Question

Why do very short agent activities sometimes display without their full ticket details in real time?

Answer

Agent activities lasting between 1 and 30 seconds may occasionally appear without their fully enriched ticket details. This issue arises because Zendesk WFM captures agent activity events, such as ticket updates, almost instantly from the time tracker. However, ticket metadata, including workstream assignment, tags, or status, is captured periodically from Zendesk services, which introduces a short and predictable delay.

When an agent’s action is extremely brief, Zendesk WFM may record the event before it retrieves the ticket metadata, which results in:

Incomplete enrichment: Some activities temporarily lack full ticket context, such as a missed workstream assignment

Apparent discrepancies: On-screen reports may show a brief misalignment between activity duration and ticket details, even though no data is lost

Zendesk WFM records every event thoroughly and later matches it with its ticket details. The result is a complete, accurate dataset, even if very short activities initially display without full enrichment.

Workarounds and recommendations

Zendesk recommends these approaches:

Data recalculation: If you observe discrepancies in activity enrichment, reach out to Zendesk customer support to request a recalculation on stored data

Manual updates: For cases where data appears outdated, update tickets manually to ensure workstreams and reports reflect the correct details

For more information, see About the Agent activity page.