Understanding custom ticket fields in business rules and views

<body>
<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">When youadd custom ticket fields, you can use them in triggers, automations, and views.</p>
<div class="article-banners">
<div id="docs-wmp-link">
<a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5411234991258-plan" rel="noopener" target="_blank">What's my plan?</a>
</div>

<div class="article-banner" id="suite_all">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>All Suites</strong>
</td>
<td>Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>

<div class="article-banner" id="support_all">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Support</strong>
</td>
<td>Team, Professional, or Enterprise</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>

</div>
<div id="docs-ai-summary">
<p id="docs-ai-summary-toggle">Summary: <span id="up-triangle">◀</span><span id="down-triangle">▼</span></p>
<p id="docs-ai-summary-content">You can use custom ticket fields in triggers, automations, and views to automate ticket handling and build smarter ticket lists. Dropdown, multi-select, and checkbox fields can create tags for business rules, and view columns can be sorted by those tags. Required custom fields do not block automations that solve tickets, so you can use a tag-based trigger and automation workflow to wait until key fields are filled.</p>
</div>

<div class="body">

<p class="p">When you <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883152794" target="_blank">add custom ticket fields</a>, you can use them
in triggers, automations, and views.</p>
<p class="p">For information on the business rules and views conditions available for each
custom field type see, <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887162394" target="_blank">Using custom ticket fields in
business rules and views</a>.</p>
<div class="p">This article covers the following topics:<ul class="ul" id="topic-1__ul_dty_jtn_4v">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#id_kxq_ydx_qcb">Understanding custom
ticket fields, tags, and business rules</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_znk_mnk_xj">Understanding
custom ticket fields and views</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_pqw_5dx_qcb">About required
fields and automations</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="id_kxq_ydx_qcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Understanding custom ticket fields, tags, and business rules</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Custom fields are available as conditions and actions in business rules,
which means that you can directly access the custom fields in your
business rules.</p>
<p class="p">Additionally, the drop-down list, multi-select, and checkbox custom
ticket fields can add tags to tickets that can be used in your
business rules.</p>
<p class="p">With drop-down and multi-select fields, Zendesk Support automatically
generates tags as you enter field options for your custom field. You
can modify the automatically generated tags by editing the Tag
field. You must have a tag for each field option.</p>
<p class="p">With checkbox fields, you have the option of associating a tag with the
field. </p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="id_kxq_ydx_qcb__image_acr_ydx_qcb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/custom_field_checkbox_tag.png"></p>
<p class="p">These tags can be used in a variety of ways in your business rules. For
example, you can use the tag to automatically assign the ticket to a
specific group. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408888664474" target="_blank">About tags</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested1" id="topic_znk_mnk_xj">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title3">Understanding custom ticket fields and views</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">After creating a custom ticket field, you can add it to your views. For
example, suppose you create a custom field to let users select one
of your product lines. After adding the custom field as a column in
a view, you can sort the tickets by product line by clicking the
column's heading. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408888828570" target="_blank">Creating views to build
customized lists of tickets</a>. </p>
<p class="p">The sort order of custom-field columns in views is by the underlying tags
used for the custom field. For example, if you sort the tickets by
ascending order, the order is by the alphabetical order of the
field's tags, not its titles.</p>
<p class="p">For example, suppose you create a custom drop-down field with the
following value:tag pairs:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_znk_mnk_xj__ul_sjw_ws2_yj">
<li class="li">Photography (tag: photography)</li>
<li class="li">Video (tag: audiovisual)</li>
<li class="li">Medical (tag: endoscopy)</li>
</ul>
<p class="p"> If you add the field to a view and sort by ascending order, the tickets
would be grouped and ordered as follows:</p>
<ol class="ol" id="topic_znk_mnk_xj__ul_irq_252_yj">
<li class="li">Video tickets (tag: audiovisual)</li>
<li class="li">Medical tickets (tag: endoscopy)</li>
<li class="li">Photography tickets (tag: photography)</li>
</ol>
<p class="p">If you want to list your photography tickets at the top of the view,
click the column heading again to sort by descending order.</p>
<p class="p">If you want to use text, multi-line text, numeric, decimal, and regular
expression custom fields, drag the fields to the columns included in
the table section.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_znk_mnk_xj__image_hdc_bb2_rdb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/custom_ticket_fields_views_1.png" width="470"></p>
<p class="p">Once added, the columns will appear in the view.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_znk_mnk_xj__image_xdv_cb2_rdb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/custom_ticket_fields_views_2.png" width="470"></p>
<div class="p">
<div class="note important">
<span class="importanttitle">Important:</span> Custom date fields used in business rules or
views always reference GMT time and not the account
timezone. For example, if your timezone is set to GMT+2 and
you have a business rule or view with a custom date field
named "Next review date", any conditions using this will
evaluate the date as GMT, not GMT+2 timezone.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested1" id="topic_pqw_5dx_qcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title4">About required fields and automations</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">If you have automations that set the ticket status to Solved, the ticket
will be set as solved even if the ticket has "required" custom
fields that are still blank. The reason is that automations check
the automation conditions, not the ticket field conditions.</p>
<p class="p">A workaround is to use tags to prevent the automation from running until
the required fields are completed. For example, you can tell the
automation to hold off until the okay_to_close tag is present, then
set a trigger to add the tag when the required field is no longer
blank. Here's how. Add the following "All" condition to your
automation: <strong class="ph b">Ticket: Tags</strong> &gt; <strong class="ph b">Contains At Least One of the
Following</strong> &gt; okay_to_close. Next, create a trigger
with the following "All" condition:
<strong class="ph b">Ticket:{custom_field_name}</strong> &gt; <strong class="ph b">Is Not</strong> &gt;
<strong class="ph b">-</strong> (blank). Set its action as <strong class="ph b">Ticket: Add Tags</strong>
&gt; okay_to_close.</p>
<p class="p">For more information, see the following
articles:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_pqw_5dx_qcb__ul_dlf_wdx_qcb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883801626" target="_blank">Creating and
managing automations for time-based
events</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886797466" target="_blank">Setting up
automatic ticket updates and notifications with
triggers</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<script id="docs-schema-markup" type="application/ld+json">{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408834953114",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408834953114",
"headline": "Understanding custom ticket fields in business rules and views",
"description": "You can use custom ticket fields in business rules and views, sort view columns by their tags, and work around required-field automations by gating them with tags.",
"articleSection": "Ticket customization",
"datePublished": "2021-10-16T03:59:42+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-07-15T18:08:56.022036+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408834953114"
},
"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": "Support",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/4405303717658"
}
}
}</script><script id="ai-summary-script">
//<![CDATA[
const ai_summary_style = document.createElement('style');
ai_summary_style.innerHTML = `#styled-article-body{padding:0 0 0}#article-body #docs-ai-summary{background-color:#f3f3f3;border:1px solid #d3d3d3;padding:10px 10px 6px;margin-bottom:16px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle{font-size:.9em;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:4px;cursor:pointer;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #up-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px;display:none}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #down-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-content{font-size:.9em;padding-left:25px;padding-right:25px;margin-bottom:12px}`;
document.head.appendChild(ai_summary_style);

const toggleAISummary = () => {
const summary = document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-content");
const upTriangle = document.getElementById("up-triangle");
const downTriangle = document.getElementById("down-triangle");
if (summary.style.display === "none") {
summary.style.display = "block";
upTriangle.style.display = "none";
downTriangle.style.display = "inline";
} else {
summary.style.display = "none";
upTriangle.style.display = "inline";
downTriangle.style.display = "none";
}
};

document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-toggle").addEventListener("click", toggleAISummary);
//]]>
</script>
</body>