Creating a custom ticket field

Creating a field takes a minute. The two settings that decide whether it helps or annoys are the permission and the type.

Creating a field takes a minute. The two settings that decide whether it helps or annoys are the permission and the type.

Create a field

1. Open Admin Center, then Objects and rules, then Tickets, then Fields.
2. Click Add field and choose the type.
3. Fill in Display name: what agents see.
4. Add a Description saying what belongs in it. Only admins see this one, so write it for the person who inherits your configuration.
5. Set the permission. Choose one visible to customers and you get two more boxes, Title shown to customers and Description shown to customers, which is where you write for them rather than for yourself.
6. Decide on Required to solve a ticket and Required to submit a request, and optionally a Default value.
7. Add it to the forms that need it.
8. Save, or use Save and add another if you are building a set.

The permission decides who fills it in

• Agents can edit. Internal only; customers never see it.
• Customers can edit. Appears on the request form and they fill it in.
• Customers can view. They see the value but cannot change it. Useful for something like an order status you set.

Getting this wrong is the usual cause of an internal field appearing on your public form.

Required, and where

Two separate boxes. Required to submit a request means nobody can send the form without it, which is a real barrier: every required field costs you some percentage of people who give up. Required to solve a ticket is gentler and often gets you the same data.

Neither is a guarantee. A trigger or an automation can solve a ticket without the field being filled in, so a required field tells you what agents will normally do, not what your data will always contain. If a report depends on the field being present, check what your rules are doing before trusting it.

Name it for the person filling it in

Agents see the display name all day. "Order number" beats "CUST_ORD_REF". If you need an internal identifier as well, that is what the field key is for.

See also

• The field types and when to pick which
• Finding the field key or field ID
• What happens when you deactivate or delete a field
• What a ticket field is and which standard fields exist