
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Y¶
Wow... |\__/,| (`\
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Z¶
- Zammad
Zammad is the greatest helpdesk in the world. Period.
What is a Ticket?¶
In Zammad, tickets are used to track customer service requests. The first time a customer emails you (or the company) about something, Zammad creates a new ticket. Each message sent between you and the customer is added to that ticket until the issue is resolved, the customer is happy, and the ticket is finally closed.
So in a basic sense, a ticket is a thread of messages between you and a customer about a single issue.
A ticket is a thread of messages between a customer and an agent.¶
Hint
You know you’re doing a great job when you 1) respond to tickets quickly and 2) get them closed in a timely manner.
👀 Keep an eye on your dashboard to see how well you’re keeping up.
Ticket Settings¶
Tickets also have metadata attached to them to make them easier to manage. For instance, tickets have a customer and (optionally) an agent; they can be open or closed (or even be scheduled for later); they can be organized into groups; and they can even be flagged for high or low priority.
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll refer to this metadata as the settings of a ticket. All of these settings can be changed at any time. Each setting is explained in detail here, but for the time being, let’s go over the two most important ones:
- Owner (optional)
The agent currently assigned to (i.e., responsible for) the ticket.
- State
Is the customer still waiting on an answer (open), or has the ticket been resolved (closed)?
Finding Tickets¶
If you plan to work on tickets, you’d better know how to find ’em first.
Read on to learn how to check for new tickets, and dig up old ones.
Browse for Tickets¶
Looking for a ticket to work on? Check the overviews menu.
Click Overviews in the main menu to browse tickets.¶
Hint
📥 Think of overviews as inboxes, each with a different filter for the tickets it displays.
There are six built-in overviews (Zammad admin may create more with custom-defined filters):
My assigned tickets (open/pending only)
Unassigned & Open
My pending reached tickets (previously marked pending and currently due)
Open (system-wide)
Pending reached (system-wide, previously marked pending and currently due)
Escalated (system-wide, failing to meet a service-level agreement)
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Click on column headings to change the display order.
Click-and-drag column dividers to adjust their width.
Ticket states are color-coded:
Closed
Postponed (Marked as pending; no immediate action required.)
New / Open (Ready for action.)
Escalated (Requires urgent attention.)
Ticket priorities are color-coded:
Zammad’s 3 default priorities allow you to see the importance of your tickets better.¶
Search for Tickets¶
Looking for an archived ticket? Use the search bar.
Results appear immediately under the search bar as you type.¶
Hint
It’s not just for tickets! Results cover 💬 chat logs, 👨 customers, and 🏢 organizations, too.
🔍 Here are just a few of the places the search engine will look:
📝 message subject/content
👩 recipient names & email addresses
📎 text in file attachments (really!)
🏷️ user/organization metadata (e.g., notes stored on customer profiles)
You can find a detailed search document in our Advanced Search page.
For detailed results, click the Show Search Details → link just above the autocomplete list.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Click on column headings to change the display order.
Servicing Tickets¶
This is where you’ll spend the vast majority of your time in Zammad.
Once you get the hang of the tasks below, there’s really not much more to it.
Creating a Ticket¶
Zammad does its best to create tickets automatically when new customer issues come your way. But sometimes, there’s just no way for Zammad to know when an issue arrives – like when a customer calls on the phone.
In these cases, Zammad needs your help to create a new ticket.
Click the ➕ button to create a new ticket. The default ticket type is Received Call.¶
An agent can create three types of tickets:
- Received Call
for issues initiated by a customer over the phone.
- Outbound Call
for issues initiated by an agent over the phone.
- Send Email
for issues initiated by an agent over email.
Filling Out the Form¶
Here’s a quick run-down of each input field in the New Ticket form:
- Title
The title of the ticket will be used as the subject line for all email correspondences.
- Customer
When entering a customer, the autocomplete menu searches for email addresses only. You must select an option from the autocomplete menu, or else create a new customer.
You may not assign a ticket to more than one customer.
Autocomplete can’t find customers by name.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Once a customer has been selected, her profile will be accessible from the ticket pane.
- Text
📞 For phone calls, record the details of your conversation. These notes will not be sent to the customer (though he may be able to see them if he has a Zammad account).
📧 For emails, this is the body of your outgoing message.
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
The message editor supports 📋 copying-and-pasting (or dragging-and-dropping) of 🔤 rich text, 🌄 images and 📎 file attachments.
Use the built-in keyboard shortcuts to apply rich text formatting.
- Ticket Settings
Following Up¶
Generally, “working on existing tickets” means keeping up with a customer correspondence in the thread view. You can do this by:
📧 responding to an individual message, or
📝 adding a message/note to the whole ticket.
Read on to learn more, or skip ahead to find out about managing ticket settings (which is the other half of “working on existing tickets”).
Tickets are threads of messages & notes about a customer service issue. ⚙️ Manage a ticket’s settings in the ticket pane on the right.¶
Hint
📇 Any time you open a ticket, a new entry will appear in your tab list in the main menu.
Zammad automatically backs up your unsaved changes in all open tabs.
Responding to Individual Messages¶
Use the ⮪ reply button under a message to reply to it directly.
An additional ⮪ reply all option will appear for email messages with multiple recipients.¶
Like with new messages, your response will appear at the end of the thread. Under the hood, responses are sent via the same channel as the original message (i.e., if the message you replied to was originally a tweet, the customer will receive your response in a Twitter DM).
Hint
⏩ You can also forward messages, just as you would in any email client (attachments are included automatically).
This way, you can share correspondences with people who don’t have Zammad (like a third-party supplier).
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Click on a message to see detailed information about it.
Adding New Messages/Notes¶
Click on the text field at the end of the thread to add a follow-up.
The default follow-up type is “note”. Click the 📝 to select another type.¶
There are three types of follow-ups:
- 📝 Note
Jot down a reminder for yourself and other agents when new information comes in (hidden from the customer by default).
- 📞 Call
Record a summary of a phone call you had with the customer.
Send an email to anyone about the ticket. The name of the ticket will be used for the subject line (click on the title to rename it).
Hint
Click the 🔒 button to change the visibility of a note or message.
“Internal” messages are outlined with a salmon border, and can only be viewed by other agents.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
The message editor supports 📋 copying-and-pasting (or dragging-and-dropping) of 🔤 rich text, 🌄 images and 📎 file attachments.
Use the built-in keyboard shortcuts to apply rich text formatting.
Using quotation¶
In many cases you’ll want to quote earlier text of your customer. This is important because especially on long conversations your opponent will easily loose track.
Referencing on earlier written text helps greatly to keep context and track of things. By default Zammad adds no whole quote body (this can be changed by your administrator).
No matter if the whole quotation is active or not, you can always mark the text you want to reference and press reply or reply all after. This will cause Zammad to add the marked text as quote to the editor. You can break up quotations by using enter.
Note
This function is limited to one article per operation. The article has to be of type communication (thus have a reply button) to function.
Mark, press reply and work with quoted text!¶
🔥 Keeping an eye on escalations¶
Note
🧐 Huh? I can’t see escalation timestamps!
SLAs are optional and require configuration by your instance administrator. Administrators can learn more about SLAs in our admin documentation.
On the top of every ticket being applicable for SLA escalations, you’ll find two dates next to the ticket number. By hovering the escalation date, Zammad will display all upcoming escalation times based on the SLA configuration.
Caution
🙅 I’m working here!
Every once in a while, two agents may have the same ticket open at the same time. When this happens, things can get messy fast: customers may receive conflicting responses on the same issue from both agents; or, changes made by one agent may be accidentally undone by the other.
To keep things under control, Zammad will alert you to potential conflicts by displaying an avatar in the lower-lefthand corner for every agent that has that ticket open.
Be sure to communicate with your colleagues to prevent these problems before they arise.
A ✏️ icon will appear if the agent has made any unsaved changes to the ticket.¶
Ticket Settings¶
Use the ticket pane to manage a ticket’s settings:
Group¶
Groups are a form of access control that allows you to dictate which agents are allowed to do what to a given ticket.
What?¶
Suppose your organization uses Zammad for both sales and customer support. You’ve got ten different agents spread across two teams, handling dozens of tickets a day.
Without groups, all ten agents can see (and respond to) every single ticket that comes in, regardless of which department it’s for. This isn’t problematic per se, but it does lead to a lot of unnecessary clutter in the overviews menu. (It can be much worse when, for example, a customer service rep sees tickets meant for your HR department, and finds out how much their colleagues in sales are making! 💸💸💸)
If, instead, each agent were assigned to an appropriate group, then they’d only ever see the tickets that belong to their own group.
Note
So how do I manage which team I’m on?
You don’t – that’s the administrator’s job.
However, you can check which teams you’re on in the Notifications section of your user settings:
This user belongs to only one group (“Users”).¶
So where do I come in?¶
If you belong to more than one group, you may re-assign a ticket from one of your groups to another. In general, though, you won’t need to do this unless you’re an admin, or an admin has discussed the procedure with you beforehand.
Owner¶
A ticket’s owner is simply the agent that is currently responsible for it.
Whose job is it to assign tickets?¶
It depends on your organization’s workflow, but in most cases, you will assign tickets to yourself when you choose an issue to work on from the pool of new tickets.
In principle, any agent may assign a ticket to any other, as long as both have the required privileges for the ticket’s group.
Why would I want to re-assign a ticket to someone else?¶
Sometimes, complicated issues will require a ticket to be passed back and forth between multiple agents before it can be closed. In such cases, a colleague may assign a ticket to you (or vice versa) after it has been partially resolved.
State¶
The state of a ticket refers to its progress toward completion, and may be one of the following:
new
open
closed
pending close (i.e., scheduled to automatically close at a later date)
pending reminder (i.e., hidden, but scheduled to reappear at a later date)
State colors¶
Zammad states are color-coded. This helps you to understanding the state of the ticket much faster in general – without having a look into details.
Closed |
|
Postponed (Marked as pending; no immediate action required.) |
|
New / Open (Ready for action.) |
|
Escalated (Requires urgent attention.) |
What’s the difference between “new” and “open”?¶
States do more than just indicate progress: Zammad has a fine-grained time tracking feature (so-called “service-level agreements”, or SLAs) that uses state information to measure how long it takes for customers to get a response on a new ticket or get their issues resolved entirely.
On a new ticket, the customer still hasn’t received her first response on the issue.
On an open ticket, the customer has received an initial response, but the issue still hasn’t been resolved.
Note
⏱️ Tickets in a pending state do not accumulate time toward their SLA limits.
So, for instance, a ticket may be marked pending reminder if it’s waiting on feedback from a third-party supplier who’s out of town until next week.
Priority¶
A ticket’s priority is simply a ranking (from 1 to 3) of how urgent or important it is.
Zammad’s 3 default priorities allow you to see the importance of your tickets better.¶
But what does it do, and how should I use it?¶
Out of the box, ticket priority doesn’t actually do anything. However, Zammad administrators can set up all sorts of automated hooks that fire off based on this value, like:
Priority can also be used as a ticket filter when creating custom overviews.
In other words, consult your administrator for details on how he’d like you to use it.
Tags¶
Tags are custom-defined labels that can be applied to tickets to make it easier to find them in the future.
Click on a tag name to view other tickets with the same tag.¶
Hint
Search for tickets with a given tag
with the tags: search filter.
For instance, find all tickets with the order tag
by searching for tags: order.
Click the → button in the corner to hide the ticket pane. Click the 💬 tab to bring it back.¶
Note
🚫 Some options may not be available if you do not have the required privileges.
Highlighting Ticket Text¶
Use the highlighter tool in the upper-righthand corner to mark up important text. (Your highlights are visible to other agents.)
Highlight by selecting text, then clicking the highlighter. Click again to undo.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Additional actions are available via the submenu:
Click the Ticket ▾ heading to access additional actions.¶
- History
See a comprehensive list of updates to the ticket, performed by any user, since its creation.
- Merge
Migrate all messages/notes to another ticket (see Merging Tickets for details).
- Change Customer
Reassign the ticket to another customer.
Ticket Actions¶
Unlike ticket settings (which are attributes that can be modified), actions are operations that can be performed on a ticket, usually to facilitate the overall ticket management process.
Merging Tickets¶
Sometimes, you may end up with two tickets for the same issue (e.g., because a customer sent you a brand new email instead of replying to an existing thread).
In such cases, you may want to merge those tickets into one.
To merge a ticket, access the Ticket ▾ submenu in the ticket pane.¶
Note
Merging a ticket migrates all messages and notes out of the original and into the selected one.
That is, if you 1) access the merge dialog from Ticket A, and then 2) select Ticket B in the merge dialog (see below), then Ticket A will be emptied, closed, and linked as a child of Ticket B.
The merge dialog. Specify a ticket to merge into by ID (1), or select one from the list (2).¶
Splitting Tickets¶
Some tickets may actually encompass more than one issue, or require attention separately from two different departments (e.g., sales and customer service).
In such cases, you can split off a single message into its own ticket. (Alternately, it may make more sense to simply take turns on a single ticket instead.)
Click the “split” button to take a message and use it as the starting point for a new ticket.¶
When splitting a ticket, the target message is imported into the new ticket dialog. As usual, remember to select the type (call/email).¶
Linking Tickets¶
When tickets about related issues arise (e.g., multiple customer complaints about the same botched shipment), they can be linked to each other for easier reference.
Click the ➕ Add Link button to access the link dialog.¶
The link dialog. Specify a ticket to link with by ID (1), or select one from the list (2).¶
Tip
Linked tickets may optionally be organized into a parent-child hierarchy.
Tabs¶
As you click through Zammad, you will see a list of entries appear in the main menu area. These are your open tabs.
Note
You can freely switch between open tabs without losing your work – all unsaved changes are automatically backed up to the server.
Tabs appear in the main menu as you visit different parts of the application.¶
- What items open in a new “tab”?
Existing tickets
New tickets
Users
Organizations
Omnisearch
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Ticket states are color-coded:
Closed
Postponed (Marked as pending; no immediate action required.)
New / Open (Ready for action.)
Escalated (Requires urgent attention.)
A pulsing dot means that a ticket has new activity since you last viewed it.
Drag and drop tabs to rearrange them.
Tab behavior in ticket zooms¶
You may have noticed the “Stay on tab” button next to “Update” on the lower right already.
Note
The behavior of a tab can be configured by your administrator globally. You can overrule this setting based on your personal preference.
To overrule your administrator’s settings, simply choose the action you prefer. Zammad will remember this preference until you change its setting.
- Close tab
Upon updating the ticket, Zammad will automatically close the tab. You’ll be returned to the last view that was open.
- Close tab on ticket close
Ticket tabs will be closed only if you change the state to “closed” upon ticket update.
Note
This does not apply for pending states that end in closed states.
- Next in overview
If you opened a ticket from any overview, Zammad will jump to the next ticket in said overview. Zammad recycles the open tab.
Note
This option is only available if you open the ticket from an overview. Zammad will ignore the setting if you opened the ticket directly and fall back to
Stay on tab.- Stay on tab
Updating the ticket doesn’t have any effect on the tab.
This is the default setting in Zammad installations.
Working with Text Modules¶
Zammad offers so-called text modules. Text modules will help you to improve your workflow, as you don’t have to type your answer on every ticket by hand. You can simply choose a fitting text module and insert it into the E-Mail.
To access available text modules, simply type :: within an article body.
If you found the right text module, just press enter or click with your left mouse and Zammad will insert the modules Text at the place your cursor is.
Tip
You can either scroll through all modules (mouse or direction keys), type the module name or enter a keyword (if keywords are set).
Note
🤔 How come some text modules don’t always appear?
Text modules can be tied to groups: that is, they only become active once the ticket you’re working on has been assigned to the appropriate group.
Text modules are updated immediately when a new group has been selected—no need to click Update.¶
How do you which groups go with which text modules? Ask your administrator!
Text modules on ticket creation¶
You can use text modules on ticket creation as well. On ticket creation, our Ticket Templates might get handy too.
Ticket Templates¶
If you find yourself creating lots of tickets with the same basic attributes, use ticket templates to fill them in next time with a single click.
Use the ticket pane to load or create ticket templates.¶
To create a new template, start by filling in a new ticket as usual. Then, instead of submitting the ticket form, use the template dialog in the ticket pane to enter a name for your new template, and click “Save”.
The next time you create a ticket, you’ll find your new template in the “Select template” dropdown. Click it to apply your saved attributes to the new ticket.
Hint
Any template created by any agent will be available to all agents.
Advanced Search¶
With Zammad, you can limit your search to specific Information. This allows you to find e.g. Tickets with specific key words and states. Below information will help you to improve your search results.
For instance you can search for a specific customer
by using customer.attribute:
customer.firstname: John
or:
customer.lastname: Doe
If you want to run a more complex search you can use conditions
with () and AND/OR options:
state.name: open AND (article.from:me OR article.from:somebody)
Note
🤓 Search phrases changed for Zammad 4.0
With Zammad <=3.6 the following keys contained a string only:
group
priority
state
organization
With Zammad >=4.0 these keys contain the whole object. This means you
now have to add .name (e. g. group.name or priority.name)
to receive the same search results.
Available attributes¶
Hint
For a more detailed list of available attributes please take a look into our Zammad Admin-Documentation
Attribute |
possible Values |
Example |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
number |
1118566 |
number:1118566 |
Search for a Ticketnumber |
title |
some title |
title:”some title” |
If you need to use spacings in the search phrase, use quotes. Zammad will do a AND-Search over the given words. You can also use a single keyword without quotation. |
created_at |
2018-11-18 |
created_at:2018-11-18 |
You can either use a simple date, a date-range or >now-xh. Please note that the date format needs to be YYYY-MM-DD |
state.name |
new |
state.name: new |
You can filter for specific ticket states (and even combine them with an OR). Please note that you need to use the english namings for states, unless you have custom ticket states defined in your instance. |
article_count |
5 |
article_count:5 |
You can search for Tickets with a specific number of articles (you can even search for everything with 5 or more articles or even up to 5 articles, if needed). |
article.from |
*bob* |
article.from:*bob* |
Show all tickets that contain articles from “Bob” |
article.body |
heat |
article.body:heat |
First example shows every ticket containing the word “heat” - you can also use the fuzzy operator “~” to search for similar words like e.g. like “head”. Zammad will also allow you to use regular expressions, where ever the attributes allows it. |
Hint
Combining search phrases
You can combine search phrases by using AND, OR and TO,
depending on the situation and phrases you use. If needed, you can parts of
your search phrase for complex searches with (). This allows you to
combine several phrases with different dependencies (AND/OR). In case you
receive search results that you want to exclude, you can use negation !.
Below are some examples that you could use with this:
Search phrase |
Description |
|---|---|
state.name:(closed OR open) AND (priority.name:”2 normal” OR tags:feedback) |
Show every ticket that state is either closed or open and has priority normal or the tag feedback. |
state.name:(closed OR open) AND (priority.name:”2 normal” OR tags:feedback) AND !(Zammad) |
This gets the same result as above, expect that we don’t want the ticket to contain anything matching to “Zammad” |
owner.email:bob@example.net AND state.name:(open OR new) |
Show Tickets from bob@example.net that are either open or new |
state.name:pending* AND article_count:[1 TO 5] |
Show everything with any pending state and an article count of 1 to 5. |
Some Ticket attributes and their type¶
Below you can find the most important attributes sorted by ticket and article.
Ticket attributes¶
number: string
title: string
group: object (group.name, …)
priority: object (priority.name, …)
state: object (state.name, …)
organization: object (organization.name, …)
owner: object (owner.firstname, owner.lastname, owner.email, …)
customer: object (customer.firstname, customer.lastname, customer.email, …)
first_response_at: timestamp
first_response_in_min: integer (business min till first response)
close_at: timestamp
close_in_min: integer (business min till close)
last_contact_at: timestamp (last contact by customer or agent)
last_contact_agent_at: timestamp (last contact by agent)
last_contact_customer_at: timestamp (last contact by customer)
create_article_type: string (email|phone|web|…)
create_article_sender: string (Customer|Agent|System)
article_count: integer
escalation_at: timestamp
pending_time: timestamp
Article attributes¶
article.from: string
article.to: string
article.cc: string
article.subject: string
article.body: string
article.attachment.title: string (filename of attachment)
article.attachment.content: string (content of attachment)
article.attachment.content_type: string (File type e.g. PDF)
Macros¶
Macros are 🖱️ one-click shortcuts for applying changes to a ticket.
If you find yourself making the same changes to lots of tickets (e.g., close-and-tag-as-spam or reassign-to-another-group), macros can make the job a whole lot easier.
Note
🤔 How do I make macros?
You don’t – that’s the administrator’s job. If you have an idea for a macro you’d like to use, your Zammad admin can probably make it happen.
Macros can be applied in one of two ways: on a single ticket, or in bulk.
On a Single Ticket¶
The simplest way to apply a macro is to select it from the Update ᐱ submenu in the Ticket View:
Tip
💾 Macro = Update
If you’ve made changes to any other settings on the ticket (including typing up a reply to the customer), applying a macro will save them, too.
⚠️ But beware: in the event of a conflict, the macro’s actions override any manual changes – including messages to the customer! When in doubt, apply your macro and your manual changes separately.
If the selected macro adds a note to the ticket, any text entered in the message composer will be lost.¶
In Bulk¶
To apply a macro to many tickets at the same time:
open a ticket overview;
select your desired tickets;
click-and-drag to open the “Run Macro” drawer; and
drop the tickets on your target macro.
Note
☝️ There’s just one difference… When running a macro from the ticket view, Zammad may automatically open the next ticket (or close the current one, or just stay on it), depending on how the macro was set up.
When running it from the overviews page, Zammad will always stay on the overviews page.
Suggested Workflows¶
Sharing Work on a Ticket¶
Some tickets require attention from more than one agent (or even more than one department!). In these cases, there are three ways to assign the work to the right people:
If a ticket is really about two different problems, you can split it in two, then assign each ticket to its respective “group” (department).
If you’ve done all you can on a ticket and it’s now another agent’s (or department’s) responsibility, reassign it to a new owner (or group).
If you just need another agent’s input on something, you can @mention them. (And if you want to get notifications for someone else’s ticket, use the subscribe button.)
Reassigning tickets¶
Reassign a ticket (via the Group and Owner settings) to let colleagues know you’re done with your part.¶
Suppose a call comes into the sales department. A sales rep takes the call, creates a ticket, and looks up some prices for the customer. After recording his notes, the rep then decides that this ticket needs to be passed onto customer service.
Our sales rep can simply un-assign himself has the owner of the ticket and re-assign the ticket to the Customer Service group. All customer service agents will be notified of the incoming ticket, and the first available agent can assign herself to pick up where the sales rep left off.
Tip
Be sure to leave notes with as much information as possible for the next agent!
@mentions & the Subscribe Button¶
Now suppose you’ve reassigned the ticket to customer service. You won’t receive notifications for this ticket anymore, but maybe this is a really important contract, and you want to make sure they have an A+ experience from start to finish.
To enable notifications for a ticket that doesn’t belong to you, simply click the Subscribe button at the bottom of the ticket pane:
A list of all tickets you’re subscribed to can be found in the My mentioned Tickets overview.¶
Or, suppose you don’t want to reassign the ticket to customer service—you just have one quick question for them, and then you can take it from there.
To start sending someone else notifications for your own ticket,
type @@ in the message composer and select their name from the pop-up menu:
@mentioning a colleague in a message will automatically subscribe them to your ticket.¶
Hint
⚙️ Check your Profile & Settings to customize how you receive notifications.
Note
😖 A colleague @mentioned me, but I don’t see the ticket!
Is the ticket assigned to a group that you don’t belong to? @mentions and subscriptions only work for tickets that you already have access to.
Quickly assign in ticket listings¶
Within overviews and detailed searches you can run bulk operations on tickets. This means you can adjust the following ticket information:
group
owner
state (with pending time if applicable)
priority
After pressing “Confirm” Zammad also allows you to provide an internal or public note of why you adjusted the settings.
Note
Zammad will not ask for time accounting values in these situations.
Use the check boxes in ticket listings to select a bunch of tickets. Now use below drop-downs to change ticket settings, press confirm and provide a note if you’d like.¶
Tip
🤓 You can change owners and groups even faster 🚀
Instead of using the drop-downs on the bottom of Zammad, you can also drag tickets. A new modal will appear and allow you to drop your selection on either just a group or agents. This operation allows you to quickly change the group and owner without further hassle!¶
Note
This functionality is only available in ticket overviews.
Time Accounting¶
Zammad supports detailed time accounting to help administrators keep track of how much time you spend on any given ticket, customer or client organization.
If time accounting is enabled, this dialog will appear each time you update a ticket. Enter how much time you spent on it (in minutes, or whichever unit of time all your other colleagues are using).¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see a “Time Accounting” dialog…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it whenever you update a ticket, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more here.
Keyboard Shortcuts¶
Zammad supports a wide array of keyboard shortcuts to expedite your workflow as an expert user.
The keyboard shortcut cheat sheet on Windows.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Click on your avatar at the bottom of the main menu to access the keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet.
Alternately, bring it up with one of the shortcuts below (shortcut-ception!)
Ctrl+Shift+H(on Windows)
Ctrl+Shift+H(on Linux)
Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+H(on macOS)
Formatting Text¶
Keyboard shortcuts can be used to apply rich-text formatting in one of two ways:
- As-you-type
Press
Cmd+Ito enter Italics mode,enter your desired text, and
press
Cmd+Iagain to return to normal text mode.
- All-at-once
Enter your desired text,
click-and-drag with the mouse to select it, and
press
Cmd+Ito italicize.
Customers¶
Use the ticket pane to manage customer profiles.
Click the 👨 tab in the ticket pane to see the customer’s profile.¶
Tip
🖱️ UI Protip
Hover over the open/closed labels to see a summary of the customer’s other tickets.¶
Editing a Customer¶
To edit the customer’s profile, use the customer submenu:
Click the Customer ▾ heading to access additional actions.¶
The edit customer dialog.¶
Most customer attributes are self-explanatory, but here are a couple that might confuse you:
- Organization
Customers may (optionally) belong to organizations – skip ahead to learn more.
- Secondary Organizations
Unlike organizations, you can add several organizations here that are not as highlighted. Still, the same behavior applies.
- VIP
Like ticket priority, VIP status doesn’t actually do anything out-of-the-box, but an admin can set up automated system hooks based on this value, or use it as a filter for custom overviews.
Ask your administrator about how she’d like you to use this attribute (or just leave it alone).
Organizations¶
Tickets track communication between individuals, but oftentimes, your company’s real client is another company (or organization). Customers can be grouped into organizations to monitor their activity as a whole.
Organization Profiles¶
Use the ticket pane to manage organization profiles.
Click the 👪 tab in the ticket pane to see the organization’s profile.¶
To edit the organization’s profile, use the organization submenu:
Click the Organization ▾ heading to access additional actions.¶
The edit organization dialog.¶
Organization Stats¶
With organizations, you can answer questions like:
“How many tickets has this company had to file in the last 12 months?”
“How many tickets does this company have open right now?”
“How old is the oldest open ticket from this company?”
Click the 🏢 button in the ticket pane to see a detailed breakdown of the organization’s stats.¶
Checking Your Stats¶
The dashboard is the first thing you’ll see after logging in. Monitor your productivity at a glance, compare your stats to the company average (in gray below your own), and see what everyone else is up to.
Check the dashboard for a quick summary of your stats (updated every 30 minutes).¶
1. ∅ Waiting Time Today |
How long has each customer had to wait, on average, to get a response from you today? |
2. Mood |
How many escalated tickets do you have open right now? (Mr. Bubbles gets grumpy if you have too many…) |
3. Channel Distribution |
Where are all your tickets coming from? (Shows tickets created in the last seven days, also sorted by inbound vs. outbound.) |
4. Assigned |
Out of all open tickets (company-wide), how many are currently assigned to you? |
5. My Tickets in Process |
What percentage of your tickets have you responded to or updated in the last 24 hours? |
6. Reopening Rate |
How many of your closed tickets have been re-opened in the last seven days? |
7. Activity Stream |
What’s everyone else on your team up to? |
Secure Email¶
Zammad supports S/MIME for high-security email communication.
Use the 🔒 Encrypt and ✅ Sign buttons to turn on encryption and signing for outgoing emails.¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see “Sign” or “Encrypt” options in the ticket view…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the ticket composer, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more here.
What is S/MIME?¶
S/MIME is the most widely-supported method for secure email communication. With S/MIME, you can exchange signed and encrypted messages with others.
- Signing
is proof that a message hasn’t been tampered with or sent by an impersonator.
In other words, it guarantees a message’s integrity and authenticity.
- Encryption
scrambles a message so that it can only be unscrambled by the intended recipient.
In other words, it guarantees privacy and data security.
Overview¶
Note
🤝 S/MIME only works if the other party is using it, too.
Your administrator is responsible for adding all the necessary certificates in Zammad’s admin panel.
📬 Incoming¶
The 🔒 and ✅ icons at the top of a message indicate its S/MIME status.
Click on an incoming message to expand its details. Hover over the security status to show a certificate/CA summary.¶
|
This message was encrypted for you. Even if it was intercepted by a third party (hacker, gov’t agency, etc.), they won’t be able to read it. |
|
This message is not encrypted. |
|
This message’s signature has been successfully verified. You can be confident that it’s authentic and that the contents have not been modified. |
|
This message is not signed. |
📮 Outgoing¶
Use the 🔒 Encrypt and ✅ Sign buttons to turn on encryption and signing for outgoing emails.
Note
Outgoing emails can only be encrypted for a single recipient.
🔒 Encrypt and ✅ Sign buttons are present on both new tickets and replies. Hover over the buttons to show a certificate/CA summary.¶
|
This message will be encrypted. Even if it’s intercepted by a third party (hacker, gov’t agency, etc.), they won’t be able to read it. |
|
This message will not be encrypted. |
|
This message will be signed. Recipients using S/MIME can verify that it came from you and that the contents have not been modified. |
|
This message will not be signed. |
Troubleshooting¶
📬 Incoming¶
- “Sign: Unable to find certificate for validation”
Without the sender’s certificate, Zammad cannot verify the message signature.
Ask your administrator to add the sender’s certificate to Zammad’s certificate store.
Warning
🕵️ ALWAYS verify certificates in-person or over the phone!
The whole point of signature verification is to alert you when someone is trying to pretend to be someone they’re not. Never accept a certificate from someone online without verifying it first.
- “Encryption: Unable to find private key to decrypt”
This message was encrypted with a certificate that does not match any on file. Without a matching private key, Zammad cannot decrypt the message.
Ask your administrator to verify your organization’s private key in Zammad’s certificate store, and ask the sender to double-check the public key they used to encrypt the message.
Hint
📢 Your public key can be safely shared with anyone.
(But if they’re smart, they’ll take extra precautions to make sure it really belongs to you.)
📮 Outgoing¶
- The 🔒 Encrypt button is disabled
Ask your administrator to add the recipient’s certificate to Zammad’s certificate store.
- The ✅ Sign button is disabled
Ask your administrator to verify your organization’s private key in Zammad’s certificate store.
Shared Drafts¶
Share drafts for new or existing tickets with other agents of your group. Load, modify and safe an existing draft e.g. as QA process with colleagues.
By using ᐱ next to the “Update” button Zammad will provide you with an option to save your draft (and thus share it) if the option is enabled.¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see “Share Draft” option…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the menu, that means your administrator disabled this function. Administrators can learn more in our admin documentation.
Hint
🤓 Let’s be clear up front
Zammad technically has two draft functions:
shared draft (allow others to load the draft), and
user drafts.
Handling drafts¶
Note
Shared draft handling is the same for existing tickets and new tickets. 🙏
- Load a draft
Loading a draft works the same starting from draft previews.
Warning
☠️ Overwriting drafts is final
Zammad will warn you in case you’re going to overwrite an existing draft. This also applies to your personal draft in case you’re loading a shared draft.
- New Ticket dialogue
If you’re in a new ticket dialogue after selecting the ticket group, the 📝 button will indicate the shared drafts function to be available.
Note
The shared drafts tab is always hidden if no group is selected!
- Existing tickets (Ticket zoom)
Within ticket zooms a button “📝 Draft available” will be shown if a draft has been shared by either you or another agent on the ticket.
Hovering over the button will tell you who has changed the draft last.
Hint
Loading a shared draft, (adjusting and) updating the ticket with an article will cause Zammad to remove the shared draft.
Warning
This also applies if you’re sharing the draft before submitting! Zammad expects that the draft is no longer needed.
- Remove draft
You can remove any draft (no matter if for new or existing tickets) from within the draft preview screen. Use the “Delete” link on the lower end of the dialogue.
Hint
This has no effect on local drafts agents may have loaded already.
Saving drafts¶
Warning
☠️ Overwriting drafts is final
Zammad will warn you in case you’re going to overwrite an existing draft. This also applies to your personal draft in case you’re loading a shared draft.
- New ticket
- Adding new drafts
To save a new shared draft, set the ticket settings, customer, ticket title and article as desired. Make sure to select a group that supports shared drafts.
If you’re ready to save the draft, click on 📝 on the right ticket pane, enter a meaning full name and click on the “Create” button.
- Update existing drafts
In order to update or rename existing shared drafts for new tickets, simply load the draft in question. Change the information (e.g. ticket settings or content) needed and, if needed, update the drafts name on the right hand side of the ticket.
Tip
This way you can not just update existing drafts, but also use existing drafts to create another copy!
- Existing ticket
Use the ᐱ button next to the update button. If the group of the ticket (or in your selection) allows shared drafts, Zammad will provide the option “Save Draft”.
All current changes on the ticket (ticket settings, article and it’s attachments) will be saved to the shared draft.
When saving was successful, the button “📝 Draft available” will be shown.
Live Chat¶
Talk to customers in real time from the customer chat panel.
Chat controls |
|
|---|---|
1. On/Off |
Enable/disable the chat panel. (When enabled, you will receive notifications for incoming chats.) |
2. Waiting Customers |
Lists customers awaiting an agent for chat. Click to answer a pending chat request. |
3. Chatting Customers |
Lists customers currently in an ongoing chat session. |
4. Active Agents |
Lists all agents with chat enabled. |
5. Settings |
Click for chat configuration options (e.g., auto-greetings and maximum number of simultaneous chats). |
6. Count badge |
Displays the number of users in each section. |
7. Info card |
Hover over for detailed information about the users in each section. |
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see “Customer Chat” in the menu…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the main menu, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more here.
Warning
If all agents have the chat panel disabled, customers will not be able to initiate a chat.
Tip
🔍 Use the search bar to pull up old chats from the archive anytime.
📋 Copy & paste supports 🌄 inline images as well as plain text.
⌨️ Live chat supports text modules.
📝 Chats can be renamed or tagged, and record technical details about the customer’s connection.
Click on the title at the top of the chat window to edit chat details.¶
Caller Log¶
View and manage call logs from the phone panel.
Enable the Phone panel to receive notifications for incoming calls.¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see “Phone” in the menu…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the main menu, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more on our admin documentation.
Hint
🏢 The caller log shows all incoming and outgoing calls for the entire instance. The number of entries shown depends on the configuration your admin chose.
The caller log offers a lot more than just the last call entries. If your administrator configured “Phone Extension to Agent Mapping”, Zammad will also help you during answering calls.
- New Ticket dialogue
Zammad will open a new ticket dialogue if:
it’s able to either guess a single user (see maybe entries)
the callers number belongs to a user known to Zammad
the callers number is yet unknown
If the user is known to Zammad it will automatically set the ticket customer for you. You can correct this at any time if needed.
- User profile
Zammad will open the users profile if your user had a customer ticket that has been updated within the last 30 days. This also applies for calling users that Zammad guesses are a specific user (only if it’s one guessed user).
- Quick dial
You can click on phone numbers (user profiles and caller log) to dial the number in question quickly.
Note
This requires either a soft phone client or CTI client on your computer that supports this action.
Note
😕 What are these “maybe” entries?
During your day by day communication you may also stumble over new customers. Usually business users send their phone numbers in their signature.
Zammad collects and aggregates these information and tries to guess the customer in case it receives a call from an unknown number.
Tip
👤 Click on unrecognized numbers to create a new customer or maybe entries to update an existing customer.
(Unrecognized phone numbers cannot be added to existing customers in this way. Copy and pasting is required.)
Note
Existing caller log entries are not updated.
Profile & Settings¶
Click on your avatar at the bottom of the main menu to access your profile and settings.
Find user-specific actions, a list of recently opened items, and useful reference information.¶
Profile Settings¶
- Language
Set the system display language.
- Avatar
Upload an avatar.
- Password
Change your login password (may be disabled by system admin).
- Notifications
Select where, when, and for which groups you want to receive notifications, or choose a new notification sound.
Use the first three columns to choose when to receive internal notifications (below). The rightmost column enables email notification as well.¶
Internal notifications cannot be disabled.¶
By default, you will receive notifications for all tickets on every group you belong to—even for tickets that are assigned to other agents. Use the Limit Groups box to disable such notifications on a per-group basis. (You will continue to receive notifications for your own tickets.)¶
Hint
The contents of these email notifications can be customized on self-hosted installations. Administrators can learn more here.
- Out of Office
Schedule out-of-office periods in advance, and designate a substitute to handle your tickets while you’re gone.
Your substitute will receive all your ticket notifications during your absence, and have a custom overview created to help keep track of your tickets.
Note
🔔 You will continue to receive notifications while you are out-of-office!
- Calendar
Add your ticket deadlines to your own favorite calendar app with the ICAL link listed at this settings panel.
- Devices
See a list of all devices logged in to your Zammad account (and revoke access, if necessary).
- Token Access
Generate personal access tokens for third-party applications to use the Zammad API.
Caution
Always generate a new token for each application you connect to Zammad! (This makes it possible to revoke access one application at a time if a token is ever compromised.)
- Linked Accounts
See a list of third-party services (e.g., Facebook or Twitter) linked to your Zammad account.
Knowledge Base¶
Manage, edit, and reorganize knowledge base articles from the knowledge base panel.
The knowledge base panel begins in Preview Mode. With some small exceptions, Preview Mode shows what the published knowledge base will look like.¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see “Knowledge Base” in the menu…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the main menu, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more on our admin documentation.
Getting Started¶
Use the ↗️ button in the top toolbar to see the published knowledge base.
👆 In Edit Mode, use the righthand menu to navigate through the knowledge base.¶
Use the “Edit” button in the top toolbar to switch into Edit Mode (and back again).
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see an “Edit” button…
By default, agents are not permitted to create, edit, or manage knowledge base articles. If you wish to edit the knowledge base, talk to your administrator about granting you the appropriate permissions.
Switching Languages¶
Use the language menu to view or edit translations of the current page.
Hint
🚧 What happens when a page hasn’t been translated into the selected language yet?
- in Edit Mode
Untranslated pages are marked with a ⚠️ warning sign:
- in Preview Mode
Untranslated pages are only visible to users with edit permissions:
- in the published knowledge base
Untranslated pages are always hidden:
Editing Categories¶
Hint
📁 If you relocate a category using the Parent menu, all of its articles and sub-categories will be relocated with it.
Note
🗑️ Categories can only be deleted once all of their articles and sub-categories have been deleted or relocated.
Granular Category Permissions¶
Granular category permissions are great to have individual access levels on a role level. Using the granular permissions of a category deactivates the default visibility behavior and applies the permissions you’ve chosen instead.
This allows you to divide user groups on a e.g. subscription level to reduce the information load for users that don’t need the information.
Hint
Note
⚙️ Roles require knowledge base reader permission
Your administrator has to provide the relevant groups with reader permissions for the knowledge base.
Danger
🥵 Beware of visibility levels
Knowledge base reader permission means that affected users can see internal answers. This is a potential issue if you’re not dividing carefully!
If you’re unsure, please ask your administrator to configure the role permissions accordingly.
Editing Answers¶
The knowledge base editor comes equipped with the same rich text editing capabilities available in the Zammad ticket composer. That means you can use the same keyboard shortcuts to insert formatted text, bullet lists, and more. You can even add file attachments and links!
Tip
🤷 Why are there four kinds of links?
- 🔗 Weblink
URLs pointing to other websites.
- 💡 Link Answer
- Internal references to other knowledge base answers.(Will not break if destination URL changes.)
- 📋 Linked Tickets
- Internal references to Zammad tickets.(Visible only in Preview and Edit Modes.)
- 🏷️ Tags
- Tags can help categorize or spice answers with further words to find.Please note that tags are visible publicly and can be the same like those in your tickets.
Hint
🙈 Set the visibility of an answer to control who can see an article, or schedule it to be published at a later date. Articles are color-coded according to their visibility:
Public (visible to everyone) |
|
Internal (visible to agents & editors only) |
|
Draft/Scheduled/Archived (visible to editors only) |
Using answers in ticket articles¶
As soon as the knowledge base contains one or more answers, you can use these
just like text modules. Instead of :: just use ?? to open the search
modal. The search is done full text on both answer body and title in all
languages available.
If you’ve found what you’ve been looking for, simply hit your ENTER-Key to load the answer into the ticket article. This way you don’t have to throw URLs at your customer and provide the answer right away.
Loading answers into articles does not replace article content.
Use ?? to find and load knowledge base answers into ticket articles¶
i-doit: Use Tickets to Track Company Property¶
With i-doit integration, you can list which pieces of your company’s property are related to any given ticket. That includes both physical and digital infrastructure, from servers to meeting rooms to virtual machines to software licenses.
Use the 🖨 printer tab to view or manage a ticket’s assets from i-doit.¶
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see a 🖨 printer tab…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the ticket view, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more here.
Why?¶
i-doit can help you keep track of troublesome equipment and find previous tickets from the last time something went wrong with it.
It’s also a great way to document quirks in the company’s belongings: Why haven’t we upgraded this system from Windows Vista yet? What did we decide to do about that faulty network switch? And why does the coffee maker keep shutting off before it’s finished? 🤬
So How Does It Work?¶
Hint
👨💻 New to i-doit?
Ask your administrator / IT personnel to give you a tour—otherwise, the directions below might not make much sense. (And if your organization isn’t already using i-doit, this guide is not for you.)
In Zammad: Link i-doit assets to tickets¶
First, add i-doit assets to a ticket in the ticket pane:
Select 🖨 > i-doit > Change Objects, then filter by category and/or name.¶
Once assets have been linked to a ticket, they can be accessed directly from the ticket view:
Click on a linked asset in the ticket pane to open its page in i-doit.¶
In i-doit: List & create tickets for a given asset¶
Your i-doit control panel should contain a list of all the tickets associated with each asset:
Click the 💬 in the toolbar to list an asset’s tickets. Use the 🔗 Open in ticketsystem button to open the ticket in Zammad.¶
You can even launch Zammad’s new ticket dialog directly from i-doit, with the asset already linked for you:
Use the 📄 Create ticket button in the asset ticket list to start a new, pre-linked ticket dialog.¶
GitHub / GitLab Integration¶
With issue tracker integration, you can monitor GitHub / GitLab issues right from within a Zammad ticket.
Note
🤔 Huh? I don’t see 
or 
tabs…
This feature is optional; if you don’t see it in the ticket pane, that means your administrator hasn’t enabled it yet. Administrators can learn more here.
Use the and tabs on the ticket pane
for an overview of issues related to the ticket.¶
What can it do?¶
- View related issues
Use the
and tabs on the ticket pane to see linked issues,
along with metadata like status (open/closed), assignee, labels, and more.
Or, simply click the title to view the issue on GitHub / GitLab.A badge on the tab icon indicates how many issues are linked to this ticket.
- Link a new issue
At the top of the ticket pane, select GitHub / GitLab > Link Issue, then enter a valid issue URL.
Note
⌛ Linking a new issue can be slow sometimes.
- Remove an issue
Click the ✕ button next to an issue title to unlink it.