Turning on and configuring redaction suggestions (ADPP add-on)

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">The redaction suggestions feature, part of theAdvanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on, automatically highlights certain types of personally identifiable information (PII) within ticket comments for admins and agents with permission. Agents can then click the highlighted PII and quickly redact it. This helps keep confidential information out of Zendesk.</p>
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<strong>Add-on</strong>
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<td>Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP)</td>
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<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 enable redaction suggestions to automatically highlight and redact personally identifiable information (PII) in ticket comments and PDF attachments. This feature supports multiple PII types and languages, helps protect sensitive data, and allows custom detection using RegEx patterns. Admins control which PII types to detect and when agents see suggestions. Automatic redaction triggers can also be set up to remove PII without agent action.</p>
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<p class="p">The redaction suggestions feature, part of the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6561144266906" target="_blank">Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on</a>, automatically
highlights certain types of personally identifiable information (PII) within ticket
comments for admins and agents with permission. Agents can then click the highlighted
PII and quickly redact it. This helps keep confidential information out of Zendesk.</p>
<p class="p">PDF attachments are also highlighted when PII is detected anywhere within the document.
However, the entire attachment is marked rather than specific instances of PII within
it. You can redact the entire PDF attachment, but individual pieces of content inside
the document cannot be redacted separately.</p>
<p class="p">When the redaction suggestions feature is turned on, admins can optionally <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9248330321050" target="_blank">create triggers to redact sensitive information</a>
automatically for PII in ticket comments, eliminating the need for agent
intervention.</p>
<p class="p" dir="ltr">Redaction suggestions work for multiple languages. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408821324826#h_01GYJ1PBVKD26QN3E8JNS3X3TX" target="_blank">Zendesk language support by product</a>. </p>
<p class="p">This article contains the following topics:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="ai_redaction_suggestions__ul_zpz_ghx_m1c">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_m4b_sgx_m1c">Understanding redaction suggestions</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_r1v_sgx_m1c">Turning on and configuring redaction suggestions</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_vjn_xx1_bkc">Creating custom redaction suggestions using RegEx patterns</a></li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Related articles:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="ai_redaction_suggestions__ul_ell_krn_zbc">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10474374743450" target="_blank">Redacting identified PII</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408822124314" target="_blank">Automatically redacting credit card numbers from
tickets</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Understanding redaction suggestions</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">The redaction suggestions feature is similar to the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408846470170" target="_blank">ticket redaction</a> feature. However, redaction suggestions
proactively identify PII rather than rely on the agent to identify PII that needs to
be redacted.</p>
<p class="p">The redaction suggestions feature automatically identifies the following types of PII
in ticket comments and PDF attachments:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__ul_bzd_nhx_m1c">
<li class="li">First name or surname</li>
<li class="li">Email address </li>
<li class="li">Address </li>
<li class="li">Credit or debit card number (including last four digits only)</li>
<li class="li">International bank account number (IBAN) </li>
<li class="li">Password </li>
<li class="li">Social Security Number (SSN)</li>
<li class="li">Bank account number</li>
<li class="li">Date of birth</li>
<li class="li">Driver’s license</li>
<li class="li">IP address</li>
<li class="li">Phone number</li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Identified PII is highlighted in orange. Admins and agents with the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882153882-Creating-custom-roles-and-assigning-agents#:~:text=Redact%20ticket%20content" target="_blank">redact ticket content</a> permission can see
the highlighting and redact the information. Light agents can't see highlighted
redaction suggestions.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__image_nm5_5kx_m1c" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ai_redaction_suggestions_example_828_update.png" width="600"></p>
<p class="p">The ticket context is important to redaction suggestions. For example, say that a
date of birth is mentioned in a ticket. There must be context that the date is a
date of birth, such as “DOB: 01/26/1990” or “My birthday is Jan 26, 1990”. If just a
date is entered without context, then it won’t be highlighted as a redaction
suggestion.</p>
<p class="p">Redaction suggestions in <em class="ph i">ticket comments</em> work on:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__ul_rc5_qhx_m1c">
<li class="li">Email </li>
<li class="li">Public comments </li>
<li class="li">Internal notes </li>
<li class="li">Content in archived or closed tickets for email, API, and webform channels </li>
<li class="li">Social messaging channels enabled through Sunshine Conversations </li>
<li class="li">Ended messaging conversations from the Agent Workspace </li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6170157307162" target="_blank">AI-generated call summaries and
transcripts</a></li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Redaction suggestions in <em class="ph i">PDF attachments</em> work on:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__ul_mxt_yx3_s3c">
<li class="li">The Agent Workspace ticket interface</li>
<li class="li">Email</li>
<li class="li">API</li>
<li class="li">SMS</li>
<li class="li">Web form</li>
<li class="li">Submit a request/ticket form</li>
</ul>
<p class="p">If you redact a Zendesk message or a message created via the Sunshine Conversations
SDK, the Support ticket interface shows the redacted areas of the messaging
conversation within the context of the unredacted content. From the customer
side, the entire message is deleted. </p>
<p class="p">Redaction events are noted in a ticket’s event log so customers can be aware data has
been deleted. In addition, when you redact ticket content, a <em class="ph i">redacted_content</em>
tag is automatically added to the ticket. When you redact ticket content, this
causes an update to be made on the ticket using the same channel associated with the
redacted content (for example, redacting a WhatsApp comment from a ticket). This
behavior can cause triggers to fire if your trigger conditions are set to look for
updates on a specific channel.</p>
<p class="p">If you redact content on a <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8037649972634" target="_blank">ticket with an AI-generated summary</a>, the summary can be
removed from the ticket by refreshing the summary or closing and reopening the Agent
Workspace tab. The summary is immediately removed from Zendesk's systems when a
redaction is performed on a ticket, but the summary continues to appear in the
browser until the page is reloaded.</p>
<div class="p">
<div class="note" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__note_w31_zpq_12c">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> Due to potential conflicts, this feature shouldn't be
used at the same time as the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408822124314" target="_blank">automatic credit card redaction
feature</a>.</div>
<div class="note" id="topic_m4b_sgx_m1c__note_ol5_tg5_wgc">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> Redaction suggestions don’t work on <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9204149016346" target="_blank">AI agent tickets</a>.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested2" id="topic_hlr_shx_m1c">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title3">Redaction suggestion limitations</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Redaction suggestions don’t work on: </p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_hlr_shx_m1c__ul_qfw_yhx_m1c">
<li class="li">Ticket subjects</li>
<li class="li">Messages stored in the Answer Bot service </li>
<li class="li">Channel framework-enabled tickets </li>
<li class="li">Ticket comments created from Mobile SDK, including those submitted through
Zendesk's native support apps </li>
<li class="li">Tickets created from Slack Business Connect </li>
<li class="li">Slack side conversations </li>
<li class="li">Call summaries and transcriptions in Contact Center</li>
<li class="li">Content in archived or closed tickets for messaging channels </li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Additional limitations include: </p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_hlr_shx_m1c__ul_mmf_zhx_m1c">
<li class="li">When you redact a ticket comment sent from an email channel, Zendesk does
not redact the content of the original email in the email provider's channel
(such as Gmail or Yahoo). Only the text hosted in Zendesk is redacted. </li>
<li class="li">When redacting a ticket, the underlying conversation is not edited on the
social messaging platform and third-party integrations. It is redacted only
within Zendesk-controlled systems. This also means that an end user,
depending on how they communicate with your agent, may still see unredacted
content themselves when accessing a message through different channels (for
example, in Facebook Messenger). </li>
<li class="li">Redaction of messages exchanged between Answer Bot and end users is not
supported. </li>
<li class="li">If triggers are configured before redaction, redacted content
may persist in the channels launched by these triggers (for example, email
conversations). </li>
<li class="li">Only PII detected in ticket comments can be configured for redaction with
triggers. Attachments with PII detected are not yet supported with trigger
redaction.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested1" id="topic_r1v_sgx_m1c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title4">Turning on and configuring redaction suggestions</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Admins can turn redaction suggestions on or off in Admin Center. By default, this
feature is turned off. Admins can also configure which types of PII the feature
should detect, as well as whether detected PII is highlighted in tickets for agents
to see. When PII is selected, it will be detected in both ticket comments and PDF
attachments. For example, if social security number is selected, any ticket comments
and PDF attachments with a social security number will be highlighted.</p>
<p class="p">PII is detected only after you turn on redaction suggestions for that specific PII
type. PII cannot be detected retroactively. For example, an email address in a
ticket comment would be detected only after you’ve already turned on PII detection
for email addresses. Any email addresses included in comments that happened before
you activated the setting would not be detected.</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">To turn on and configure redaction suggestions</strong></p>
<ol class="ol" id="topic_r1v_sgx_m1c__ol_jdr_j3x_m1c">
<li class="li"><span class="ph">In <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4581766374554#topic_hfg_dyz_1hb" target="_blank">Admin Center</a>, click <img class="image" id="topic_r1v_sgx_m1c__d8e384" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ac_account_icon.png">
<strong class="ph b">Account</strong> in the sidebar, then select <strong class="ph b">Security &gt; Redaction suggestions</strong>.</span></li>
<li class="li">Under <strong class="ph b">Choose which types of PII to suggest for redaction</strong>, select the
types of PII you want redaction suggestions to automatically detect. The options
are: </li>
<li class="li">Under <strong class="ph b">Select when agents should see suggestions</strong>, select one of the
following options: <ul class="ul" id="topic_r1v_sgx_m1c__ol_yy3_rnh_ldc">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Show suggestions in ticket comment and redaction editor.</strong> Agents
will see highlighted PII when they’re working in tickets and when they
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408846470170#topic_wrc_nsl_znb" target="_blank">open the redaction
editor</a>.</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Show suggestions in redaction editor only.</strong> Agents will see
highlighted PII only when they open the redaction editor. </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Save</strong>.</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title5" class="topic nested1" id="topic_vjn_xx1_bkc">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title5">Creating custom redaction suggestions using RegEx patterns</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Zendesk includes built-in redaction suggestions for standard PII types, but some
companies also need to protect unique, company-specific sensitive data. By creating
custom redaction suggestions using regular expression (RegEx) patterns, admins can
help Zendesk detect these values automatically and surface them as redaction
suggestions in the Agent Workspace, where agents can review and <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10474374743450" target="_blank">redact them manually</a>. If you use <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9248330321050" target="_blank">triggers</a> to redact detected PII automatically, PII
identified through custom redaction suggestions is also redacted. This provides a
flexible way to protect sensitive information.</p>
<p class="p">For example, you can create custom redaction suggestions when your organization needs
to detect information like the following:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_vjn_xx1_bkc__ul_clj_4x3_bkc">
<li class="li">Domain-specific identifiers</li>
<li class="li">Internal account or wallet IDs</li>
<li class="li">Medical or patient numbers</li>
<li class="li">Employee IDs</li>
<li class="li">Other structured values that are unique to your business</li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Up to ten custom redaction suggestions can be created. For more information about
regular expressions, see <a class="xref" href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular-expression-language-quick-reference" target="_blank">Regular Expressions Language - Quick Reference</a> on the
Microsoft website. Zendesk uses Python to process regular expressions, which might
vary slightly from other language implementations. For differences, see <a class="xref" href="https://www.regular-expressions.info/python.html" target="_blank">Using Regular Expressions with Python</a> on the
regular-expressions.info website.</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">To create a custom redaction suggestion</strong></p>
<ol class="ol" id="topic_vjn_xx1_bkc__ol_o1f_by1_bkc">
<li class="li"><span class="ph">In <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4581766374554#topic_hfg_dyz_1hb" target="_blank">Admin Center</a>, click <img class="image" id="topic_vjn_xx1_bkc__d8e384" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ac_account_icon.png">
<strong class="ph b">Account</strong> in the sidebar, then select <strong class="ph b">Security &gt; Redaction suggestions</strong>.</span></li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Create</strong>.</li>
<li class="li">Add a name and description for the redaction suggestion.</li>
<li class="li">In the RegEx pattern field, define the regular expression pattern you want to
detect within a ticket conversation. <p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_vjn_xx1_bkc__image_aqj_f2h_bkc" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/redaction_suggestion_custom.png" width="700"></p>
</li>
<li class="li">In the Test detection field, add text with example PII that the redaction
suggestion should identify. <p class="p">If Zendesk detects the PII, you've entered the
correct RegEx pattern. If it isn't detected, revisit the RegEx pattern to
make corrections.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Create</strong>.</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title6" class="topic nested1" id="topic_th5_lfp_s3c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title6">Turning off redaction suggestions</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">When you turn off redaction suggestions, PII is no longer highlighted in tickets.</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">To turn off redaction suggestions</strong></p>
<ol class="ol" id="topic_th5_lfp_s3c__ol_uf3_nfp_s3c">
<li class="li"><span class="ph">In <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4581766374554#topic_hfg_dyz_1hb" target="_blank">Admin Center</a>, click <img class="image" id="topic_th5_lfp_s3c__d8e384" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ac_account_icon.png">
<strong class="ph b">Account</strong> in the sidebar, then select <strong class="ph b">Security &gt; Redaction suggestions</strong>.</span></li>
<li class="li">Under <strong class="ph b">Choose which types of PII to suggest for redaction</strong>, deselect <strong class="ph b">All
types</strong> to clear all selections.</li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Save</strong>.</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
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