Which macros nobody uses: measuring macro usage

Zendesk can show which macros your team applies, in two ways depending on how far back you look. The unused ones tell you more than the popular ones.

Zendesk can show which macros your team applies, in two different ways depending on how far back you need to look. The unused ones tell you more than the popular ones.

For the last thirty days: the macros page

1. Open the macros page.
2. Read the Usage (last 7 days) column, or use Sort by to choose a longer usage period.
3. Read the list from the bottom.

That covers up to thirty days and needs no setting up, which makes it the right first look. Sorting by usage starts at Suite Growth and Support Professional; on the plans below it the menu sorts by name and date only. The three most-used macros of the past week already stand at the top of the list by default.

For longer than that: tag your macros

Explore has no macro attribute, so a report per macro is not something you can build directly. The way round it is to have each macro you care about add a tag, and then report on the tags.

1. Add a distinct tag to each macro whose use you want to follow. A prefix such as macro_ keeps them together in reporting.
2. Wait. A tag only appears on tickets from the moment you add it, so this measures forwards, never backwards.
3. Build the Explore report on those tags. This second route needs Explore Professional, which comes with Suite Professional and above; a standalone Support plan includes Explore Lite, and that cannot build reports.

That waiting is the real cost, and it is the argument for tagging the twenty macros that matter now rather than deciding you will do it when somebody asks.

Personal macros

Agents' own macros stay outside both routes: you do not see them on the shared list, and no tag was ever set on them. As an admin you can pull their usage through the macros API endpoint, including for macros you did not create yourself. That is the only way to see whether a team has quietly built its own parallel set.

Read the bottom of the list

Whichever route you took, the top tells you what you already know. The bottom is where the information is, and a macro nobody uses is one of four things.

• Badly named. Agents search by typing; a macro whose name does not match what they type is invisible.
• In the wrong category, so nobody browses past it.
• Answering a question that stopped being asked. Which is a finding in itself.
• Not trusted. Someone tried it, it set the wrong field, and word got around.

What high usage tells you

A macro applied several hundred times a month is a question your customers keep asking. That is a candidate for a help centre article, a change to your product, or an AI agent answer. A frequently used macro is a signal, not just a saving.

See also

• Personal and shared macros
• Which subjects come up most often
• Building your first report