Searching

This guide provides a reference for searching for items (tickets, users, organizations, etc.) within Zendesk.

Search limitations

Note that while a search can say it has over 1000 results, only the first 1000 results (based on whichever sorting method you are using in the UI) can be accessed.

Basic search

To perform a basic search, click the magnifying glass icon in the top-right of any page within Zendesk. This will reveal a textbox you can type your search into. Without using methods detailed in Advanced searching, this will do a loose text match (also known as a fuzzy case-insensitive match) for the text you type to various items in Zendesk.

After typing your search query, hit the enter/return key on your keyboard.

This will bring up the search results page. The results from your search are separated into tabbed sections:

• Tickets
• Articles
• Users
• Organizations

If you wish to share these search results, the white Copy link button can be used to create a link that will replicate the search for you to share.

Advanced searching

This covers searching for more specific information using the Zendesk search language. All results are still shown much like those within a basic search. This is ideal to use when you need to refine your search beyond that of the loose text matching basic searches do.

Using negation

You can search by negation by putting a minus sign in front of the search item. This will then do a “NOT” style search for it.

As an example, if you wanted to find items that do not contain the tag spam, you would do -tags:spam.

Searching by tag

To search for objects with a specific tag, you would simply use the syntax:

tags:tag_name

As an example, to locate objects using the tag skip_2fa_automation, you’d use:

tags:skip_2fa_automation

You can search for the negation of this by putting a minus in front of it:

-tags:tag_name

If you wanted to search for objects with multiple tags, you’d encapsulate them in double quotes:

tags:"tag_name tag_name"

As an example, if you wanted to find all objects that contains both the tags gold and sev1, you’d do:

tags:"gold sev1"

Comparison operators

The comparison operators are:

Operator	Meaning
:	Equal to
<	Less than
<=	Less than or equal to
>	Greater than
>=	Greater than or equal to

Searching by organization

You can search by organization using the format:

organization:name_of_organization

What this pulls up varies by object type:

• For tickets, it pulls up tickets owned by the organization
• For users, it pulls up users associated to the organization
• For organizations, it pulls up the organization

Ticket only methods

Searching by ID

To search by the ID, just put the ID value in the search box (by itself) and do the search. Doing so will open the ticket in your browser.

Searching by priority

To search by ticket priority, you would use the syntax:

priority{operator}name

The priority names (and order) are:

1. low
2. normal
3. high
4. urgent

These values are compared ordinally based on the order above

Searching by status

To search by ticket status, you would use the syntax:

status{operator}name

The status names (and order) are:

1. new
2. open
3. pending
4. hold
5. solved
6. closed

These values are compared ordinally based on the order above

Searching by dates

To search using dates, you will use the specific date object you want to search. For tickets:

Object	What it ties to
created	The date the ticket was created
updated	The date of the most recent update on a ticket
due_date	The value of the due date ticket field for a ticket
solved	The date the ticket was solved (most recent one if moved to solved multiple times)

You will use this in conjuction with Comparison operators to do a search, using the date format of YYYY-MM-DD.

As an example, to locate all tickets created after December 18, 2023, you would do created>2023-12-18

Searching by custom ticket field

To search by a custom ticket field, you use the format:

custom_field_{id}:value

where {id} is the ticket field ID. This one can be less intuitive as it requires knowing the ticket field ID. The best resource for this would be to talk to the Customer Support Systems team (via Slack) for assistance in locating the ticket field’s ID value.

Searching by satisfaction rating

To locate tickets based on satisfaction rating, you would use the format:

satisfaction:value

The possible values are:

• bad - A bad rating without a comment
• badwithcomment - A bad rating with a comment
• good - A good rating without a comment
• goodwithcomment - A good rating with a comment
• offered - The survey has been sent but not responded to

Searching by submitter

To search by the submitter of a ticket, you use the format:

submitter:search

Where search can be:

• The email of the user
• The name of the user
• The ID of the user
• The term me (which searches for yourself)

Searching by requester

To search by the requester of a ticket, you use the format:

requester:search

Where search can be:

• The email of the user
• The name of the user
• The ID of the user
• The term me (which searches for yourself)

Searching by assignee

To search by the assignee of a ticket, you use the format:

assignee:search

Where search can be:

• The email of the agent
• The name of the agent
• The ID of the agent
• The term me (which searches for yourself)

Organization only methods

Searching by custom organization field

To search by a custom organization field, you use the format:

field_api_name{operator}query

The common organization field API names are:

Field	What it is for	Zendesk Instance
account_owner	The Account Manager for the org	Both
aar	The Annual recurring revenue (ARR) of the org	Global
arr	The Annual recurring revenue (ARR) of the org	US Government
assigned_se	The user ID of the Assigned Support Engineer for the org	Global
technical_account_manager	The Customer Success Manager for the org	Both
support_level	The highest support level of the org	Both
health_score	The Gainsight health score for the org	Both
seats_decimal	The highest number of licenses seats for the org	Global
number_of_seats	The highest number of licenses seats for the org	US Government
salesforce_id	The 18 character Salesforce account ID for the org	Both
sfdc_short_id	The 15 character Salesforce account ID for the org	Both
solutions_architect	The Solutions Architect for the org	US Government

An example:

Searching for organizations with ARR less than 1000:

aar<1000

User only methods

Searching by email

To locate a user by their email, use the format:

email:email_address

As an example, to find the user in Zendesk with the email jcolyer@example.com, you’d do email:jcolyer@example.com

Searching by custom user field

To search by a custom user field, you use the format:

field_api_name:query

The common user field API names are:

• gitlab_username - An agent’s GitLab.com username
• gitlab_user_id - An agent’s GitLab.com user ID

As an example, to find one where the GitLab.com username is jcolyer, you would do:

gitlab_username:jcolyer

Combining advanced search items

You can combine multiple advanced search items to create a more refined search by separating them with a space.

As an example, you can find all tickets containing the tag customer that have a status of new by doing tags:customer status:new.

Examples

Example 1

Task:

• the preferred region of support is AMER (a custom field using ID value 360018253094)
• the support level of the organization is ultimate
• the satisfaction rating was bad (and had a comment)

custom_field_360018253094:americas__usa tags:ultimate satisfaction:badwithcomment

Example 2

Task:

• all ticket status except new, solved, and closed
• the assignee is Jason
• the SaaS Account problem type is Namesquatting (a custom field using ID value 360011793260)

-status:new -status:solved -status:closed assignee:Jason custom_field_360011793260:namesquatting_requests

Example 3

Task:

• locate an organization in Zendesk based off the Salesforce ID

Salesforce accounts actually have two forms of their IDs, the standard 18 character value and the shortened 15 character value. Zendesk organizations have both values within them, so you can use either to locate the account:

• Based off the 18 character ID value: salesforce_id:ABCDEFGH0123456789
• Based off the 15 character ID value: sfdc_short_id:ABCDEFGH0123456

You can also make use of a wildcard search by using an asterisk. So if you have the 15 character value, you could do this as well:

salesforce_id:ABCDEFGH0123456*

Example 4

Task:

• locate an L&R IR ticket based off the Salesforce ID of the account

As detailed in Example 3, there are two values one could have for a given Salesforce account. With L&R IRs, there is a custom field you can use to locate the Salesforce account it was filed for, but knowing if which of the two was used can be difficult. As such, it is best to use the 15 character value with a wildcard search. If you only have the 18 character value, drop the last 3 characters from the ID (so if it was ABCDEFGH0123456789, drop the last 3 to make it ABCDEFGH0123456). With that, you would do one of the following searches (depending on which Zendesk instance you are looking in):

• Zendesk Global: custom_field_6978327875612:ABCDEFGH0123456*
• Zendesk US Government: custom_field_11717220820372:ABCDEFGH0123456*

Useful links

• Zendesk search reference

Common issues and troubleshooting

This is a living section that will have items added to it as needed.