Explore recipe: How to capture the date when a macro is applied to a ticket




What's my plan?






All Suites

Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus









Support with

Explore Professional or Enterprise






In this Explore recipe, you'll discover how to generate a report that tracks
the instances when a macro is utilized by an agent.


There is no built-in method to report on macro activity, such as when a macro
is applied to a ticket. The system does not track macro usage by timestamp or
support reporting through tags added by macros.


To track macro usage, you can create a custom checkbox ticket field and add it
to the macro. Update the macro to check the box. This allows you to use the field
change to identify when the macro was applied.

For more information see the articles:


Creating custom ticket fields


How can I use macros to add tags on a ticket


Below is an example macro with the checkbox added.





Note: (Enterprise only) If you have multiple
ticket forms,
edit the ticket forms
where you want the field to appear, drag the field from the right onto the
ticket form, then click Save. Repeat for additional ticket forms.


Skill level: Average


Time required: 20 minutes


Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise

Editor or Admin permissions (see
Giving users access to Explore)

Ticket data in Zendesk Support

Creating the report
Use the following steps to create this report in Explore.

To create the custom calculated attributes



In Explore, click the reports ( )
icon.


In the Reports library, click New report.


On the Select a dataset page, click
Support > Support - Updates history,
then click Start report. The report builder opens.


Next, you'll create a standard calculated attribute that records changes
to your custom checkbox. From the Calculations menu
( ),
click Standard calculated attribute.



On the Standard calculated attribute page, enter
a name for your attribute like Macro Usage Date,
then enter or paste the following formula:

IF ([Changes - Field name]="Macro used")
AND (([Changes - Previous value]="0")
OR ([Changes - Previous value]=NULL))
AND ([Changes - New value]="1")
THEN [Update - Date]
ENDIF

Replace "Macro used" in the first line of the formula with the name
of your custom checkbox.


Optionally, you can use the [Update - Timestamp] instead to capture
the timestamp.



When you're finished, click Save.


Create another standard calculated attribute to list the name of the
macros. In the Calculations menu ( ),
click Standard calculated attribute.


On the Standard calculated attribute page, Under
Functions, click Add.



Search the SWITCH function and click +.






Give the attribute name like Macro name.


Select the attribute containing the values you want see in the list or
the attribute name. In this case we use the Ticket tags
attribute.


In CASE _value1, enter the tag of the
macro.


In _return_value, enter the name of
the macro.



Enter your other cases for more macro you used, you will need to
manually type out additional CASE expressions. The formula for this
example looks like below:

SWITCH ([Ticket tags]) {
CASE "greetings_macro": "Greeting"
CASE "closing_ticket": "Closing Ticket"
CASE "closing_tickets": "Closing Ageing Tickets"
}


When you're finished, click Save.



To create the report



In the Metrics panel, click Add.


From the list of metrics, choose Updates >
Agent updates, then click Apply. Ensure
that the metric aggregator is set to D_COUNT.


In the Filters panel, add the
Updater role attribute and configure it to show
Agents and Admins.


In the Rows panel, click Add.


From the list of attributes, choose Calculated attributes
> Macro Usage Date, click Excluded
and select NULL then Apply.


Go back to Rows panel, click Add. From
the list of attributes, choose Calculated attributes
> Macro name then Apply.


You can also add Ticket ID in Rows.
From the list of attributes, search Ticket ID >
Apply.


The report should match the following:






{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9495178369690",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9495178369690-Explore-recipe-How-to-capture-the-date-when-a-macro-is-applied-to-a-ticket",
"headline": "Explore recipe: How to capture the date when a macro is applied to a ticket",
"description": "You can track when a macro is applied to a ticket by creating a custom checkbox field updated by the macro and then generating a report using calculated attributes to capture the date and name of the macro usage.",
"articleSection": "Ticket reporting recipes",
"datePublished": "2025-07-17T15:03:29+00:00",
"dateModified": "2025-09-06T00:03:06+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9495178369690"
},
"author": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"isPartOf": {
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Zendesk Help",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/"
},
"about": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com",
"softwareAddOn": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Explore",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/4405298856346"
}
}
}