Mail API

Help desk end-users can submit a new ticket by sending an email to support@accountname.zendesk.com, where accountname is the name of your help desk. In addition, when a ticket is updated the requester and assignee of the ticket receives updates per mail. This is called a notification. By replying to the notification, the ticket is commented accordingly. Basically you just need to include the ticket ID (prepended by the number/hash sign, e.g. #123) in the mail subject to have your e-mail appended to the relevant ticket. Notifications are sent via triggers and are fully configurable. Adjust and create notifications that fits your business rules.

A less known feature lets agents set ticket priorities via e-mail. Properties can be set by stating the relevant commands in the subject of your e-mail. This also serves as a high-level integration method.

Agents in your help desk can set properties when working with tickets via mail. Properties are set in the subject of the mail and are enclosed by double curly brackets. Thus, by including {{assignee:john priority:high}} in the subject, you assign the ticket to “Joe”, and set the priority to high. If more than one agent named “Joe” exists in your help desk, the first one found will be used. You can use quotes to delimit full names, e.g. {{assignee:"Joe Doe"}}.

Ticket properties that can be set via mail - as long as the sender is a registered agent

status

Valid values are open, pending and solved

requester

Sets the requester of the ticket - only relevant when creating a ticket. The "from" email address is always set to the submitter. Valid values are the email address of the requester, the name of the requester or his internal Zendesk ID (obtained via e.g. a REST integration). If you are setting the requester via email address, the requester will automatically be created in the help desk if the requester does not already exist.

group

Assigns the ticket to a group. Valid values are the name of the group or the ID of a group.

assignee

Assigns the ticket to an agent. Valid values are the email address of the assignee, the name of the assignee or the Zendesk ID of the assignee (obtained via e.g. a REST integration).

priority

Sets the priority of the ticket. Valid values are low, normal, high and urgent. Note, in order to set a priority, you must also set a ticket type (see below)

ticket_type

Valid values are incident, question, task and problem.

tags

Set any tag on the ticket, or multiple tags delimited by quotes, e.g. {{tags:something}} or {{tags:another thing}}

public

Sets if a comment update on a ticket is public. Defaults to true, and will only be set to false when set to {{public:false}}. Only useable when updating a ticket.

Notice that any invalid property settings will discard all property settings for the mail operation (e.g. designating an assignee without designating a group, when a help desk has more than one group).

A few examples: {{assignee:JoHn}} - assigns the ticket to the first agent found with a name matching “John” (case insensitive). {{assignee:123}} - assigns the ticket to the agent with ID 123. {{assignee:john@johnsupport.com priority:high}} - assigns the ticket to the agent with email john@johnsupport.com and sets the ticket priority to high.