Reporting with custom fields

You can add custom fields to your Zendesk Support tickets to enable you to collect information that's not collected by default. For example, you could add a drop-down list to tickets that enables the requester of the ticket to choose their office location.


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Verified AI summary ◀▼
Enhance your reports by adding custom fields to tickets, allowing you to collect specific information. These fields sync with Explore every hour, enabling you to track and analyze data like office locations or user details. Use custom fields to create detailed reports, helping you understand trends and improve support operations. Be mindful of field names and dynamic content to ensure accurate reporting.


You can add custom fields to your Zendesk Support tickets to enable you to collect
information that's not collected by default. For example, you could add a drop-down list
to tickets that enables the requester of the ticket to choose their office location.
When your data is next synchronized with Explore, custom fields are also synchronized and
can be used in your reports. This synchronization occurs every hour. Explore
synchronizes ticket, user, and organization custom fields from Support.
For details about how to create and use custom fields in Support, see Adding custom fields to your tickets and support
request forms.
This article contains the following topics:

How custom fields synchronize with Explore
Finding custom fields in Explore
Custom fields example
Tips for using custom fields in Explore



How custom fields synchronize with Explore

When you create, edit, delete, or reactivate custom fields in Zendesk Support, the
following happens in Explore:

When a custom field is created or reactivated in Support, a corresponding metric
or attribute is created in Explore at the next data sync (which can take between
1-2 hours). The custom field values must have been used in tickets, users, or
organizations for them to appear under the corresponding metric or attribute in
Explore.
When a custom field title or value is updated in Support, the metric or
attribute title or value is updated in Explore.
When a custom field is deactivated in Support, the corresponding metric or
attribute will no longer appear in new Explore reports, but will continue to
display on existing reports where it was used.
When multiple custom fields share the same name, issues can occur. If a shared
field name is used in a formula, Explore's formula editor always resolves that
field as the custom field with that name that was created first. This means you
can't create formulas with a custom field that shares the same name as another
custom field and was created after the first one. If you have multiple custom
fields with the same name, deactivate and delete the one that
isn't needed, or rename it.
If a custom field uses dynamic content, updates to the
dynamic content itself don’t automatically sync with Explore. If you update
dynamic content, you must also update the custom field that uses that content so
that Explore pulls in the updated data. To trigger an update to the custom
field, you can add a space to the field name, click Save, and then immediately
remove the space and save again.
Explore uses the default Zendesk account language for the dynamic content used
in custom fields. This means that the field values are shown in the same
language for all Explore users. The default language is synced by Explore during
the latest field update. If the default language is updated, the custom field
that uses dynamic content also needs to be updated to propagate the new default
language to Explore custom field attributes.




Finding custom fields in Explore

All ticket, user, organization, contact, lead, and deal custom fields are
synced with Explore and automatically placed in the corresponding attribute or
metric folders of the datasets. From there they can be selected and used on the
reports or dashboards.
Only the latest field value is recorded in the standard Explore metrics and
attributes. In the Updates history dataset, you can track updates to the
fields by using the Changes attributes. For details, see Metrics and attributes for Zendesk
Support.


Note: The Support - Backlog history and Support - Group SLAs datasets do not contain
custom fields.

Use the tables below to help you understand where to find your custom fields in
Explore.
Remember to double-check which Explore folder you're selecting the metric or
attribute from. For example, you might see the same field name under both Ticket
custom fields and Requester/user custom fields, and the value might
vary depending on which you select.


Table 1. For Zendesk Support







Field type
Object type in Explore
Explore folder





Drop-down
Multi-select
Text (single line)
Multi-line
Checkbox
Credit card
Regex


Attribute


Ticket custom fields
Requester/User custom fields
Requester/User organization custom fields




Date


Attribute


Each date attribute is represented by multiple time dimensions
placed in the attribute’s individual folder




Numeric
Decimal


Metric


Numeric custom fields



Lookup relationship This applies only to lookup relationship
fields that are present on standard objects, including tickets,
users, and organizations. Lookup relationship fields present on
custom objects cannot be reported on. However, for lookup
relationship fields present on a standard object that link to a
custom object, Explore can return the ID and name of the custom
object.


Attribute
Relationship lookup data is available only from April 6, 2023
onward. Relationship lookup data related to custom objects is
available only from September 18, 2023 onward.
For lookup fields with a related object of User, if a user has no
tickets (as either a Requester or Submitter), then that user
record isn't returned in Explore.
For more information, see Using lookup relationship
fields.

Ticket custom fields Requester/User custom
fields
Requester/User organization custom fields
The
attribute names of lookup fields with a related object of Ticket
are appended with " - id". The attribute names of lookup fields
with a related object of User or Organization are appended with
either " - id" or " - name".
Additionally, if an " - id"
field is related to a custom object, you can click the
attribute’s value in a report and select Open link to see
the custom object record. For details, see Viewing lookup
relationships.







Note: If you've set up multiple organizations for users,
Explore will always report custom field information from the default organization. This means that
any additional organizations added will report incorrect information.




Custom fields example

In this example, you'll create a custom field containing a drop-down list that lets
agents add the requesters office floor to a ticket. You'll then synchronize this
with Explore and finally, create a simple report showing tickets associated with
each office floor. You must be a Support administrator to add the custom field.


Create the custom field in Support

Perform the following actions in Zendesk Support.

In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Fields.
Click the Add field button.
Click New Field at the top of the page, and enter a title for the
field, in this case Office location.
From the list of field types, click Drop-down.

In the properties for the list, enter a title for the list, an optional
description, and configure permissions as to who can set values for this
field. For detailed information about the options on this page, see
Adding custom fields to your tickets
and support request forms.

In the Field values section, enter each line of the list. For this
example, enter 1st Floor, 2nd Floor, 3rd Floor, 4th
Floor, and 5th Floor.

Click Save.
Add the custom field to the ticket forms you want to use it with. For help,
see Adding custom fields to your tickets and
support request forms.

The new custom field is now available in your Support tickets. Before you move
on, create a few tickets using this new field, or update the field on some
existing tickets.



Tip: You might need to refresh your browser window before you see
the new field.




Create the Explore report

Perform the following actions in Zendesk Explore after your data has
synchronized. Synchronization takes place once every hour.

In Explore, create a new report using the Support: Tickets dataset.
For more help, see Creating reports.
In the Metrics panel, add the Tickets metric.
In the Rows panel, expand Ticket custom fields, and then click
Office location. It might take a few seconds to display the
custom field.

Tip: To find custom fields for users, expand User custom
fields and for organizations, expand Organization custom
fields.


Explore generates the report in a table similar to the following:


Tip: Previously, Explore displayed custom field values as a tag instead of the actual
value. If you have report filters, calculated metrics, or calculated
attributes that reference the tag values, update these with the new
custom field value to ensure they continue to work correctly.


Give the report a name, and then save it.





Tips for using custom fields in Explore

Use the tips in the following table to help you understand how custom fields work in
Explore and how you can get the best from them:









Field type (from Zendesk Support)
Values
Usage





Drop-down
Multi-select


Agents or end-users select values from drop-down and multi-select
fields. These values appear in Explore as they are recorded in
the Support UI.
However, if a value is later deleted from the field in Support,
its tag will be displayed in Explore instead of the actual
value.


The drop-down field is commonly used to track information about
the user or their request. Some common examples are category,
issue type, region, plan, etc. Drop-down fields work in a
similar way to built-in Support fields like Type or
Priority.
Use the multi-select field when multiple values are required. For
example, you could record multiple product areas, services
provided, or areas of interest. Use this field type when a
drop-down field cannot be used as an alternative. Reporting on
this field type is more complex than reporting for a drop-down
field. For example, while you can use the CONTAINS or REGEX_MATCH function
to create a custom attribute for multi-select field values, you
cannot create an attribute that simultaneously includes one
value while excluding another.




Checkbox


Checkbox fields have three values:


True if the box is checked

False if the box is not checked

NULL if the ticket was closed before the checkbox was
created (for ticket custom fields), or if the user or
organization was created before the checkbox was created
(for requester/user organization custom fields)



The checkbox is the simplest field type to use and is commonly
applied as a report filter. Examples: Submitted for review,
Serviced, Completed.




Text (single line)
Multi-line


Text field values are manually typed in by agents or end users,
meaning the field might contain a large number of values.
Additionally, the values entered might be inconsistent or
contain spelling mistakes.


Normally, text fields are used as notes to record additional
unstructured data. This makes them less useful for reporting
purposes. However, they can still be added to table reports to
provide context about tickets or users.




Credit card
Regex


Values for these fields are also manually typed in by agents or
end users, but the format is controlled by the credit card
number format or custom regular expression.


Because these fields provide a more structured way of recording
data, they can be more useful for reporting purposes than
standard text fields.




Date


Each date attribute is represented by multiple time dimensions
like Date, Month, Year, etc.


Enables you to record dates or deadlines, like date of birth,
project end date, and booking date. They can be used in reports,
dashboard filters or calculated metrics in the same way as any
built-in time attributes.




Numeric
Decimal


Numeric and decimal fields allow storing numeric values that can
be computed in the same way as any other metric using the
available Explore aggregators.


These fields are similar to the system metrics, like Agent
Replies or Resolution Time. Examples you could use are revenue,
project length, or area in square meters.







Note: The maximum length of a custom field is 65,535 characters after encoding.



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