Quickly and easily draft comments
The Save as Draft app allows an agent to quickly create draft notes from Zendesk ticket comments. The drafts can be opened by the agent or other users at any time for further review, change, or submission to the ticket.
About the Save as Draft App
Have you ever wanted to write a note on a ticket and save it for later? Perhaps you want to have your new hire send you a draft reply for approval before sending it out. Or maybe you need to check with another team member on the details of a response, but are unable to reach that team member at the moment.
This app makes it easy to create working notes and share them with other users. The Drafts app includes a preview screen in the Ticket Sidebar for easy viewing and a button in the Editor bar for quick access. A copy button is also provided which will quickly copy an internal note to public comment when clicked. Have more questions? Read on for more details.
Key Use Cases
Ideal for a range of use cases, such as reviewing the comments left by new hires before submitting, sharing draft ideas with other team members, saving work for later, or copying comments from internal notes to public replies.
- Create drafts to view later
- Allow other agents to review comments before submitting
- Copy Internal Notes to Public Reply
- View a list of all draft notes
- Work on draft while viewing other comments
Installation Instructions
1. Install the app via the Zendesk Marketplace link here.
2. Create a multiline ticket field to store the draft data. See here for help on creating the field.
3. Add the field ID to the app settings.
4. Determine which agents should have access to the app.
5. Optionally create a trigger and view to quickly show a list of all tickets with draft comments.
Detailed Functionality
The Save as Draft app is available in two locations: ticket editor, and ticket sidebar. Both locations provide four buttons: open, save, delete, and copy. In the ticket sidebar a preview function is also available. Optionally, a trigger and views can be created to make it easier to see a full list of tickets with draft comments or provide further business rule processing.
- Open - The open button will open any stored draft on the ticket and place it into the ticket comment field. It will be appended to any comment currently in the field. It will not change the type of comment (public or private).
- Save - The save button will store the comment currently in the ticket comment editor into the draft field. This will overwrite any existing comment. Inline attachments will be included. Non-inline attachments are not supported. **
- Delete - The delete button will delete the comment currently stored in the draft field.
- Copy - The copy button will copy the current internal note to the public reply. The internal note must be the field that is currently selected. If public reply is active, then no copy will be performed. Only inline attachments will be copied; non-inline attachments are not supported. **
- Preview - If there is an existing draft on a ticket, it will automatically display in the ticket sidebar screen. An expand button is available which will resize the app to show the entire comment (if possible); a collapse button is also available to minimize the screen.
- Trigger - a trigger can be created which will detect if there has been a draft added to a ticket. If so, then it can add an optional tag to the ticket. If there is no draft on the ticket, then the tag can be removed. This information can then be used as a condition in Views, in reports, in other triggers and automations, or any place else that a tag can be used. Please see this article for more details on creating the trigger.
- View - views can be created which will display all tickets which currently have an active draft saved on them. The views can be customised to include other conditions, such as who is the assignee of the ticket, who is the group of the ticket, and so forth, which allows for more granular listing of tickets with draft comments on them. Please see this article for more details on creating the views.
** Zendesk Apps Framework is used to create this app. The framework provides the ability to read and modify inline attachments. For non-inline attachments, such as .pdf or .doc files, they can be read by the app, but they cannot be placed into the current comment. This means that our app is technically limited and unable to provide this capability. If you have any concerns about this limitation, please reach out to us or leave a comment below.
See below for videos of how each of the different capabilities looks when using the app. Apart from the preview function, all four buttons are available in both the ticket sidebar and ticket editor location.
Open
Save
Delete
Copy
Preview
Limitations
There are some current known limitations with the app which are listed below. Additionally, potential areas for improvement are also included. Please feel free to leave comments in the article with your feedback about the app's capabilities, usability, or suggestions for new features or improvements to existing functionality.
- Only one draft can be saved at a time. We are currently exploring possibilities to support multiple drafts for one ticket.
- Draft history is not available, but this may be included at a later time.
- Drafts must be created and modified in the main ticket comment editor, but we are exploring options to make the drafts editable in the ticket sidebar location as well.
- Only inline attachments can be stored in the draft or copied from internal note to public reply. This is a technical limitation of the Zendesk Apps Framework. We are exploring alternative options to address this issue.
- Drafts are unavailable when working on a new ticket. If you'd like to save a draft while working on a new ticket, please create the ticket first, then you can save the draft
- Draft comment stored as raw HTML. If you show the field in places such as a view, then you will see the HTML tags as well.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.